So it is in, and through, the Beatitudes that we find “the map,” the way to Jesus, the way to embrace fully that which is completely a story, completely a myth, also a history, also a penetrating psych-scientific study and teaching of how to attain intellectually and physically a spiritual life, the way, in other words.  (Credit to The Chosen Series for putting these phrase, a Map to find Me, into the Beatitudes episode culminating Season Two.)

The cat has gone outside again.  It’s four AM, and I watch him tread his paws over the lightly frozen ground, disappearing into the darkness of a cloud covered night.

We all make our pilgrimage as children, trying to be men, women.  Our own path of spiritual support, which comes to be the single most important and meaningful thing to us.  To the greater meaning, we can only be ignorant.

This is the pained thing, the path, its great length through time.  We cannot come to its conclusion, its greater meaning, before we are ready.

It is an incredible and unbelievably difficult and trying path to be on.  To listen to the order of heaven, god, truth, reality, ...  It might also smack of madness, for its risks, for its otherworldliness.

Joseph, a good father who must, as all good mortals, pass way.

And Jesus is the one who reveals the reality of existing in the universe.  Not to exclude any other path, the ancient wisdom of Eastern thought...

The myth shows us the way, a map, to whatever it is we chose to strive for.

As a writer, maybe it's harder to fake who you are.  If you end up doing yoga and reading Genesis and that's all you can do, that's how it goes.  

Mom comes down, after I write two sentences.  She sits down at the table, I get her her two morning pills. Did you sleep okay...  She examines an empty box of museum painting holiday cards.  She is concerned about the cat being out, reaches her hand, her right hand, to the top of her head to pick at around at it.  She makes little observations.  The refrigerator is very full, she says.  I'm making soup for her, the usual can of Progresso, tear up some chicken, from fried chicken breasts today, add stock, spices.  I need to get to the River's End Bookstore.  She wants to go for a ride too.  Mom, it's cold out.  The way she clears her throat irritates me, perpetually.  Do you want to take a shower, Mom?  It's too damn cold.  But you just said that it's too warm already when I asked you if I should turn the heat up.  She opens a can for the cat, he eats it.  You're scaring him, she tells me.  Soon he wants to go back out.  I feed him another spoonful from the open can, he mushes the bits up against the side of the dish, licking up the liquid gravy and some of the bits, abandoning the rest.  He's calling to be let out now, on top of mom going on.  She looks through her purse.  She brought it down last night, when she came down for a slice of pizza.  

I get through the dishes, sip on a chilled paper cup of Stewart Shop coffee from the fridge, take care of some emails, write out a card for Ben the maintenance guy, and low on money as we are $40 is generous, but I feel guilty about that, and then as winter night comes with cloud cover I go up to change out of my sweats and put my trusty pants on, with belt, wallet, mask, either to go for a walk in the light, or to get down to the grocery store, so I check in on mom who was lobbying for a ride earlier.  No, she's comfortable in bed.  I sit in her chair, text my friend Betsy to catch up, on yoga, on the Christmas holiday, and she's flying back to DC from Utah, and in the background mom's talking to herself, stirring, and down the stairs as I am in mid sentence composition.  And she's hungry.  Oh, but not that hungry.  Oh, I don't want to disturb you.  My voice rises, mom, what do you want?!  Okay, pizza, so I put my energy on hold and heat up the oven for 425, Paul Newman cauliflower crust pizza...  Okay, calm down, you can do this.  She's on the couch still.  The cat has observed me head into the kitchen, so he hops down from being next to her on the sofa and out he goes.  Where did the cat go?  Then she's singing Silent Night in her out of tune tone deaf way, so I vanish back into the kitchen's relative refuge.

She'll go around all day looking at random pieces of paper, packing slips, old mail from the Toyota Takata Airbag recall, oh uh, we're in trouble, Ted, Ted, are we in trouble... So I leave the kitchen, over to where she's sitting in her great chair...  I look at the two pieces of mail, one a promise of rates for an extended car warranty, and the recall note.  Mom, we already took care of this?  I'm not so sure.  Mom, remember driving down to the Toyota dealership in North Syracuse off of 481?  No, she doesn't remember...

No wonder I've become addicted to looking into my iPhone for the communal minds of distant cyber friends for some relative sanity, Instagram.  (If not worse.)

Is this my home?  This is a nice place.  But I left some things back at the other house.  Okay, mom.

It gets exasperating.   This spiritual journey to pained adulthood.

Okay, pizza's ready, mom.

She rises from her chair.  I'm coming.  I don't have an airplane, ha ha ha.  

She comes in.  Where are the people?  Mom, it's just us.

I ask if her if she wants some "roast beef," from the standing rib roast from Christmas dinner leftovers.  No, I'm fine.  How about a small piece.  Okay, she says, as if she doesn't remember saying no.  I've brought the horseradish sauce over, as an alternative to the hot gravy way I've served it with the last three nights.  She smacks her lips as she eats the cut of pizza picking it up with hand, her mouth looking like a monkey's as she chews with her broken teeth.  She spreads some horseradish sauce on the bit of crust she's picked on.

Well, I offer, I never thought we'd get through all that roast beef, I say.  (There's more in the freezer, plus the bones.).   

It ends with I won't come here again, after she says, no, my house is over that way.  This is the last time.

She observes her mother's mirror, there to my left on the wall before the old dining room table here in the kitchen, cluttered.  I should write a story about my mom's mirror, she says.  Well, why don't you.  You have to get in the...

I suggest, as I mention my going out to get groceries, that she rinse her mouth out, and she quickly gets angry with me.  I will not be bossed around.  She slams down her glass when I ask her to take her pill.  I call it pill for a her bones, though it's a mild tranquilizer.  I move her little wine glass closer to her, asking if she'd like more.  She immediately bangs the glass down where it was before.

Do you want a B-12?  I've had enough with your pills and being bossed around.  Well, I'm going to take one.  Good for you, she snoots.

So, what's up for the rest of the day...  Did you cut your hair last night?  It looks good.  So what are going to do...  Mom, I told you I'm going to the grocery store.  Oh, fun.  She compliments me on my shirt.  L.L. Beans, I tell her.  Mr. Beans has outfitted a lot of good men...  and women too.  What a nice bracelet that is.  Is it gold?  No, mom.  Copper.

She rises to clean off her plate, the pouring some water on it, then checking on the back door and here comes the cat.  Oh you’ve been out all this time…  poor kitty.

Okay mom.  I leave her picking at her scalp.  It’s damn cold out there.  Yup.

I find the card and envelope with 2 twenty dollar bills, and as I walk out and start the car to warm the engine.  My spine straightens.

And on my grocery list, wine, and maybe cider too...

I go the grocery store, after the wine store, where I leave embarrassed from having asked the stalwart woman if she's been boosted yet, and to hide my embarrassment I listen to her agreeably as she tells me she is a healthy person, and that everyone she knows who's had the shots has gotten sick, and she hasn't gotten sick yet.  At the grocery store I repeat my parking lot joke, looks like a good night to ge drinking down by the river.  And here to I embarrass myself, and no one really gets my "living in a van down by the river," because you shouldn't really joke about such things.

Then later, after four glasses with a nice young woman bartender at Bistro 197, I go out across to the east side, where there's a bar that serves food late.  I was just going to leave, but the woman bartending there was nice enough to come over and check on me, so I have a shitty California fruit bomb cab in a plastic cup full of ice, but the whole crowd is for Trump.  The night gets increasingly weird when an older guy asks if I want to smoke any weed with them, no thanks.  I avoid the weed, but strike up conversation with a large man who looks vaguely like Albert Finney, but Polish American.

