9/4

Jesus couldn't keep them all straight, the disciples.  The usual impossible mix of contrary and competing qualities and habits, even those related to the very intimate matters of character related to the spirit within and the teaching.  There was a portion in all of them that could betray, but even that betrayal would or could be out of many many ways and means and things.  Choices.  What could you do?  Such a myriad of things that it was rather easy for Jesus to quip, three times before the cock crows, embracing the world's range of infinite possibilities that would then come true.  Could be for any number of things.  

And in the same he loved them all, as a teacher would, older, in some sense of the term, than they.  

That's why Jesus had striven for maturity, wisdom and experience of life, in every and all things.  He had given up much of his youth for this blind ambition of one standing as a full fledged teacher.  Now I'm old.  And I don't like that either.   What bride would take me now, at my age, Jesus pondered, with a sadness.  And he could have had that, and beautifully and happily.  But.  Where had the years gone?

Having a dependable trade in his pocket had defied Jesus for a long time now.  Sure, he could make ends meet, sort of, not really, in any lasting sense, with his trade of words and parables and understandings and recognizing the sinner in all people with kindness and in judiciously helping them, aiding them, with a few wisely chosen words, certainly helpful for their own ability to face daily existence.  Yet, he wondered, what about himself, though.  Surely, it was rewarding, to align words, to put them in such an arrangement that they reflected the truer nature of the vibrations that had wrought the world and made it all exist, just as it was, down to every atom and particle and inner resonance to the great tune.

It's like what Kurt Vonnegut said, to the folks at the Paris Review.  What we need is a reading public, to, essentially, support all us bums who go about musing about life as it really is, not some soap commercial, as is the expression, perhaps, about commercials, maybe from Papa Kennedy, selling Jack to the nation.  

I make a fresh pot of tea as I get up.  There's some in the mason jar, but it has a bitter taste from my forgetting to time the steeping of the leaves from yesterday, distracted by mom in the other room driving me crazy.   It's early for her to be up, but I hear the heavy footsteps, and at the top of the stairs, the open door of the bathroom there, windowless, with the tub behind the shower curtain, no window in there, above the kitchen, I see the purple heather sweat pants lying on the floor, not folded, just its own pile.  And on the bed, as I stand there with a BLT on Ezekiel toasted, fresh tomato, romaine leaf rinsed and dried, and Hellman's Olive Oil Mayonnaise, still with goddamn soybean oil in it for filler that fills and adds weight to you, just a little, as she requests, bacon extra crispy, and just the slightest hint of mayo, to a waitress, there she is, head on the pillow, a towel over her waist, bare legs, thick and peasant like, and I can see the Depends she has on, to the extent that she is even wearing them, are torn and inside out, which I keep at bay as far as the mind.  It would be time to shower her, high time, as always now.  

Soon some tomato, a little chunk, is on her shirt, and I venture to put the Baily's glass mug she likes, with ice water in it, now on the second trip up to tend to her, so she can take the first of the three morning pills, the tranquility one, what's it called, Venlafaxine.

I look out the window, the white doily curtain on the door, looking out at the golden rod evenly decorating the stand of ragweed at the back edge of the lawn with yellow.  The cat is doing his cleaning, his head bobbing as he sits, or stands, tall to clean the white of his chest and orange fur of shoulder, patiently and actively and systematically.   Back down in the safe quiet of the kitchen.  A little pot of coffee from the Bailetti a little Labor Day treat as the wind sighs outside through leaves that have performed their chlorophyll operations and given us good oxygen all season long as they lean into the wind of shorter days of daylight and the cooling off of early September in its wisdom.  

Mom, in her own opinion, is perfectly fine, nothing wrong it all with not wearing pants, with being a slob.  When I shooed her upstairs, she didn't even want to go into her own room last night, what a mess, as she cried foul over what a bastard I was for making her go, get off the couch, but I'm comfortable here, no, mom, it's better for you... why?  And then the agony of the stairs, oh, my knees, I can't do it, oh, my back, you bastard, why are you making me do this.  

I'll tell you agony, you stupid selfish bitch, Jesus muttered to himself.  The agony of being born and alive, even with all its joys.  Via Dolorosa.  Holy Mary, Mother of God.  Pray for us Sinners, now, and at the hour of our death.

Her obliviousness to deal with for another day.  The blind wants... What are going to be doing today... What are we doing for fun...

