The latter

There are moments and events that take you out of your self. Out of your head. Out of your obsessions and rumination. Some of these moments and events are magic and beautiful and some are painful and exhausting. Both kinds can do you some good. 

Needed

Oh, Melatonin gummies, thank you.

Spring Sunday

Getting up early to do laundry. To go to the supermarket for just coffee beans and toothpaste and spending two-hundred-fifty dollars among people I don't even like. March. The sun is out. The wind is blowing. There are robins in the fields and blackbirds gathering straw for their nests. I'm going to have lunch with my daughter today a couple of hours drive from here. We're all gathering to celebrate her 25th birthday belatedly. I receive a text message unexpectedly. Another invitation for lunch. The first such invitation in a very long time.

A couple of months in a week

Well, that was a week of headaches, anxiety, ruined sleep, and frustration. I'm through it now though and the thing is nearly finished with just a few loose ends that are beyond my control to wrap up. Hopefully, we can stick a bow on it Monday.

Let's go

Work is my entire life now. Last night I dozed for a while in a job posting. I woke in the midst of interviews, making schedules, shuffling things around to try to make it all work. There's no time for anything else.

Unexpectedly

March has its own unique kind of harshness. Something about its particular angle of sunlight makes a part of you believe in Spring while at the same time its brutal wind slashes you with razors. The metaphorical lion.

This morning, while driving the backroads early, a bald eagle took flight from a light pole startled by my passing car. 

Later, at dusk, hundreds of crows blowing about in the crazy wind, circling, caw-cawing to one another in mounting excitement. Spring is moving in their blood. 

I decided to get my self a spicy shrimp boil for dinner. One of the waitresses, who I've seen in there many times, approached me with her phone and showed me some photos of Bill Pullman - the actor (and University of Massachusetts alumnus). She told me I reminded her of him and said that we're handsome. Aw shucks, I should have said, but I kind of laughed not knowing what else to say. 

A little while later, a beautiful woman, who I've kissed in my dreams on a foggy, lonesome pier on the Jersey Shore, sent me a message complimenting my hair. The metaphorical lamb. 

Doldrums of March

I saw the sun shining out there yesterday but stayed inside and did next to nothing. Which is to say that I rested. Today, I'm up earlyish and ready to take care of some of what gets neglected during the work week. St. Patrick's Day happened and I just stepped around it. It's time for a whole new series of holidays. All of the old ones are worn thin and depressing to me. Some real joy, not the kind that comes in a can.

Hairdo

I went into an old timer's barber shop tonight. His hands were shaking hard. That's the first thing i noticed. Parkinson's, maybe. He's a Vietnam War veteran. I couldn't walk out on him once I'd gone in there. He barely touched my head with the clippers, but where they did make contact, they did significant damage. I've given myself better haircuts in the desert without a mirror. But we laughed and told each other stories and I just let him do his thing. He told me I had a terrible hairline and the worst possible kind of hair. A barber's dream, he said. You need to come in every week in order just to not look ridiculous. After, he had me pay him on Venmo - full price, which I did without blinking. He showed me the back of my head in a hand mirror. He didn't seem at all concerned about the path he'd shaved nearly half-way up the back of one side of my head. I wasn't either. We said goodbye and he told me that, if I didn't like the haircut, I could come back in a couple of days and he'd fix it for nothing. Then I walked a few blocks to another place and paid again for them to try to repair the damage.

March snow

There's certainly a lot of it. More than a foot of snow out there now and it hasn't stopped falling yet. I worked from home today and have yet to go out to shovel. It's that wet and heavy stuff that breaks the trees. At least the wind is not (yet) as fierce as predicted and it's not miserably cold out there. I'll wait a little while and then go out for half an hour and see how far I get. 

I've been day dreaming about a long walk again.

Note

Do you remember the night we met in the park? You'd been soul searching, and I hadn't heard form you in a few weeks. 

I remember two things about that meeting. The first was crossing the busy darkened street and how we unconsciously joined hands as we started to run. The other was you telling me that, although I didn't have any of the items listed on your checklist, when you were with me you felt happy. 

When you were walking close to me, it felt instantly right again. My body was happy. Something relaxed and was restored. The words were less important. There was something true and right about just our proximity to each other. I felt that often.

Choices were ultimately made. Don't you want me to have those things? Of course I do, if that's what you want. Just let me do what I want. So I did, and what else could I have done? It's for the best, I told myself.

Then I assumed the identify of the one not chosen. The rejected. His death was a slow one. 

Now, you have matured and I am not far from growing old. What would it feel like to walk together again? I would do so, even if only once more.

What is this place?

A gauntlet. I ran it today and made it through, all clubbed and bruised and kicked and spat upon. I didn't know if I had more or fewer friends or enemies when it was over. The young nurse's assistant giggled during our interview. Are you sure this is what you want to do? 

Santa something

I remember sitting alone on a beach at night. To the south was a pier and a ferris wheel and people laughing, all encircled in light. Out beyond the light's perimeter was the ocean and darkness and me. I knew it would always be like that. 

Wednesday

At work, you're trying to hire people while attempting to do the jobs of the four managers you'd be supervising if they worked there. A headache all day - constriction. Dealing with pay problems, medical leaves, discipline and every other minor fire emerging spontaneously in the tinder. Six months you've been here. Your daughter just turned twenty-five while you were working. You'd like to take a few hours today for slowing down and meeting, but you don't think you're going to have them. Nothing is free.

John Gorka

 

Italian American Catholic High School Girl

A song on the car radio took me by surprise and brought me back to high school where girls were something I admired, feared, yearned and suffered for. Mostly from a distance. The song brought her back vividly in my memory. Joy, an Italian American Catholic High School Girl from Worcester, Mass dressed in her uniform skirt and sweater. 

After I'd signed my enlistment papers at the age of 16, I got a little bolder, my tragic fate now sealed. I found ways to talk to her- usually by acting like a screwball. I'd too often do my Stallone impression. "Yo, you're a pretty tough kid, you know that?" It was a shtick we developed, but getting beyond that was a struggle. 

I saw her at a few parties during our senior year. She had an older long-term boyfriend. She drank a little back then and I didn't. On a few occasions, she sat with me outside under the stars and told me about her life. Intimate stuff. A couple of times she said things like, "I've never told any one this before." 

Around the time of graduation, we had a talk like that outside a party. She was comfortable with me. I was less comfortable, holding everything in and trying to tamp it all down. I finally worked up the courage to ask her about our situation. "You've told me things you've never even told your boyfriend. How come we never got together?'

She didn't hesitate. "Well, I think your pretty good looking but you're also pretty weird".

Intermission

 

This is how you spend your dreams?

We are packed cheek to jowl in a sweltering courtyard. Someone insists on mounting a bicycle which is a special kind of selfishness and absurdity because there's no space to move through and nowhere to go. We talk as if speaking to him. Yeah, that looks like a good idea. Asshole. 

It's very hot. I'd like you to pedal just as fast as you can, sir,  I quip, although he cannot hear me, just to add some levity to the situation. The man closest to me smiles wryly. We are suffering here together and no one likes it much. 

When I stretch my neck and look up, I can feel the hot sun shining on my face. I am taller than most in the crowd, except for the fool in the bike helmet standing on his pedals going nowhere, and this action provides me with a momentary and unexpected feeling of spaciousness. I feel the pain of everyone, I say aloud to no one in particular.