As I drive away the kid in the hoody is up in a maple tree where the older guy, slender, who was also wasted, I should never have said hey to him as he got his jack and coke and passed by, he's talking to the kid up in the tree, whereas going to the car I was pretty sure he was talking to himself, in a drunken rant.

In the morning, I'm wakened by our meals on wheels friend's knock, and also Ben the maintenance guy's call at the same time, as he needs to come and measure for the new dishwasher, who comes and goes curtly, and the poor woman has to see me with my hair stuck out to the side looking like a crazy man, and I can't explain to any of these people about the Covid symptoms, for which I was careful about wearing a mask last night.

I take some cough medicine, but the sweetness of it quickly brings on a feeling of a hollow stomach.  I open a fresh seltzer water, regretting the plastic of it, and release a bit of the demon airs from last night being a fool.  I feel stupid again.  But I get in a few Nadi Kriya and attempts to roll my core stomach muscles back and forth, exhaling through opposite nostrils on the back steps of cold concrete, coughing, releasing mucus so I can breath again in the dry heated cluttered apartment air.

And down in the basement I continue with the kriya practice and the breathing pranayama variations and breath counts and holds, after the mantra as I sit crossed legged and I begin to feel decent again, and after the silent mantra Ham Sa I'm feeling on my way into Shavasana corpse pose, and I feel that Jesus is just one to call attention to how we can be, as the proverbial "Son of God/Man," to be as if at the center of the universe, the center point where the Big Bang came, but also stretched across the whole thing like a vast blue light energy field with cores of other light.  The chakra opening chant had set up a very pleasant vibration, almost like those Tibetan monks I saw once at Amherst, who can make one note, but let other notes drone from deeper within their vocal chambers sympathetically. 

And so it can seem to me, how my years were not completely wasted, as I did explore mediation throughout the years back in the old apartment in the house on the quiet street, as Jorge harassed me but was sweet and kind enough as well, as much as I wish those years back and consider them wasted ones now as I say.  

I was getting in touch, dialing in with the deep...  It's a nice long relaxing breathing lightness thing, letting the muscles sink away from the bones, as if something that needed to gradually sink down to the soft sea floor and find comfortable and safe bedding had drifted down just so, and the old bones could too.  And I had in my deeper heart center mind meditation reconciled Jesus and Buddha and the wisdom of the yoga traditions.  Proper action, as the Bhagavad Gita tells us.

The cat comes in, proudly, as chickadees swim just so through the honeysuckle bushes coming away from the brief visit to the neighbor Bonnie's lard bird feeder.

And when will mom come down...

It's not an easy assignment to write out the spiritual experiences of mediation, morning Sadhana inspiration...

It is a burden, to be responsible, dutiful to the journal, to its honesty, to its reflection of your human thoughts.

Early December sketch

 So, gradually, bit by bit, I became a bum.

"Thanks," is the first thing I hear, after the cat nudges the door open to mom's old study where I try to sleep and balances along a cluttered shelf.  That's from mom, across the small hallway, on her bed.  Thanks.  As in Thanks a lot, offered with the usual.  I guess I'm not making her very happy.  She was on the warpath when I was asleep, waking to hear her. "hello, is anybody here, where is everybody, Ted?  Ted?"  She quiets down for a while.  In the night I get her the pill, but I'm exhausted still.  She doesn't push me about how she's starving.  Can you take me home tomorrow?  Mom, you are home.

I get the old chilled tea out, gunpowder green, sit down, find a place of peace, not easy, within, think of how to approach my being behind in my yoga teacher training certification class.  Behind on the homework, the lesson plans, the agility with teaching the poses.   In truth, I haven't been doing much yoga.  If I get to the morning sadhana spiritual practice in this gloom and uncertainty, that's pretty good.  If I get to study from the book, that is good too.  If I get to read, The Bhagavad Gita, more power to me.

I get a bit done.  I sprayed the wall with watered down bleach last night.  The fan and the dehumidifier...  But what do we have to do, to keep mom pleased.  I'm glad she's still in bed, but..  I've done the dishes.  I've rehearsed a thematic opening and then a centering for yoga class, and then taught myself through a few warm up poses and then asana.  But I still feel a fog over me.  I had two ciders with dinner, somehow enough to make me want to go up and rest, and a nap here turns into sleep.

I had a dream of Chef Bruno the other night.  I had a dream of having a college age girlfriend, as if I was back in college.  Outings to old reservoirs in the woods.  And I'm not certain that mom arrives even in these dreams to spoil the party.

"What is it that is not serving you anymore," one of the adult spiritually questions the Yoga Man Todd asks of us when we fall down into corpse pose.  "What if you let that go, let someone down...  How badly do you want change...  What are you willing to do for it..."

Do I take her to the bookstore?  Do we run out to Ontario Orchards for a Christmas tree?  Is she going to demand to be taken out to eat...  If so, where?  And if so, will I have a glass of wine, which then leads to another and general strife.  Maybe I should just escape now, and study somewhere.  But that would leave her all alone...  She can't feed herself intelligently anymore.  Thanks.

There's the drive down to Washington, DC, for Christmas...  Try not to let that hang over your head, or that you'll be going back to your old apartment...  Will you ever move back there?  What can you salvage...

Almost 11 and mom hasn't stirred yet.  The cat's been in and out several times since 7:30.

I walk around on eggshells, nervous, almost shaking a bit.  I look at my old Jesus face in the bathroom mirror as the fan whirs, inseparable from the light, after brushing my teeth and putting ten percent hydrogen peroxide on some skin barnacles.  Is the cat due for a rabies shot.  Maybe it would be nice to take a walk by the river, but perhaps for now I should just get out into the sunlight, over to the old beaver saga power grid transfer station, where they re-dug the water way to beaver proof it.  I make some dandelion tea.

Maybe I should just let her have her way today.  Lunch at The Press Box, fine, I don't give a shit.  I just won't drink.  Homework later.

I'm an old bartender.  I don't have any advice to give out.

I'll look at my phone, but there will not be anything interesting, beyond a friend's post on Facebook, or Instagram.

About 11:45 I go up and check on mom, and she's there sitting at the side of her bed.  I ask her if she's hungry.  Sure.  I go down and open a can of Progresso Chicken Noodle soup, adding a small carton of decent chicken stock, the store out of bone broth, a shake of ginger, cayenne, turmeric, a pinch of ground flaxseed, a dash of seaweed salt, cutting into the bone in chicken breast I baked last night in onions.  

Well, Mom, would you like to go get a Christmas Tree out at Ontario Orchards... It's a nice sunny day, not too cold, not too windy.  She snipes at me.  Asks me irrelevant questions.  Are you still in school?  Yes, mom, this is your home.  The mirror, the map of Ireland.  Nana White.  Well, I've lived here before.

She's less kindly to me as I get her out the door, after finding her the right coat, her gloves, her hat, her cane.  She pauses as she stands out on the sidewalk in front of her steps.  Mom, the car's right there, I say, pointing to it.  I'm not the village idiot, she shouts back at me.  Ten times smarter than you, she adds, quietly as I open the car up.  

Really mom.  Do you want to get a Christmas Tree or not...  She pretends to get out of the car.  I look at her.  Up to you...