And already, Jesus is feeling behind.  Behind on his writing.  Behind on his meditation, always a toss up in the morning's light, too bright at first.  A sun salutation series, slowly, and then twists with legs apart to stand in a warrior's pose to support the trunk in its rotation outward on one side, then pulling through and doing a series on the other side, and then the cobra shoulder's back to improve the attitude for the day, upward not downward, preparing for sadhana, and breath to bring back positivity of attitude.

And these are the sufferings that one has to bear.  My father and his sister had to endure their mother, sturdy woman, who had supported them all through it, running her private speakeasy, dying slowing from the tuberculosis, as the Depression gained steam of permanence through the land, then FDR stepping up, to curb the greed of Men.  

Break down the little box of Woodbridge four pack of little cans of Chardonnay.  The bottles of her wine go back and turn even in the fridge.  The year of things placed carefully enough on a surface, but then the things falling, tumbling off somehow.  The clutter.  Hard on even a yogi's balanced aim.  Bottles of beneficial pills, mason jars of tea, cans and dishes for cat food, the on-going dish operations, the stove with its iron pans and kettle, a mini pot thing to measure cups and to hold the strainer when you pull it hot out of the iron Japanese black tea pot made in China with its zen.  

One Prilosec down the gullet, hopefully not, but probably, breaking the fast, the stomach best left empty of substances before the various exercises of breath and kriya practices.  

I write the posts, daily, pretty much, but I don't post them on the blog publicly any more it seems.  A writer needs a certain privacy to gather the first of the four movements of his Ninth, or whatever the number of the symphony he is writing.  The cloak of silence, so as not to be disturbed by outside opinions, as outside opinions are welcome, otherwise one wouldn't know if he even as an audience, and it would probably be the greatest percentage something blind like Artificial Intelligence cribbing your style.  Feed it all into the great mouth of the infinite number capability, the biggest and finest card trick joke, to make it seem like the computer is actually capable of writing, even one sentence, which of course it isn't.  

Contract the belly in from the diaphragm back to the spine, pushing the prana, energy, life, breath, up, up the spinal passage of nerve energy, up through the neck and into the skull's head caverns, past the eyeballs and the sinuses and other sensory elements of a person's body.   Sadness and depression not mattering for shit anymore.  Breath.  

Then a great exhale, leaning forward, before resuming a straight back as you sit however you sit, exhaling, and then as you rise back straight breath slowly like poured water or oil drawn slowly down into the lowest of the bottom chambers for air of the belly, then expanding the floating ribs outward in all directions 360, then upward to the tree tops of the lungs to flutter in the light within.  Then hold.  40, 50, 60, 70 seconds, sharing with all the cells, the blood pulling a little switch that rejuvenates it on a cellular level, and the slow waves of light sort of flowing pleasantly over the head in a kind of inward swoon, then, hold, release and then get all the old air out, for another fresh ocean running into the sea cave.

Grim, to watch a woman cough her lungs up, helpless.  Chickens in the backyard.  Empty glass beer bottles from the speakeasy home brewed days in the back that all four children will remember cleaning, another whole operation.  

Then, the counted breaths in, sitting up straight.  And mantras to chant, Aum... followed by a series of Sanskrit words to intone deep from where the resonant sounds we are able to make come from.  

Stagnant, in ragweed season.  Doesn't pay to go out and get the exercise of a long walk in, no.  

The white tea pot of lemon water nearing empty.  Cut a fresh lemon, kettle full enough of fresh filtered water from Mulligan tap filter to the Britta pitcher change the filter every three months.  Get the seeds out on the little cutting board, doesn't have to be quite perfect.  Still feels like there's nothing to do here.  Sad.  Go check on mom again, bring her the one hearing aid.  

Only half a bottle of wine last night, after dealing with the insanity of mom for the day.  The Seroquel half a tablet powdered up into coffee ice cream didn't seem to calm her that much, though it did the day before, but maybe she was tired from all the appointments last week.

And what pill can I take...  brainMD gaba calming support, maybe a propranolol.  yeah, why not.  Vegetable cellulose and whatever else won't break a fast, necessarily.  Not that I would know.  

Fresh water for the cats dish, and a sweep of the floor.  

Ahh, can of soda water, the first one, left by the laptop for a bit, an hour, longer, so a fresh replacement, by the sink, lid rinsed, go take a pee.  Can of soda water, kinkajou, kinky jew, word sound, rinse the top off, crack open, miracle, soothing fix washing down, letting the stomach in the belly have its word on a Labor Day Monday of blank calendar.  

If I show this to people, what will they say.

Them's that have eyes, let them see, thems that got ears, let them listen.  Bubbles, fizz, fresh can of Polar Premium Seltzer to lift the mood, all will be alright. 

