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Reading Light
Up on the shelf in front of me is Jimenez, Swift, Hemingway, Brecht, Kerouac, Kafka, Joyce, some Kotzwinkle, a large chunk of Brautigan, the minor works of Hesse but including his big hit, Steppenwolf, and my cub scout handbooks. I used to have a vintage Elvis Gospel album up there but things disappear over time.
There was for a few years some mild concern regarding my sanity and during that period conservative elements of the family took action and one or two books disappeared as well, for example, Trotsky's Permanent Revolution, and one of those books that contain supposed satanic verses. To tell the truth I was scared to read that second one, the mad ravings of whatshisname.
Over there to the left used to be what I thought by now would be the complete works of P. K. Dick but that collection is apparently being enjoyed by someone else; no man, I ain't naming you, I'm just saying.
At some point this ridiculous flittering-around lifestlye of mine precluded me from carrying several hundred pounds of books around with me so I just left them here in this boyhood bedroom and started using public libraries.
And then as more time passed other premium books took wing and some less than premium books were added by others where gaps occured and up there now I see titles like How To Live With Yourself And Like It. What a long title that is. I see a Billy Graham biography and scattered throughout two or three books about Hitler.
I do not see that book that was offered during my faithful stint with the Methodist Youth Foundation, How Far Can I Go?, which I thought was going to be, based on the cover teasers, a literal guidebook telling me how far I could go with my girlfriend, but it fell way short of that expectation and I was left to my own fumbling devices, and a less than stellar success rate. And speaking of devices the book had no chapter entitled--Devices, Where, Why, and How.
There's an interesting title over there, 20 Million Careless Capitalists, I know I never read that; and Bulls, Bears, and Dr. Freud is a pretty snappy title also.
I'm not actually reading a lot of book length stuff lately, I just read the titles, so if you ask me if I have read Eleanor Early's, New Orleans Holiday, I will be able to answer honestly, oh yes, I sure did. Try to trip me up by asking what its about and you know I'm going to tell you--300 pages, or so.
Oh Yeah, Hey
It's all a blur now, the passing Waffle House signs, I can't even tell you where I was, but it was probably outside Lafayette, Louisiana. I forgot my reading glasses so I just pointed to that blurry image in the bottom left corner of the the laminated placemate/menu. It turned out to be cheese scrambled eggs, bacon, grits, and raisin toast, with coffee. It was barely 5:30 in the morning which really means nothing at a 24 hour joint.
The waitress called me "sweetie," bumping her up into top tier tip range and I was so happy that they had the chocolate cream pie I didn't even tell her that I meant I wanted it to go and just ate it for my breakfast dessert, forcing down the last few delicious bites.
Back on the road I set the cruise control at whatever the law allowed and danced in place sitting down a few times and did a little stretching when I got stiff over those seven hours before I got really hungry again. I was close enough to Dallas to where I could have waited to see what the cupboards allowed but then I saw the sign for Senorita's famous Mexican food and I salivated to the highway 19 exit. It turned out there were three popular Tex-Mex restaurants at this one little dirtwater miles from nowhere exit, and they were, Senorita's, Juanita's, and the Ranchero. I hit Juanita's, had the large bean and cheese nacho plate, followed with an enchilada plate with rice and beans and throughout snacked on the crispy bowl of chips and delicious salsa (never forget cilantro) and hot, freshly made (by the woman right across the way in front of me) corn tortillas. With iced tea.
I was a little sick after this meal but luckily had prepared with stage one prevention by popping a pepcid AC before going in. Back in the truck I popped a stage two, I call it the pepcid sandwich, acid prevention program. I fought off one or two tidal waves of acid before the meds properly kicked in, then I was good to go.
Shortly, downtown Dallas loomed before me and I exited onto Central Expressway, but south instead of north, so I had to make a U-turn and proceed in the direction of my mom's house, which is in far North Dallas, you might even say Farmer's Branch.
In the cupboards there wasn't exactly what I had in mind for breakfast this morning, oh yeah, hey, Merry Christmas, so I thought I would bop out to MacDonalds for two burritos and coffee but its Christmas you stupid idiot. My mom felt guilty and gave me twenty bucks for food. I looked at her derisively while rubbing the paper between my fingers and barked, "this all you got?" (I'm just kidding, how sacreligious, on Christmas morning no less, shoot me, shoot me dead.)
Alberston's grocery at Forest and Marsh was open though so I got some cereal, a couple of Vanilla Frappuccinos in a bottle, and some whole milk. In the parking lot walking back to the truck I heard this young woman scream out something about her baby on Christmas and then turned around to see her and her young husband and baby in a stroller walking out of the left end of the store over by the small bundles of firewood. She screamed again and picked up a bundle of firewood and since my default has been set for harsh reality I cringed at what I thought could happen but then she just acted like she was going to throw it into the plate glass and her husband voiced his protest and I turned around and ran into my truck.
I heard this young prick yell out to an old man, "hey it's not too late to ask Santa for driving lessons." Turned out the prick was me and I ain't that young.
There used to be in this house a little hand-carved sign that said "the family that prays together, stays together," but I don't see that sign and as if to prove the price of smugly ignoring homilies, there's not too many of us around for Christmas this year. Until this evening when we go over to my brother's house it's just me and mom by ourselves roaming around this big undecorated house. I sneak around a little to see what's up with her, what it's like when she's here alone like she is most days of the year. She naps alot. Standing on the front porch I called her from my cell phone yesterday because she doesn't hear the doorbell that well. She answered the door in her housedress with her gray hair gone wild and she looked a little like the freshly captured Saddam Hussein, without beard. This morning, sleeping to well past sunrise for the first time in weeks, I went down and saw on the dinner table a little scrap of paper with a scrawled red ink message from her long standing paper boy, it said--Merry Christmas Mrs. Louis.