We get on the road.  Over the hill down past the muck farming fields, up the next hill and over, down to turn left onto Seven South.  Right on Twenty West.  Down along the marsh of dead flooded trees, a habitat for duck and geese, beaver...  And soon, after mom asking me to slow down again, going about 40, we pull up to the intersection of 104.  Ontario Orchards just by, past the old school house and the small brick church, a large parking lot and nursery, the barn building where you'll find produce, Christmas ticky tacky, frozen meats, lots of apples, pet food, plant material, garden stuff, potted plants, vegetables, chocolate, aged cheddar cheese, baked pies and breads.  Potatoes, squashes, onions, scented soaps, cat nip.

Out in the lot we have a leisurely walk over to the trees, after I wait for her to talk to herself and finally unhook her seatbelt, bundled up there in her coat, finally opening the door and stepping out.  There are only a few Balsam Firs left, way too big for the car's back seat, too big & heavy for me to handle.  The rows of trees, there are some Douglas firs in the size I'm looking for.  And I have done my chants earlier, so I'm feeling fairly calm about negotiating her through the market part with its many aisles.  I get her in through the door, holding onto the receipt tag from the tree as the man is cutting a fresh end to take water. She hovers once inside the door, so I have to guide her forward.  

Go pick out some apples, mom.  I'm looking for almonds, dates, catnip (the cat looking depressed, picking up on mine, hurt by our yelling at each other).   The tree.  A simple wreath for the front door.  Get her back, feed her something, maybe go do some homework.  Or maybe just write.  Get away from dementia town.  Laptop.  Get some sunlight sitting at the McDonald's like table.  

I don't feel up for any homework, but at least I'm moving independently.  Mom wanted to come along.  I told her NO.

Sketches, pre Christmas 2021

You try to live a life working on the meaning of life.  You wait on people, fair enough.

But you end up taking care of your old crazy Mary Lincoln volatile mom.  Broke.  Running out of money to pay for basic things, like rent.  And a job after all this?

So you end up soaking the dishes, getting the silverware done that you'd washed yesterday but didn't rinse, just left in the sink the morning after you cooked dinner and served mom and then got so tired you had to disappear, pretending to do homework, reading at least, but doing nothing, so disheartened.  And the next day is a big doctor's appointment.  But we can't really be getting on the road until just after two, and it's noon now and you've fed mom, so you take her for a little drive into town, a cup of coffee ice cream, a New York Times she won't really read, a look over the lake, the sun is out.  Skip the bookstore, to buy a book for kids or to shepherd her around the store, waiting for her, no real time for that, just a grocery store run, quick, and then the wine store, being out of white for her and red for me.

I get her down to the doctor's office, down in Fulton, a nice drive along down the west side of the river reflecting the winter sky, then over the bridge, and not too many hysterics from mom.

We need to up her dosage on whatever we can up, the memenda, and maybe, well, something to mildly tranquilize her.  She talks one story to the doctor, and I slip in the truth, my perspective anyway, where I can.  I think he gets it.  Dr. Ouano.  

But goddamn, I'm feeling grim the next day.  The hour of yoga anatomy with Ellen Saltonstall was fascinating, about fascia.  And in the night, with wine, I think of how all the writers in the world were motivated by this strange enveloping muscle holding organ that goes in bands through all of us.  The fascia has moods, is effected by them.  Any writer worth his salt knows motion, physical activity, the knowledge of holding a tool, an axe, let us say, or a wine bottle and the opener, the lifting of cases, the motion of running.  The writers knew, know, the secret of keeping the fascia happy, and of how bands from the forehead go over the head and down hour back and through your legs, and all the way down to the bottom of your feet.  And inactivity is no good for these fibers.  Motion is necessary.  Kerouac the fullback.  Hemingway the hunter.

So I get the tub with hot water and soap, get the batch of the silverware dipped and rinsed, all of it feeling the silverware rack of the dishwashing machine that does not work here, waiting to be replaced, and then I proceed with the rest.  Then tossing a few things from the fridge, packing the tall trashcan liner bag full.

Mom slept on the couch again.  In her coat.  I had to take her out to The Press Box, as a treat she insisted upon, though by that point I had time constraints.  Coming up the stairs from the basement she is bent over, head on her hands and forearms.   But I let it slip, mom, you need a shower, you haven't taken one in more than two weeks.  There's shit on your pants.  She denies it.  From two weeks ago when you had to poop against the dumpster outside Bame's.  

I go up the stairs and look back, to use the upstairs bathroom as she uses the downstairs.  She's looking for her cane.  She sees me looking at her.  You're a fucking creep, she tells me.  And I am.

I go back down to sleep more, or just hide.  Got a headache.  Can't deal.  Summon the courage later to face the day and the dishes, and the rest.  The bookstore?

I feed her, I get her out for a drive, around 3 in the afternoon, we go get a newspaper and her cup of coffee ice cream, then down for a view of the lake.  The old lighthouse reflecting the sun.  Quick swing through town, First Street, then to The Big M, quick run, okay, we'll take a quick trip to the book store, but we can't stay long.

I put two chicken breasts in the oven with some quickly cut onions and I make the meeting, Cheryl, for a tutoring session.

But it is no fun to have the time to write, rather a curse.  A time of being unable to make any decisions.  Of being stuck.  The argument when we got home, when I tell her, look, be thankful, I took you out to the bookstore, I told you I had a meeting.  Oh, you're so important.  You have a penis, I just have a hole...

What?!?  (Disgust.).   Look, mom.  You were a professor, you had meetings too.  Anyone still working has meetings to go to.

So I stew around with what to do with mom for the day.  I've done the dishes.  Let the cat out on a prowl in the back yard before it rains.  It's not warm out.

After my meeting, which takes my head away from mom, who's carrying on upstairs, with large long OOOHHHHs and other cries, so that I have my aunt call her just in time, and my tutor asks me, "is your mom okay," as I get completely distracted with the directions I'm supposed to be giving for The Four Essentials, Open, Engage, Align, Expand.  I need to work on my language for the poses anyway.

I get through the hour.  I don't how dedicated to yoga I can be.  I'm making it hard for myself, psyching myself in a lot of ways.

But after we're through dinner, I've had it with mom.  

There's no way around it, I need to go to graduate school.  Brother calls.  Maybe it's too much for her to be driving all that way, then not being in her home with her cat, disorientated as she is.  Will the pills, the new dosage, help?  Will there be a tranquilizer for her?  Take care of her teeth, or get her hearing aids.  I tried to press the point about her anxiety, as did her colleagues.  The doctor is listening to her, yes, but I get my points in...  We went to The Press Box that night...

I'm trying to look past, or around, my misery.  I deserve it.  What did I do with that nice kid, but become the Prodigal Son, had, been had, by everyone and every thing...

And I'll never have a chance at a girlfriend or any fun or happiness like that ever again, not at my age and state.  That's what you get for being a writer...  a bum...  I get the internet, the web, friends on Facebook far away, in all senses of the term, unreal.  Horror.   Dark thoughts.

But my job has been good for the fascia, at least.  Constant motion.

Other than that, I've never achieved a thing.  I"m ashamed of myself.  How could anyone else likes me...  And I know my situation...

Mom is quiet til mid morning.  I sneak a peek in at her, she's reading, okay, cool.  I can go work on my yoga practice and my homework.  There's the whole decision too about driving her down to DC to see her grandchildren.  I could go by my old apartment...

After making soup for her, a nice onion soup color from the onions baked with the chicken breast, I get her to change out of the jeans she's been wearing for three weeks now, telling her I'm doing a colored wash.  I'm also working on the Cologuard stool sample process, and of course you don't want to get that wrong.  Set up the little tray under the toilet seat, then the white sold plastic bucket with the screw on tight lid, and also a strange Q-tip type thing you swab through the shit you just took, to cover the groves at the end with poop matter.  I've been careful to take a probiotic and also some fiber, but the shit doesn't come out as neatly as I'd hoped.  Well, anyway...  I shave, I take a shower, after sealing the whole thing up.  

