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Cat Vomit
I was following behind a manager at the Lowes in Culpeper as he led me to an opposite end of the store to show me a kitchen timer. I had hoped he would just point but the store is new and some people want to appear useful or actually be it for all I know. There were more employees than customers in the store and I got stuck behind one who had veered out of the manager's way because the manager looked all purposeful and this employee was clearly making good money for doing absolutely nothing. I remember a past work life when I was purposeful and I used to tell less ambitious co-workers that I did not care if they worked or jerked off but to stay out of my way when I was working. Which is what I felt like telling the employee who had veered in front of me to get out of the ambitious manager's way, because I was in a hurry to keep up with the manager. I did not want to lose him after all this effort he was putting forth. I pretty much knew that the manager had misunderstood what I was asking for and that this journey would end fruitlessly, and I was right about that.
I stood looking at a 20 dollar kitchen timer while he said he would ask about cheaper ones and I then waited until I could see him take a phone call and I disappeared back to the area where I had begun. I brushed lightly up against a woman's sleeve who was standing with her boyfriend, husband, or brother and she said after I passed, excuse me. She said it in the way that meant she was offended by my sleeve brushing against hers. She said it like a woman who is easily offended. I said sincerely but offhandedly, oh yes I'm very sorry, and I wandered up the aisle a bit. Then I came back and stood by her and her man friend and her girlfriend who was of a different skin color than the other two and fifty pounds heavier and much taller and wore a type of shoe that neither of the other two would even think about wearing. I wanted the offended woman to engage me or just continue to be offended by me. I wanted to say to the man, sir, please take no offense but your girlfriend is sort of a bitch and yet if she would give me a hug I would feel better about life. You see, I have been out in public longer than is my custom and I am coming a bit unraveled due to the fact that I can't really find anything and the longer I am out in public the more uncomfortable I get about being in public because if I can't find anything I could have just stayed at home. Although I do enjoy the drive, yes I do. I could really use a hug, ma'am? How 'bout it? Hug me?
None of this imaginary after the fact reconstruction of reality has any bearing on the here and then so, moving on, in another aisle, I found an employee who looked as uncomfortable in public as I say I am and I asked him about timers and he walked me four feet and showed me an array of timers of the type that turn plug-in devices on and off throughout a day. I was happy and expressed my thanks happily and the awkward feeling man appeared to feel happy, if only conditionally. I could tell he wouldn't take well to being hugged so I just moseyed on.
Things got worse before they got better--if in fact they have gotten better, which is in question-- when I ventured to the SuperWalmart where I got a neat array of items, from a colander to a knitting hoop to dish rags and a basketball and some bleeding heart tubers to bread and peanut butter and talapia (but I didn't really get enough food and now the next day I'm hungry, 20 miles from the nearest full sized grocery store). A couple of different people acted like I was in their way and they wanted to kick my ass for it and if only they weren't in such a hurry they would have. There was clearly nobody in this store who would give me a hug but that guy in the mismatched camouflage outfit did look like he wanted to slit my throat. I made a note to keep an eye out for him. I turned away once and he disappeared, but was probably right in front of me. I may have underestimated the efficacy of his camouflage. The camo-bandana hanging like a mullet hair extension under his gimme cap I had actually sort of smirked at before the underestimation. Hell, maybe it is better to withhold judgment or to never even form an opinion about something. The guy could have been a secret government agent protecting my candy ass with his skills of stealth and may have been at that moment on the trail of a wanted international terrorist and all the while I'm making fun of him for the implied lesser status of his breeding versus mine when let's face it--the both of us are milling around the same Walmart. It would serve me right if he did slit my throat in housewares, me bleeding out near the toaster ovens.
I got up at two this morning and it felt like wake up time so I made coffee and toast and oatmeal and had breakfast and then read for awhile. I treaded lightly through the house because the cat had thrown up in five different places last night before I went to bed and where there are five piles of cat vomit there may be a sixth. I forgave him the creamy biege lumps of bile laden puke but afterwards the incessant crying to be fed earned him a one way trip to the cold outdoors. I let him back in later, and fed him, the spoogey-eyed cat bastard.
Forget all that Greenwich Mean Time asserting that its only two in the afternoon, I've been up for ages and I'm having a cocktail. Cheers. And I'm sorry for making fun of bitches and warriors and sick cats.
The Valentine
Today is Valentines Day and I just finished having breakfast with Lorina followed by a bout of speechlessness and then I bid her adieu out into the icy cold and grey wet unknown of the Virginia countryside.
Some months ago we decided to break up on Feb. 13th and so for the special occasion last night I baked some Salmon and she baked this medley of vegetables cut into cubes and doused with olive oil and salt and pepper. The vegetables were beets, parsnips, potatoes, garlic, and carrots. She made a spinach salad with cranberry raisins and goat cheese and some of that raspberry dressing you can't escape even if you wanted to, which I don't. She brought a bottle of white and a loaf of homemade bread and wouldn't I have to be crazy to break up with a beautiful, loving, intelligent woman laden so heavily with delicious fruits? The scale certainly dips heavily towards yes.
This idea of sharing your life with someone is kind of tricky and I don't want to pretend that I know anything about it, not that I would be very convincing even if I were pretending a knowledge about it, and surely not convincing enough to fool Lorina or earn entry into the Book of Right.
I just now fell into a sort of narcotic cat nap and when I opened my eyes the screen was full of letter S's.
I was going to write my mom a letter today but I haven't even sent her the three I wrote last week so who am I kidding writing letters and not sending them off in the mail?
