Another Friday evening that has no meaning. No cause for any Happy Hour, but rather a questionable first sip of low alcohol red wine while mom dithers in the background, wandering, coming into the kitchen where I sit to get a couple of saltines, then another trip in, to feed the cat, then a trip to the bathroom leaving the sliding door open, then back into the kitchen again to find herself more chardonnay, mumbling to herself a narrative throughout.
I'm having a crap day. I didn't do well holding back my anger in the morning, coming down the stairs, there's mom in her chair, reading, the kitchen a mess, dirty cat dishes on the floor, an open can left out, the cans of cider I left out by the sink, the jar of almond butter open on the counter top... Mr. Grumpus, she calls me. I tried to avoid the wine last night, but yeah, again I was up late, to have some form of miserable peace in the night, as if I were studying something, and the cider wasn't doing it, so I had some box white wine, actually not bad from the Bota Box people. I can gather the wine isn't so good for me and my mood the next day, but then again I can't quite tell given how things are now, thrown up into middle aged limbo. I was watching some YouTube pieces about monasteries again, one out by a river at the edge of barren desert edge in New Mexico, and then one about Trappists in some large monastery out in Iowa, where they make coffins out of the wood from their forests, oak, elm, pine. They aren't, the coffins, the simple pine box with the characteristic shape that widens out above the narrow feed end, then after the shoulders and folded hands, narrower at the head. Like the one John Paul II rested in in St. Peter's Square with the great book open upon it, pages turning in the wine, or like the simple one they put Mastroianni in, if I remember correctly. Dignified. The ones the Iowa Trappist make are hand made of course. Rectangular, with side panels cut for some touch of decoration.
Well, I'm quite tired of her presence, but the sun's out, and after my shower, and feeding her some sliced turkey breast--she dirties two plates, then goes into the living room with a bit of cheese and the slice of turkey to eat without any plate. "You don't do a fucking thing," is what my mind is saying. "At least I do the dishes," I express to her when she complains about my morning moods.
Anyway, I end up taking her along for the errands in the old Corolla silver grey. Down to the western end of town, 5 Point liquor store to get some wine, across the road from the McDonalds, the steam plant smoke stacks rising in the distance at the edge of the lake. We go for a quick ride to the lake overview, and you can really see the curvature of the globe the earth and the waters sit upon.
Up Second Street, the old movie marquis is lit up, a fresh development here, the lettering saying Tom, and below it, Jerry. Up past Mohawk, taking the rear entrance into the Big M parking lot. The sun is out still. Fried fish dinner offered at the deli counter hot bar.
Then later, westward again, out 104 to the turnoff, the road leading you South over the fruit valley farmland to the Rice Creek Nature Center, where the waters are higher than normal, geese in a thawing estuary, and I regret not being a scientist like me dad who gave me all the encouragement one could ever ask for and yet I failed at that. There are nice birds at the sunflower bird feeders hanging from their shepherd's hooks, a bluebird, a gold finch, chickadees in lively flight. We have a nice moment, and then we drive back. Then the kerfuffle of getting mom, the New York Times and her book in, and she's still wearing her sunglasses, leaving her regular glasses in the glove compartment, as I take the wine and the groceries in and wait for her to follow me up the stairs to 35 Cedarwood, so I go back, put her glasses case from the car in and on her Eames Chair, but by the time I get to the kitchen I forget where I placed them, look through pockets of the winter coat, can't find them, ahhhhh! Then she's mad at me, so there goes the nice day, but I don't have much of a care about that and having forgotten canned cat food at the store, I drive back down, then go for a walk in a cold descending wind at twilight.
Later, after I get in the above scribbling, I heat what's for dinner, clam chowder and the fried fish from the market, heating the chowder on the stove with a dash of milk, the haddock in the toaster oven with some chili, a local tradition. We get through dinner, and I get mom off to her bed and the tv and the cat, then I go back down and soak the dishes, check my email, etc., pour myself a little more wine, The Maltese Falcon in on Turner Classic, and then I go back and load the dishwasher up with the soaked plates, as the cat ventures outside while the wind blows 26 miles per hour. And I'm full and tired and full of hateful thoughts anyway.
So I ease my night with some wine, a mass produced one, by Bolla, a Bardolino, which is light.
I talk to a coworker about work, and he sends me some texts that are snapshots of how things are there. I feel far away, I tell you. I feel less like an unemployed piece of shit. Several customers, amongst my favorites reach out to me, an email from Bob and Lynette Harris, a message from Pete Thompson, saying they all miss my presence there. A bit of 'it's not the same place without you," because I've been there long and steady, faithfully. For years. To mine own financial detriment, but I was there when no one else wanted to take care of mom.
So what am I? A child? How can I fail so badly at making a living? Art was not worth it, writing, music, too many nights in a roadhouse were a crime, a blasphemy almost....
I try to find the right blend of distraction and attraction. Perhaps a great writer, a Vonnegut, a Tolstoy, could create the necessary spell of distraction within their own creations, so that the deeper thoughts could come through as a coherent system previously unknown, doubted even, even internally until it might come out. Distant planets of Tralfamador with higher forms of realized Christian spirituality, visited by Billy Pilgrim, hack science fiction writer Kilgore Trout, or elaborate tales of Princes and Princesses and court intrigue against a backdrop of the Napoleonic campaign to Moscow, the love story of Tolstoy, as Levin, and his courtship of his wife, the wholesome bookend in Anna Karenina.
Probably the same reason I liked tending bar with all the interesting talk and people and conversations, the distractions that let the Holy Wheels turn, through their seasons, to the end of considerable creative moments, whether they are caught on record or not.
Mine, lost to time. No one stood to record a mutual heroic life. Underrated. Quiet. Hung about with the sting of New York City rejection from a phantom princess all happening at the tender age when depressions come to adults. The tragedies of a gifted mind, a jerk of all trades, master of none. A weed growing in a lost place. Yet still, with a human soul. And perhaps as good of an idea as anyone else about how to approach the great matter of life.
The stone that the builders rejected will always be the first cornerstone. So they
The Bardolino tastes better now that it's been open for hours in its larger bottle, six hours. Mom has relented, visiting once, briefly, having a cracker, not willing to brush her teeth or use mouthwash, and quickly, for her, back to bed.
The cat is calmer now too. It's 25 out, with winds continuing. The sky clear to the stars.
Outside, the cold feels like heat in the summer, in the way it caresses you intimately all over your body.
Mom comes down again, just when I thought it was safe. Eventually I placate her with the chicken salad I made last night. Oh, she always hates mayonnaise, can't have any mayonnaise on her club sandwich, but how she like it. Without pear or apple, no strange herbal touches on my part. Finally, she goes back. She had sat in her chair before, talking about her books there. I don't get it, she says. Earlier I saw Sherwood Anderson on the ottoman but I'm not sure if that's what she's looking at.
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