It's cold, rainy, I head out, taking out the trash, and with my poop box all sealed up under my arm in the cold blustery wintry mix rain.  I'm not happy about anything anymore.  There is no more happiness.  I'm not even confident about doing well in yoga class.  To earn the heart affection of a woman, you have to be capable of doing something, like, being a school teacher.  Competent at it.   A man about it. 

No wonder, no girlfriend...

But as soon as I get my laptop out, after coming back, concerned she might be hungry, from my yoga homework--I saw a pretty young woman working the barista job at a little coffee booth in Canal Commons, having forgotten my laptop earlier after dropping off my Cologuard Poop in a Box, just as soon as I sit down to write, after putting a tray of stuffed peppers, gluten-free spaghetti and potato gratin for mom, just as soon as I sit down to write, mom comes down from upstairs, talking to herself, sighing, talking to herself more.  Just as sure as the ghost she's been in my life, pouting and sighing, always with the big volatile explosive reaction, all my life, since boyhood, putting on all the lights back on Ernst Road after I came home late from necking with Hilde in high school, on my way to being a local rock star with the Chevy Malibu station wagon with faux wood paneling.  Everyone else was drawing away from her, just to spare themselves the craziness, patient as my father truly was, an honorable man, my brother just finding a way out and away and off I go, bye.   I wanted my father's life.  Not hers.  She'll still lampoon anyone for "never doing anything fun."  And her defense against that, of course, is ugly.  Do you placate her?  Or, maybe you just begin to hide, let the cat deal with her.  Your father, he didn't know how to have fun... 

So speaketh Claire.

Every day is an ordeal here.  I hope the dosage change helps.  I hope they can come through...

Disgust is my feeling every day.  And of course mad at myself for having fallen into this trap.

I wake up foggy, and I have to get mom down to the hospital for a bone density scan.  She's out cold up on her bed.  I touch her toes, and a twitch, but she's still deep asleep.  Finally I wake her, and the first thing she says, she asks me if I've come to try to kill her, Jesus Christ mom.   Mom I'm sorry to do this to you, but the next appointment isn't until February.   I bring her up a chilled Pepsi.  Downstairs, I get her a slice of pizza, eyeing the clock.  The appointment is at ten.  They ask you get there fifteen minutes early.  Okay, we'll just try for our best.   Old lady wrangling.  On top of Christmas open mess of of all the possibilities of what might be needed ad infinitum.  Presents?  What kind of presents or price range?  Ship, mail, or are we going down there in person, just so other people can see where we are at with mom...  But that's eight hours on the road... 

But on certain days I become aware of my true horrible college failures, and if I'd put just more effort in and not been such an obstinate contrarian and if one of my professors might have caught it, and asked me what I needed, instead of letting me dangle...  Drinking to rid myself of all the bad feelings...  as if to put them away, hide from them.

And I need to put out another book, morally, just to show I was wrong, that you shouldn't go drink your way through college or whatever I did, and offer some sort of pained correction over the lessons learned about the illusions I've lived under...

You made a choice, my aunt says, to stay at that bar with all those interesting people, no need to be ashamed of that, you still have a life to live..

But I need to express to someone where I'm at, how I'm struggling.  Like a confession.  A correction.  A rock bottom I've hit, finally unable to hide it from myself or anyone else.  But then there's mom on top of me, squeezing me all the time unless I simply escape.

But you'd thought what you wanted, what you'd hoped for, the chance to write, to not have to drag your sorry ass in to the bar to work like a dog until you were completely beat and do it four straight nights, after cruel earlier Tex Mex Restaurant shifts, night, day, night, day.  Sunday night, typical of your love hate relationship with the whole thing.   The day you wanted to stay home, the sabbath, and in the same the night you hold court.

To have to sit home, or wherever you are, on the roads of life, and have nothing much to do BUT write quickly becomes a nightmare more than an opportunity, a deep look at your ugly old lazy self who, unlike all other adults, hasn't gotten a single thing together.  And the boring life you previously wrote about has just gotten, seemingly anyway, even more hollow, devoid of all the normal things of male human life, the job that is a career, having your own family, passing on that most precious thing of all, your genetic codes and the traditions of your parents.

I do have the yoga to lean on.  A therapy for all those years not being good to myself, just hanging in there.

A few days have passed since I last wrote.  I got the booster, it didn't even hurt, down at the Kinney's drug store near the McDonald's and the Quik Mart gas pumps, the intersection at 104 just this side of the university and the electric plant's huge stacks, and I didn't think much of it and went for a cup of coffee.  At night, not enough water either, and rather getting into the wine, just feeling desperate and behind and incapable on my yoga teacher training course.  And the next day feeling increasingly achy and tired through the day...

I gutted it out, my heart almost breaking at my lousy job of being a student.

And is spirituality any good for you in this world, or does it just get in the way...

I'm not even Dharma Bums St. Jack of the Dogs in the chapter of Nin's house in Rocky Mount, North Carolina...

And so I try to get distracted, after I've cooked breakfast and gone to the grocery store and kept mom entertained some, then lunch, then dinner, and dishes all the way through, and the constant battle to keep the kitchen organized...  I attempt to distract myself so that my mind can work.

Mmmm k.  The way mom says okay.  She uses a sharp knife to spread the almond butter on saltines.  She doesn't want the cat out at night.   There are small open bottles of Pepsi by her bed,  by her chair, on the counter, on the kitchen table.  

She comes down and wants a bite to eat.  I give her a pill for her memory and focus.  I heard her stirring upstairs, just as I sit down to write.   Then she's calling my name in the living room.

Am I your mother?

So I tell her I'll cook a pizza, the frozen cauliflower rice crust kind, with some ham and sliced red onion, but it will take a few minutes, and she's asking me, so, are there any interesting plans for later today?  No!  

So later after it's cooked, I go up and call her down.  I put a slice in the toaster to heat it just a bit, and present it to her, and soon enough she's using scissors to cut it, having failed with the sort of sharp knife.   and then she's staring at me as I'm half watching YouTube for a good classic samurai film, then finding Lester Young jamming some bluesy jazz, and she's looking at me, anything new in the world, usually people talk at the table, is that a song, so I raise my voice, yes, Mom, it's Lester Young from 1944, raising my voice and she gets angry at rises from the table.  Don't forget to brush your teeth, mom.  Don't forget to wipe your ass, she counters.  I feel a bit bad, but frustrated enough to just shrug, oh well.  Off she goes.

But it's enough to destroy the mood.  

 Christmas Eve.  

I went over to the Throop's house the eve of Christmas Eve, and fortunately, almost psychically I brought along my guitar. 

A welcome break.  I lead them into Like a Rolling Stone...  it's a good jam.

I remember how my father would handle it, her expositions, her rants, her tirades, her takeover of our peace and happiness, taking us back to the picture of her childhood seen through her childhood mind, now acted out upon us.  I felt so sorry, so sympathetic, when he'd take to the bedroom in the afternoon, to lay on his back and close his eyes, and just let it rest, let it pass away.

And now I find myself doing the very same thing, feeling an exhaustion, even from just spending two hours with her.

That's how I grew up.  Expecting all of that, as normal.

And so when I met a girl in college, who pursued her New York City scorched earth policy against my sensitive benevolence, putting her fireworks and unpredictability, virtual schizophrenic duplicitousness then blaming me, and then when she'd done that marvelously, then she softens... but by then I have enough self awareness and self respect to know that she's evil, no good for me, so I avoid her, to what I would later see as a chance, one that I missed.  Great.