I did call her a minute ago and she sounded tired so maybe she is having nightmares again; the doorbell rings but nobody is there. My sister is visiting her this week and that might be making her nervous too because she probably knows the plot to upset her autonomy is forward moving. She probably doesn't remember that I was there for the month of January, haphazardly pushing the buttons of the machine that would bring a stranger into her life, to live with her, but part of her remembers it and that part might be coming back to conspire with the part of her that is anxious because my sister is there introducing the same kind of crap I was introducing, although likely with more finesse is my sister introducing it.
I can hear geese honking out the window to my left at night now because I put this aside for a few days so its not right after breakfast anymore, or for that matter, Valentines Day. Lorina is in another state entirely, attending a bachelorette party, which makes me a little nervous in that hey what happens at the bachelorette party stays at the bachelorette party sort of way. Ultimately what saves me is that I don't have the strength or willful endurance to be as insecure as I sample at being, and uh, ok dammit, I trust Lorina, even if only in equal measure to my insecurity regarding all things her, which occasionally is a very fucked up way to be but for now will just have to be good enough. Besides, if you removed all my petty insecurities I would be so excruciatingly incredible that no mortal woman would be able to be with me, without bursting into flames, anyway. But mostly what I think about when I hear bachelorette is who was that chick on that show a couple of years ago about a single gal looking for a groovy hubby? Its as if the name is on the tip of my tongue.
You can't always be autonomous is what I had knowingly explained to my mother in January.
Sometimes you have to let people help you is what I had said.
I drove 22 hours straight with only a 30 minute catnap to arrive back here from Texas on the 3rd of this month. For the home stretch I came through mountain passes on both sides of Luray with dusted snow on the black pavement at 2 a.m. As is often the case around here, even when its not 2 in the morning or snowing, I was the only one on the road. I was lonely as I considered that everything and everyone on the other side of the mountain had been wiped out by an apocalyptic event. It being so cold and sparsely populated here you wouldn't even smell the demise of humanity for quite some time. It would be as if the apocalypse never happened or as if the humanity never existed. You might see people sitting mannequin-still in their cars obliquely angled to normality but you wouldn't think much about it if you minded your own business like you're supposed to. I was driving very carefully, winding downward now, as I imagined black ice under the thin layer of snow. It felt sort of pointless all the previous day's road rushing. Though it was a driving record for me, over 1200 miles in a single stretch of driving, with only over the counter energy drinks to fuel me, so I could pin that medal on my bony chest if I did indeed make it down the mountain instead of off the mountain in a fiery crash of sparks and smoke and flying metal ending upside down in a frozen creek bed with only the predictable desolate flickering meanderings of my last few cognitive moments to keep me company before the final darkness.
I arrived back here and crunched over snow and onto the breezeway and then into my shiny clean abode scrubbed by Lorina and there was the rhododendron cutting on the table that won't stop blooming. And some love messaging written on paper and a cat that only briefly considered had I been gone at all who rolled over on the wood floor and sprawled belly open to the latent potential of my kung fu warrior death blow.
Lorina slept elsewhere and I was too wired/tired and crazy to my core to go over there and wake her up and say baby baby I'm home. I'm crazy. What? Yes, yes about you, but if I could only keep my mouth shut I wouldn't add some less romantic self-absorption which would cause us to sit together in a quiet and awkward silence while you debated with yourself my merits or lack thereof and I not to be out done would do the same right back at you, until I switched sides to join you--just who the fuck do I think I am?
Instead of that I had a glass of whisky and searched the spidery corners of secret places until I found a dead roach, which I crumbled up and laid lengthwise along a section of a feathery page torn from a bible and then I sealed it with a lick and set fire to it.
I did not drift off and then abruptly wake up just as my truck rolled off the side of a mountain. Nor did I leave my body and float purposelessly near the ceiling. I slept in a dreamless void and woke up later in the afternoon to a world that would, despite its abundant allures, take some getting used to. And that's as far as I've gotten. But I will keep you posted as events unfurl in the wind making the flag look like all its stripes are not connected even though through other sources we are led to believe that they are not only connected, but parallel.
Flickering
My brother in his prime could throw a baseball 90 mph and at 6' 7" his backswing and follow through with a golf club are such that I cringe a little each time he drives the imaginary ball 300 yards down the fairway, which is represented by me sitting in an easy chair in front of his fireplace, just six feet away. I slouch down a little so that my head is protected from the accidental tragedy that would be the slipping of the club from his fingers. With each fierce swish my mind pulls up a photograph from the past so that I see and hear a swishing flicker show of images, one of which is not from the past but the future and is glass enclosed framed photographs on the wall in front of me exploding in a Sam Peckinpaw smithereens fashion as the accidentally? released club bounces to and fro like it is under the control of an invisible and not so very adept baton twirler. The pictures from the past are me smarting off to him by asking does he want a medal or a chest to pin it on, or stealing his car keys to sneak out the family car three years before I had a legal license to do such a thing (driving, not stealing), or the accidental? karate chop to his throat that made him reassess his real or imagined superiority over me, in our childhoods.
I got new tires on my truck yesterday and a new windshield last month and will begin driving northeast in the morning and although my stay here in Dallas did not seem to accomplish much towards the ultimate goal of easing my aging mother into the idea of accepting in home care I did learn a thing or two about the incompetence of some agencies that provide such care. My brothers that are local and a sister coming in for a follow up attempt will carry on and despite this string of dismal failures we have faced it would only seem natural that luck will eventually change to an opposite of whatever it has been bringing and for this family that will be a good thing. My mother, meanwhile, is a long way from full blown alzheimers and I expect will carry on just fine until her children are able to get their acts together.