Last one

Snakes.

It's actually a little 

Sad, really.

Over 

And

Out.

Anchored

Went in early to work to check on things after a holiday weekend, to attend a much-too-early meeting and to catch up on a few outstanding to-dos. The reality of things didn't take long to depress me and, by noon,  I was yawning frequently and ready for bed. There were still things to tend to though and another long meeting to attend. I somehow managed to neglect most of the things I'd come in to confront today. 

Stopped at a laundromat on the way home that featured a restaurant and bar across the street. I stuffed a weeks worth of clothes into a single washer, dropped the quarters into the slot and set the controls. I crossed the street, not without peril, and ordered myself a michelada. This made me feel a little better but not half as good as the Latino family I saw on television in eyes-rolled-back euphoria after biting into Pop Tarts. They were levitating in a state of total delight. Unrealistic expectations, yo. 

I can't get there from here. 

Sick or something

The distances between myself and others grew ever wider until my only contact with them was imaginary if not entirely forgotten. Your social distancing was a mere technicality.

Family holiday

Growing, aging, balding, greying, forgetting, repeating, remembering and laughing - we get together and count heads. They've changed - the velocity of change having quickened - but they all remain. We celebrate that with food and drink and stories and we leave later hoping the next time we do this the numbers will have increased or remained the same and not be fewer.

Would be

There was a woman walking on the bridge over the turnpike. She was silhouetted black against the sky as the sun set. I wanted to see you that way, bundled in your long winter coat with its fur-lined hood. I wanted to see you walking that way and to know it was you by your profile and by the way that you walked. That would have been enough.

Hey, Gringo

I bought some booze tonight to bring to the upcoming family holiday gathering. None of us remaining are alcoholics as far as I can tell. A jug of bold red, some Old New England Eggnog, and a bottle of Bacardi Coquito. Coquito, as I understand it, is a Puerto Rican holiday beverage. It's rum based and coconut flavored. The best stuff, I've heard, is homemade and often gifted to friends and loved ones. I've never received a gift of coquito, until tonight, when I bought myself a little. It's nice. 

Brass

The witch told me that the woman I should be looking out for is blonde. I told her that blondes had never really been my type. That is why things are the way they are for you, she said. 

Stand up eight

The first snow fell here last night. My shoes, on the walk to the car, neglected to inform me that they'd just decided to be skis instead of shoes thereby not allowing me the time I would require to transform from a walker into a skier. I had just enough time to evolve into a faller though. I went down hard in a cloud of curse words. Time for some new shoes, I guess. There's no tread left on those soles at all. Things wear down eventually. They certainly do. 

No Deal

We were both facing our own financial difficulties as a consequence of divorce. Once, while she was worrying aloud about her particular circumstances - something she did not often do with me - I said something about us being partners and being able to work through it together. She spit that idea out the moment it entered her mouth. No! She was better at math than I was. She thought in economic terms. I thought in terms of endurance - carrying the load, inching forward, trying to make the best of it.  I just wanted to be with her, really. She was into maximization though. She had a will to change her circumstances and she did so. I haven't seen her since.

Thank you for your service

 

Veteran's Day

Veteran's Day. They gave me a free haircut at a place I stumbled into while not expecting a free haircut and I left appreciative. I put the pack on my back later and headed out into the remnants of a humid tropical storm for three miles up over the power lines. 

Happy Veteran's Day!, the young woman who cut my hair had said. I don't think it's that kind of holiday, I thought but didn't say back to her. 

I watched a You Tube video featuring a former soldier who'd unintentionally blown a boy's head off with a shotgun in Iraq while breaching a door. After coming home, a few years deep in the abyss of heroin addiction, a stint in prison, lots of therapy and the birth of his own son (now about the same age as the boy he killed), he can finally talk about what he did. 

Don't say, Happy Veterans Day! like you're at a child's birthday party. And don't ask what he did to earn that free haircut.

Neighbors

I was thinking while walking that this block looked like one on which I might actually be able to afford to live. The rats were out walking too. I saw three in the span of two blocks and could hear more. Maybe it's the sudden drop in temperature that had them bustling so just after dark. Shepard Street, Brighton.

Rest In Peace, Mimi Parker.

 

The Obsessed

 

Mr. Lonely

 

The real sun is rising while mine begins to set

It's dawn and something is talking to me through the screen from the back yard. It's not often you can leave your slider open all night in Massachusetts during the month of November. It sounds like a crow or raven. A rolling sound in the throat. An interrogative. I don't know, brother. I don't know. 

Thank you for  the extra hour of sleep. I spent it dreaming about eating pizza with people I didn't know and and appreciating ballads sung by Bobby Vinton with one of them. I woke up thinking about how ABC managed to perpetrate a freudian slip that insulted the entire Indigenous world and how I'll likely never marry again. 

Friday night, I went out to listen to a band play. It was a weird night. Saturday was spent recovering. My ears are still ringing. I woke up Saturday feeling outside of it all. Like there's nothing for me here. That feeling stayed all day and was  confirmed by everything I saw on the internet.

It's tongue in cheek, the Mr. Lonely thing. Nothing's in earnest, or honest. It's a prank. It''s ironic. It'''s sarcastic. Which means it comes from someone hopelessly lost, terrified and adrift. 

I was watching a band play. Old grey wizened biker dudes playing heavy guitar-driven stuff. They've been at it for almost 50 years. Admirable and still ferocious. I was standing close to the front, dancing in place, trying to show my appreciation. You see, a show like this in a small room requires reciprocity for the desired transformation to take place. When the band puts out, you move to show your appreciation. That's your part in the process. You don't hold your phone up and document a moment that you'll never actually look at again for the sake of posting to gain momentary cool. That's not why we're here. It's a sort of atheist's communion for a relatively small group of people. 

Some youngster attacked me from behind. Grabbed me around the legs below the knees and pile drove me into the stage and kept driving. Somehow we ended up on the floor against which I held his head and punched it once. He came up smiling, so I'm pretty sure he was ok, but he simmered down a little after that. I'm not the guy who punches people at shows though. That's not me. My ears are still  ringing too. 

What's old is new

Old angers remain and surface in my dreams. The old ones give birth to new ones. You'd think that after all this time I'd be able to let it go. But you'd be wrong.

November things

I'm graced with the opportunity to participate in both the sunrise and the sunset along with bare black skeletal trees silhouetted against vivid skylines in the East and in the West. It feels good. 

Technicolor

Life has returned in my dreams. Maybe you only fully realize you've been in a depression once you've climbed out of it. At this rate, life might soon be returning to my waking life. It's been a long, deep, dry several years.