So the whole thing is bogus.

hard for me to be a man anyway, when the burden of mom living off on her own came down squarely on me just as I was going through my senior year at college...  blah blah blah.

Mom's crying out on Route 5, because her car has broken down.  No body else going to help her.

Unwrapping presents, or, rather, cutting open the heavy paper sealing tape on the Amazon Prime boxes, giving gifts, rather, Mom opens her first one, struggling to open first the box, and then the gift bag within.  Over on the couch, I cringe, trying to write off an email to my little yoga group, and I cannot form sentences in my mind as mom continues with her circular rambling talk.  The first gift, or maybe the second, after the body lotion from her grandkids, Kiehl's, is the new book in hardcover, the latest biography on Sylvia Plath.  I might have grumbled my exasperation, and then after enjoying the book and reading off the picture captions, oh, we need to go to Cape Cod, I haven't ever been to Cape Cod..., suddenly her face drops.  Earlier she'd asked me, "did she kill herself," well, yes, mom, it was a cold winter and she was alone with the kids and with the gas ovens back in those days, you could do that, so it was sort of a fluke as much as anything...  But now she's turning on me.  You gave me this book, you want me to commit suicide, she suddenly shouts at.  Mom, I didn't get you that book.  Chris did.  She's a writer, she was married to Ted Hughes, you know, so you can round out your history of him...

Brother calls with family.  That goes well.  Everyone is Covid shy these days.  Everyone has a story, too.

Another Amazon box, and this time it's the biography of Ted Hughes.  I shrug.  Sorry about the theme.  Writers are miserable people in general.  It's like a possession.

(Later she's mumbling on to herself over his pictures like she's talking to him.  Stay out of trouble.  Handsome...)

She calms down later.  We have some chip dip, onion, with small curd cottage and cream cheese, Nana's recipe.  Potato chips. 

I go out for a walk.  Not far, just to get out of the house and let my back straighten and my shoulders going up for a change. 

As far as I see it, the roast, a huge one, sure to give us plenty of leftovers, needs to sit out to come to an even temperature, and I don't feel a lot of happy energy to get the roast going.  I'm just putting it in over the onions I've sliced into the big Lodge iron pan.  Mom comes into the kitchen, looking concerned.  Is dinner ready.   No, I'm sorry mom, I'm not very organized today...  I'm sorry.

I end up making her some soup to calm her, and she goes back into the living room.

She comes back and stares at me...  No, not yet.  How much longer...  Oh, half an hour anyway, then I have to let it rest.

I get her some, and then she's talking to herself in her chair over her books, and I go up for a nap and conk out, then I come down later and do the dishes.

The day after Christmas I wake at 1 in the afternoon feeling empty and hollow, with a tight cough deep in my chest, a pain I've never felt before, and too exhausted and fall back to sleep after taking a pee and drinking some water.  I was up watching Russell Crowe in Noah, and after my Christmas alone with mom, who wonders, "where are the people?"  What people?  We talked to x and y, and Sharon can't do anything...  I see the grey murk clouds of winter sky... don't get up really til after two, but something is up with my lungs, and who knows now, Omicron...  It was a long day, two bottles of pinot noir down in 12 hours...  that's too much.  Why can't I quit, I'd like to...

And Noah was a righteous man, where the rest were wicked, and God sent a great flood to wash away the evils thereof.

Mom comes down.  At least I had the energy to do the dishes last night.

I heat a slice of pizza for her.  What's the plan today?  What's on your agenda?  Did you sleep well?  3 times.  

Again, I make soup for her.  Again she comes down after I've stirred after my nap as I'm doing yet another round of dishes and carving up the remainder of the standing rib roast and putting some of it away in the freezer, well-wrapped up.

I'm getting impatient with her, but she has enough kind words, it's a hard holiday, very tiring.  And after I ask her how the plate of food I've put in front of her, and she says, snootily, "fine..." dismissively, the same thing she did to the apple pie my sister in law cooked from scratch at Christmas dinner at my brother's house a few years ago, and he blew up at her too, just as I want to now, but I let it slide, slide past, just ignore it, Sanskrit chants...  She'll go to bed soon, she's got her pills down, just gotta get her to do her rinses and then brush her teeth, which she always finds a way to resist, and she complies with me and goes off to bed, though she might well stir in the night, as she did last night to the point where I shouted at her.

I found that I needed to remind myself what a woman is.  I looked at things at night I felt a bit ashamed of.  Even then I'm scarred, not finding anyone, to be all that nice, either out there in unfortunate addictive cyber world, or in on line dating.  And I can't blame anyone.   

Mom reminds me, "you hate me."  You hate women, she tells me.  

Oh, what a fine example you are, Mom.  

It takes whole blank hours of the quiet nighttime late hours to relax. Sad, I suppose, but that's how it is.

And finding myself too old to connect as I had been able to for so long with anyone, as if cast out, I thought of Noah, and of God.  I thought as an ineffectual man in a fallen and wicked world, to entertain a fantasy at least, briefly, as I knew not which direction to turn to.

The things the old people in the oldest of tales, they went through things.  Things painful to take.  And so they took to coming up with stories, out of their own experiences, of course, to symbolically express a sense of the deeper things they knew to be going on.  Could all of humanity be wicked, so wicked, evil and violent so that they, we, ruin the whole face of the earth of God's Creation...  Only a great flood could do justice, justice itself.  And one, only one, that's all it takes, along with his family, one family, were enough.

But it's not that bad.  It's just how I am tested, and finally become a man, as they say, an adult.  I see her later, all by herself, the cat at her bed, as she watches television, after I wake from my nap, feeling lousy again.

The pressure had left off a bit, and Christmas was retreating from the calendar.

Okay, she comes down from the bedroom to the kitchen, checking the bathroom, "toilet seat down," as if she does anything to clean here, she takes a bottle of Pepsi from the refrigerator.  And then, thank god, she leaves.  I hear her pulling a couple Kleenex tissues out of the box as she goes, and then her feet, as always, in her Keen hiking shoes, back she goes.

October '21 sketch

 Core wounded identity, the enabler. 

Placation.

Mom is an interference pattern.  I regain calm through meditation.

I wake up with a bit of a headache.  From the Bota Box Cabernet Sauvignon from two nights ago, probably.

I get my morning sadhana in at least.  Then fall back into a nap, after a terrible sleepless night of anxiety, realizing all my sins.  The time just totally wasted. 

The day before mom pleads with me.  She's a nervous wreck.  The only thing she'll settle for, she says, is to go to The Press Box.  She says she's just realized that her mother is dead, and says that this place is not her home.  We were just there, last night, mom, I tell her.

But every day, no, I don't know what to do with her.  I hide by sleeping late, until her shout rises, "Hello?!" or some other expression.  "I'm hungry!"

I drag my self up or down the stairs depending where I slept to the kitchen, worrying about what to do feed her.  

Will I ever work again?  What happened to my literary life?  My mind is clouded.  Anxious.  I had cider last night, maybe four cans.  A headache lasting from two days ago.  From the Lexapro?  The cheap box wine?  Mold in the cellar?  I treat the flea problem down in the basement, not with the fogger bomb I purchased from the hardware store, but the peppermint clove oil spray I sprayed over the concrete floor after moving my bedding up to the second floor.  I left the fan on in the heating air conditioning system and I'm upstairs watching the television with mom after giving her evening pill and the strong fumes come through the vents, prompting her reaction, "you're trying to kill me..."  I crack open a window, go down and click the wall unit to fan from On to Auto.   Later I soothe myself listening to Todd Norian, Shanti Mantra, music from YouTube.  And I can understand why I like the night, a break from her constant consciousness.  

I wake tired and anxious, and the green tea, while giving me some pep, makes me more anxious.  Mom suggests we order a big pizza as I check in on her first thing, rising from my air mattress when she lets out a shout.  There's a cauliflower crust pizza, Price Chopper brand, in the freezer, so I go down, turn the heat on--pouring rain earlier coming down heavy with a Northwest wind--and then get the oven preheated to 450, have some tea.  

Later, when mom asks, after she's had what she will eat from the slice I give her, giving me her pepperoni, what might we be doing later, I tell her, well, it's Sunday, we'll go get the newspaper and take a look at the lake, the waves will be up, and she says, "whoop-tee-shit," and inwardly I wince, taking the blow with a slight inward bow, my shoulders sinking just a little bit more.  With the wind up there's a small boat advisory from the weather service, waves 6 to 9 feet up toward the mouth of the St. Lawrence.

With the rain I go down to the basement and lift the water collection pan out of the back of the dehumidifier and jostle it up the stairs to pour out in the toilet.  I take a shower.  

The duty of another is full of peril, I remember, one of my father's sayings.  The duty of another is full of peril.  Let that sink in, here in this situation.  My failed literary career.  At least I should have gone into the academic side, somehow, too hard to make anything come out of your writing.

It's hard to do anything, fearing interruption or attack, hearing her creep down the stairs, hello, is anybody here?

Yoga, or at least a sadhana session, would be good today, but it's hard to concentrate enough once both mom and I are up.

Mom makes me nervous.  That's nothing new.  Feels like I'm standing around with my dick out in the open.  I take a propranolol, half a tablet. 

That feeling, nothing is ever good enough.  Unless everyone gets into the wine, for a temporary reprieve. 

I was meant to be a teacher, literature, that sort of thing, analyzing poetry.  But I went into the restaurant work, so I could write.

To ease my nerves, I get the big pot out, with butter and olive oil over the burner, to sear a link of sausage, then the meatballs, then the onion and pepper, then a splash of wine, then all back into the pot and then make a tomato sauce.

Mom comes down, I pour her some wine, as she asks for it. 

Later, the pot simmering now, I go in to the living room to check on her.  So how are you, she asks me, from her chair.  "I'm a bit anxious, I say...  my career."  "A state career?"  No, mom, just a career in general... I don't want to go back to bartending.  

"You better not have done that to my son," she says, when I suggest I'm unhappy, over yesterday's newspaper.  Peak foliage the back page of the front section says.  

 Light flurries in the night, and when I wake I see some blue sky, looking from the pillow on the floor up to the front, western facing windows, thin, if there are any clouds, grayness to the east, but the sun is out, and mom is snoozing on the couch next to the orange cat, wearing her bathrobe, over her clothes, still wearing her hiking shoes.  I walk past, take a cup of tea from the fridge, back upstairs to hide for a little while longer, then I hear her stir, so I go back down and take care of breakfast, a slice of Stewart Shop cheese pizza.  It's classic and very good, kind of a doughy junk Central New York baker's almost bread dough hearty pizza, quite delicious, not too thick, greasy cheese crust.  Could become a habit.  Addictive.

It goes okay at first, as I have my tea and then sliced turkey at the table, as I look over at her.  She's sweet enough, but after several times of telling her that we are invited over to Barbara's for dinner, Sharon will be there, what time, because she's with her son down in Florida, no mom, it's Tania's son who is in New Mexico, Barbara's joining Tania down there for the winter, so this is the last little dinner we'll have with them for a while...  

Mom indicates she finds the Tuesday dinner thing a little boring.  I'd rather stay here with my books, she says.

But, Mom,  you like going out.  It'll be good for you.

I've already told her, where, when, what time.  She's called me a loser, a woman hater, a sadist, any number of things this week, with the enforced closeness of the holiday.

If I mention anything to the effect of, you're ruining my life, mom will come right back, you don't have a life!  That's not my fault, that's yours!  No one likes you.  Okay, mom...

Okay, I'll take her for a ride.  Just to see the lake, get some sunlight on our bodies.  Stewart Shop for the newspaper, a drive along the lake by the loop road past the university, the Big M, home, hopefully.    

I'm worn out already.  She's pretended not to know where the sink is when I ask her to brush her teeth.  She's asked me again, and then again, and then again, what time, where... is it today?

I could just take her back, but okay, she tells me she wants to go out, for lunch, though it's 4:30, okay, fine, we'll swing by The Press Box, and the frozen peas will keep the sliced turkey bread cold enough for the hour, and then we'll go back

We pull in, finally, worn out again, into the parking lot of Cedarwood Drive Townhomes.  Help.  I can't hold it, my intestines.  I hustle her around the parked SUV, to the steps, two sets of them, pulling at her arm.

Soon, I hear her squatting on the toilet, squirts of liquified shit.  And now, help. help, Ted, Ted, I need to vomit.  So I bring over the big stainless steel bowl.  Pepsi.  So I get her a Pepsi, and later a glass of soda water to wash her mouth out.

I get her upstairs finally.  By her bed I find a package of rolled Kleenex around a half a baked potato and a piece of the chicken breast I cooked a few nights ago, still rolled up, on the window sill.  Who knows what happened.  I've eaten the same things she's eaten over the last few days.  I don't know.

I avoid Black Friday, and Cyber Monday.  If you allow your concentration to be distracted, you miss your line to the Collective Unconscious, the play of thoughts and the sudden reality of objects of art, thought and creativity that are like a stream to feed off, water to sustain us.  Caravaggio.  Vs. the iWatch.  

I'm too tired to write anymore now.  I'm not even happy enough.  I want to sleep, but lie awake.  I want to hide.

The cat is proud.  Mom is proud.  They all want , insist upon, their own thing.  Noisily.  To be fed, to go out.  And I'm fucked.

Mom is still feeling queasy by the time I could get over to our normal recent Tuesday night dinner engagement with mom's colleagues over at Barbara's house off of 104 near the university, a quiet ranch on a quiet street, and I'd stay home and stew in the usual things, and on top of yoga homework due soon and not even touched.

I stay later and it turns out to be a session of therapy for me, about how mom's anxiety is getting worse along with the dementia, when I'm not around to drive her back and forth she keeps asking for me.  Barbara tells me her mother was put on Ativan and it worked wonders.  

So today, after a yoga sadhana, the first one in more than a week, clearing the congestion in my nose, the nadi kriya to develop, the Sanskrit chants, the pranayama breathing and further meditations, completed after getting mom some soup, as she's helpless now about feeding herself.  Down in the basement. It's not a bad place after all, though I can't quite tell if putting up a plastic sheet to cordon off my yoga mat end in front of the washer and dryer with the space heater like a radiator but with hot oil circulating in it.  The air is pretty dry now, another issue for trying to breath.

I make an appointment two weeks out for mom to check on her medications down in Fulton.

Later she has the large picture book of Audobon bird prints, taking in the beauty of it.  She sits in her chair looking over the egret in its print habitat, reminding me of Wyeth realism.  I pass by her a couple of times, checking on her as I do the dishes.  "That's very irritating, that sound," she calls regally from her chair, so I open the door to the cellar as a baffle, wearily proceeding with the dishes, the soup bowls, the pot, the chat dishes, the mugs, the assortment of small glasses used not long ago for Pepsi, water, her wine.  I venture past her, to see if she's taken the two pills from the morning which she refused to take.  Ahh, a bluebird, I say, as I pass, to go upstairs to empty the upstairs bathroom paper trash can, and she responds in a haughty tone, "Eastern Bluebird," correcting me.  Okay, mom.  

After the dishes are done I come by and there she is tucking her pills in to her pocket, the little pockets of her jeans.  So we go through, no, if you put them in your pocket you'll never take them.  I know my body! Okay, don't take them.  You're a cruel bastard.

Again she finds the recall notice for the Toyota airbag recall, and again I have to tell her, no, mom, remember when we took care of that?  I bring out the invoice from the dealership.  See, here's what it says.  Remember driving back?  But by now, I'm a piece of shit, not to be trusted, and she's getting aggressive, so, I take my yoga notebook and flee, taking yoga notebook binder and laptop, heading down to the Stewart Shop.  It feels weird at first, but everyone is encouraging me to get out of the house and not worry about it.

But the stuff has all been getting to me.  Kerouac was a writer and when he died his estate was worthy, oh, about 95 bucks, so I hear in a documentary about his presence and life in old mill town Lowell.  Later valued at what, ten million?

And not only that, he ended up so terribly unhappy, on top of the alcoholism, his mother having crowded any other life out of him, after the death of brother Girard, the saint he could have used, his father, never to have a wife, kids, a normal home life, a house, a job, though he did work a job on the railroads and other American jobs along the way.  Am I, will I ever be, ready for marriage, with a job and all that, or am I too warped already, permanently.  But you would be obliged to try, if you could.

I too was an anomaly in my work career, which lasted til I was 56 or so, before breaking apart taking care of mom.  Weill all the paperwork we could have never moved mom anyway.

The ladies observe me getting close to finishing the bottle of French pinto noir I brought alone as 6 in the dark evening turns into 9 at night.  I tell Barbara, the doctor tells me my liver is fine, and she says, Ted, that's kind of a low bar, with a chuckle.

Coming away from it l come down with a cold, no surprise from visiting at dinner with college professors.

After escaping mom’s afternoon accusations and unpleasantness, at the Stewart Shop, in the dank cold of 5 o’clock, I feed her a cursory dinner, offering her chicken tenders, fried chicken breast, a cold cut sub, or a slice of two day old buffalo chicken pizza.  My headaches, my body is sore, I can hardly breath through my nose, I don’t even want any wine at all.  I endure the table as long as I can, which isn’t long. She’s trying to argue, or talk about something and go upstairs for an hour turns out nap.  I’m awakened by frantic calls for help, doors opened and closed.

The children, she cries, we’ve got to do something for the children, for Christmas.  We need to get a tree.  We need to get presents.

Mom, your children have grown up.  …

But it's useless.  I've made it til past 9 PM on December 1st, but now just looking for something to make this all bearable, I twist off the cap of the $10.99 French pinot noir, pour it over some ice, and go hide down in the basement.  And hopefully, she'll stop yelling help, at some point go upstairs to bed so that I don't have to hear her creak away all night in her Eames Chair.

I have a headache, but it helps.  I take another Tylenol.  I have yoga homework to get done, at least review the poses and so forth, but inspiration for that is rapidly dwindling.  I have a cold.  I tried to do some work, and at least got some writing in down at the Stewart Shop, but the grocery store errand took it out of me.  My joints ache, a feverish feeling that I've had all day worsens, as mom sits on the couch and ends up sleeping there, refusing to take her nightly pill, the meantime.  Okay, fine, Mom.  I'm never going to try to give you another pill.  Good luck with that.

Later on there's a news story, a writer, a female, who chronicled a horribly traumatic rape as a college student at Syracuse University.  5 months later she's walking and sees a guy, a black guy, thinks it's him, goes to the police.  I think I know those neighborhoods between the University up on the hill, and then winding down below the Carrier Dome down to South Salina Street, where mom lived as a grad student in an large Italianate on the upper floor, while the ghetto blaster cars rolled by.  The man, picked out by the Prosecutor, not the man she picked out of the police line-up, she later identifies, in her situation, and he's sent down the river.  He comes up for parole, but each time, five times or so, he insists on his innocence, so rather than being freed, if he had admitted to it, he spends the full sentence behind bars.   And then it's no better when he's out.  No possibly of any job.  He's shunned by his own community.  He's welcome to a very small number of people's houses, 10 or so, others won't even let him in.

Finally, a producer of the movie version of her book, sees the glaring inconsistencies, comparing the actual with her written story of the trial, with the script, approaches a private investigator to handle it to find a way through.

Here comes mom down the stairs.  I told her I had some pot-roast cooking.  Down the stairs she comes, hello... hello... hello, is anybody here... coming through the living room, past the couch.  hello?  Louder now.  Dinner is ready, spinach too if she wants anyway.  

Too sick to do anything for a day or two, fever of 100.  

Friday evening, the yoga weekend module thing starts up again, 7 PM.  Please, let's just get through this, get what we need to get, wine, groceries, so forth, I'll get some time, maybe start to catch up on the homework I wasn't able to look at.

She's insistent, needy enough, to demand going out.

Debacle.  I get her a pizza, to go, so she can have something to eat on when I'm doing yoga, but as it arrives she wants some.  Mom, you just said you were stuffed.  I've just packed up the last of her chicken fajita along with some Cole slaw from my fish dinner in the to go box.  I've put our plates aside, neatly stacked, silverware together, easy to take away.  I want to get out of there.  She wants her taste of pizza.  Almost just to defy me, I wonder.

Okay, here. I put the box in front of her, lift the lid.  She can't figure out how to lift the lid.  I help her open it.  Okay, mom.  Give her my fork.  The box open now, she takes fork and knife to it, cutting into several different slices, from one side to the other, haphazardly.  Mom... what?  I want a crispy piece.  

Mom, look, I have a class.  We have to go soon.  There's your wine.  

She tries reaching over the box, to get to her wine glass.  She can't do it.

She raises her voice at me, so the crowd can hear.  "I'm no good.  I'm no good!" she shouts.  You hate me.  

People are looking on now.

She ends up hatefully telling me I'm pressuring her and that she needs to use the restroom.  Okay, fine mom.

She comes back, without her cane.  I look at her.  Mom, it's okay, you can go back in and get it.

Behind, the four-top of retired aged women having a Friday night dinner, three of them, at least, drinking, parallel to us, over my shoulder, one appearing to have tea, or maybe a hot toddy.  I notice one of them is going to the lady's room, but as I'm encouraging mom to go retrieve her cane, green aluminum with a matching green rubbery handle, I hear behind me, sir, sir, so I turn around.  Our friend is going to go get it for you.  Which is kind, and good, but adds to the shame of the drama.  The scene we are has ruined their Friday night, I'm sure.  They probably take me as being the true lowly shit.

I thought it was all going okay, earlier.  I'm just trying to get her through dinner.  It didn't help that chatty Terry with the white goatee who plays some of the open mics here comes by even as we're at the back table by the brick wall of the old freight house by the gas stove with the fake logs but real heat, and I'm enjoying the music, came by to check in and tell us of his pending knee replacement and earlier eyelid surgery and other things, and we're eating and mom is getting irritated, and not engaging, and she probably can't understand a word he's saying.

Just get through this, and then I can get in with 15 minutes to spare, and get, at least, a decent start to the class.

I'm buying wine later, after The Big M.  There's a guy giving wine tastings, and I would slink by him, but I get a good vibe from him.  At least see what he's offering. Oh, a Montepulciano, cool. And guess what, it's pretty delicious.  Though I was draining Guinness over the bitter Friday placate the bitch dinner.  I have a nice chat with him about wine importers, working with them, etc., it's a pleasant moment for me.  Sean, from Fulton.  He studied, marketing, at Oswego.  I like the importer's taste.

I get out to the parking lot, after passing a hot chick, tall, and I say hi, and she gets it, and says hi back.  She could hear the goddamn you're pretty but I'm burdened by some serious shit now, my wistfulness, hope-gone deal with mom, no one else will, vibe, and when I get back to the old Toyota she's not there.  Darkness.  I don't even have the car door light on the right setting so the light turns on.  What the fuck...

Okay.  So.  I look around.  Will I need the car?  I look across the street.  Toward Big M.  I look east, toward the river, I look west.  I look by the tree at the corner of the parking lot, 2nd Street.  Good god, has she wandered off, crossed the road?  Where could she be?

I go take a little walk through the parking lot, and then in the car lights, I see her, with her navy short purple overcoat on, pulled up, I think, I hope, her jeans down to below her knees, leaning forward, her back almost against the dumpster.  I see the pale flesh of her thighs in the headlight lamp light from the liquor store parking lot.  A squirt of shit, followed by another.  I can't tell if she's reaching her left hand around to her wipe her shitting as her right hand holds her pants up.   

She's...  I walk over toward her.  To shield the scene from the light.  She's fishing for crumpled Kleenex in her pockets.  Are her hands clean?  

I go back to the car.  Box of tissue paper in the glove compartment.  There's a full one somewhere in the back seat, but I can't see it.  Rattled, I can't get the car overhead light to turn on.  She's still shitting when I get back.  Her hat fulls down on the used tissue paper she's wiped with.  

I pick up her hat.  I take her by the arm, back to the car.  I open the door for her.  Pull out the bottle of hand sanitizer.   Squirt it over her hands, which she dutifully holds out for me.

I get her back in.  By the time I tune into yoga class I'm fifteen minutes late.  

After the true ordeal of the weekend's classes--I haven't done my homework, running a fever, exhausted, joints aching, mom demanding, haven't turned in the written asana pose assignment, have lost touch with what we are supposed to be doing, losing sleep over it all--okay, let's go out to dinner.  Even if it's cold and dark, and raining on and off.  Maybe we can call my nephew, mom's grandson, from our booth at Canale's, if they're not too busy and we can get a booth, whatever, they are nice.

I have my 20 minute teacher training practice session to live down.  Even the boss cut me off.   Early.

I think the team realized I was having major troubles with this yoga teacher training, with all the language-ing you have to do through the poses, a musical scale, a script to put into the motions and actions of the yoga poses, step by step, and even remembering what you're supposed to be doing.

Mom dogging me everywhere I go, no wonder I hide down in the basement where there's obviously some airborne mold or something that makes me feel like my lung tissues are fighting something.  Or just appearing, I'm starving.  Or, I'm so lonely.  Kill myself.  

Or I'm down in the basement, trying to follow along with the class.  And I have to hear her above me.  The  intensity of the feeling.  Ohhh, help...  HElLO?!  Creaking in her chair.  Self-important.  Unwilling or unable to feed or entertain herself, so she acts, bellowing like a king from Shakespeare, bring me the map there!  I am Lear!  Nothing is happening here!  What are we doing for fun today?  What are you doing next?  Where are you headed?  Any summer plans?  Mom, it's winter, the beginning of Winter!

All I can think about is groceries.  How can I be prepared...  cold-cut turkey, frozen pizza, maybe a fried chicken breast to pull apart after getting rid of the fried crumble of skin, to shred into a pot over a large can of super market non MSG soup with added broth, hopefully bone broth.    Eggs.  V8.  Cans of tuna I have not used to mix for a tuna salad, with Hellmann's mayo, lemon, chopped celery, parsley.  

The teacher practice came at the end of the day, at the very last, where I was so worn out with stress I didn't care anymore.  Fried.  I'd listened to all the presentations, and done my best to comment.  I'd paid attention, followed along with all the poses.

So when it's my turn, after rising at 6 AM, now it's 4:15, and I've had mom to deal with, take your pills, no, please, I'm losing my will and energy and focus.  

And so when I try to tell my story of why we should connect, how do we do this, how do we apply to the theme, in this case of CELEBRATION, and to, specifically, the Fourth Essential of Expansion, radiate out from the Spanda center, etc., just telling the story of the theme, which I desperately wanted to do correctly, I've flubbed it, unable to read my handwriting, confused, and I can't quite tie in reading Edward Arlington Robinson's poem, Mr. Flood's Party, in that classroom with the rippled Chapel windows where Frost himself taught, the loneliness of poor old Eben Flood, how one cannot have a party all alone, and how, maybe, if you do yoga, you can really understand and experience that there are Multitudes within, that No Man is an Island, as Donne said, that within us are genies whirling around in atoms, and within those atomic particles, more genies, and all down the line, and that if we realize this we don't feel along.

But as I muddle through explaining to this artificial class where everyone is looking at you, the poses, a sequence I didn't even have time to plan, as I get cut off by the Master, now we are picking apart my theme.  "You have to do it quickly, simply.  Get them engaged."  And it all feels dumbed down to me instantly, but that's how you learn.  You get hit by the bamboo pole.  Okay, fair enough.

I look at the computer zoom image of myself. Ashamed.  I thought I'd do slightly better.  That's how it goes, though.  I understand.  I am lagging behind.  My habits as a poor student are coming out.

And then, so it goes, as I've had to devote attention and time to monitoring the refrigerator's temperature, by the time I get mom home from Sunday night dinner, get mom in the house, after she tries to charm her way with a man she's been asking me about, Mom, no, he's not familiar, he just looks like Chatty Terry, because of the goatee, but I can't restrain her and she goes over to the table, and I hear a chuckle, but then, as I go over to pull her back in, they are from in town for a funeral.  

I wake up in the early hours, down in the basement, not feeling well, lungs in pain, and that feeling of now shower stickiness.  I have a cider, there's nothing  left to do at this hour, besides take a shower, drink a can of cider.  And after the shower I need something to relax, after also doing the dishes, and checking the freezer and refrigerator temperatures, wearing a bathrobe, I'd like to write, about how I got called out, the Master a good humored sweet guy so you don't mind him having the powers of discernment.  Okay, my statement was not so concise.  

I put on a little show, on my iPhone to record, the samurai monk I've always wanted to be.  I put on being Lord Kikushiro, from The Seven Samurai, as if he was your yoga teacher for the day.  I have fun with it.

But later on, my little performance, while winning a nice complement, is deemed to be offensive.  My new friend the restaurant guy even himself doesn't see how my references to the Shakespearean quality of the a great work of art have any bearing on the specifics of our facebook group discussion.  Okay.

Okay, fine.  I can imagine who the complaint came from.  A person who has kept her dog Fluffy's body in the freezer for the right moment of funereal dispatch.

And so I'm left alone again.

Friday, with a bundle of nerves, I sneak out the house.  The air is dry.  My heart is in my throat.  Mom is up in on her bed.  I get the car packed, and proceed to the library.  I need to escape, and yet I feel guilty the whole way.  Over the bridge.  A very grey day.  I find on open kiosk.  The wave of anxiety, this grey winter morning, dissipates slightly, but I could still jump out of my skin.  I ponder my future, what I'm doing here.

I am behind in my homework for the yoga class.

It's almost too still here in the library.

I've escaped the gravitational pull of all mom's worries.  I've become skeptical of the basement.  The mold, the mildew.  The breathing problems.  Will I ever have a job ever again...