A sweep of the floor wouldn't hurt.  Bits of cat foot, and one of those little plastic sort of wire things that holds a triad of new socks in a packet on sale at TJ Maxx.  Did I take my GABA pill already, I forget.  Is it worth it to show one's face... to what?  Another monkey baboon showing its own red ass.  A little spoon end of ashwangandha powder in my tea, I like the taste anyway.  A cup of Tulsi tea to brew along with the fresh pot of lemon water.  A lot of seeds in this lemon, here on the bamboo wood or whatever it is cutting board....

St. Francis, he did not betray me.  He got it.  Copacetic. Rebuild my church.  He did.  And he didn't really say, build a big church in my memory.  The little broken masonry falling down ones where the ones he liked to inhabit.  Everything is broken.  Buddha, everything is on fire.  

Change the water in the cat's bowl.  Does he prefer it washed, or just rinsed out.  Cat spit adheres to bowl for dry food after two visits to his own little cup of worldly sorrows and personal maintenance.  Hydration. Good for you.   Likened unto a plant, the kingdom of heaven.  Don't forget to water it.  Don't oversleep the tea leaves or there'll be bitterness.

Kitten scratching at the screen, the animating force of life.   Chuck has his mailbox keys now.  He's off to Walmart, with his son, unseen as I run out with hat and KN95 mask and barefeet down to the parking lot, suddenly invigorated by being outside, friendship restored after hanging out with him too late fresh back in town.

Scrap it all, who gives a fuck.  It is Nora who saves the manuscript of Ulysses from the flames, dear woman.  

Lots of seeds in this lemon.  Patience.  Paper bag of recycling, cans, largely, getting full to the top.  Lemon water steeps now.  A pile swept together on the floor, carpet could use a vacuum.  Boston Fern, a little water, same with the little stone pine.  The wine hampers the meditation.  Jesus did not mention this in performing the first miracle.  Are those mom's footsteps, yes...  Better go and head her off before she comes downstairs, maybe get her into the shower on the chair...

8/30/2023

 8/30

I listen to myself drink the lemon water as I stand over the sink.  Another day of doctor appointments for mom.  

 Calm I say to myself.

My day starts at 10:30.  The alarm on the phone was set for 9:45, but I give myself a little extra.  The realities of the day weighing on me, and Sherry, who I spent the night with 35 years ago, between a Friday night shift and a Saturday day shift, where she lived down in Georgetown off of Q Street in a sort of apartment for young women.  I didn't know what I had at the time.  I'd lost everything already.

I have a mason jar of green tea to work down as I wake up and go upstairs after making the BLT for mom. I see her jeans, the short leg ones, Oompa Loompa pants I call them, on the floor in the bathroom, along with a pair of dirty wet Depends lying on the floor.  I bring her the sandwich, but there she is now in the bathroom sitting on the can blankly.  Same striped socks she's been wearing now for a week or more.  I have to go through it all step by step.  She retracts her usual knee jerk reaction, oh, my feet, they're ticklish, your hurting me, but I get her socks off, one of them wet, and put her feet into a fresh pair of Depends, seeing her long ugly toenails, thickened with fungus, balled up feet.  My grandfather had bad feet.

Then she's sitting on the bed.  I'm trying to get us out the door by noon, but I'm beginning to wonder now. She's absently-mindedly eating her sandwich bit by bit, and she still hasn't put pants on.  So it's a big fight to get her pants on, and her zip up fleece jacket, is on inside out.

I end up having to yell at her and grab her by the arms to get her to realize we need to go.  

But we get there.

I need to sit down she says, as she gets downstairs, her pants zipped but not fastened, don't touch me, she shouts as she comes down the stairs.  I get her out the door, and it's windy out.  Easy down the stairs, very carefully now.  

It's a fight to get her into the car, and I know the clock is ticking.  48, down to Fulton, skies overcast, rain earlier, and maybe some more coming later.  The end of August in the air, and just a few twinges of color at the edge of maple leaves.  The ragweed high in bunches mixed with golden rod.  

I get her in the door just about 1 pm, fifteen minutes late.  

Waiting room.  First nurse comes to get mom to put her chin on a bar and look into a machine.  Then back to the waiting room.  Then another machine to go to, and do similar things, and mom is complaining the whole way through of her neck hurting and could you hurry up.  

I attempt to assist.  I push the rolling chair in behind, looking down at her matted hair.  He doesn't know what he's talking about, she says.  Get away from me.  Don't touch me.  I back in to the brightly lit hallway, feeling the softness of the institutional carpeting, good for yoga.  I let the woman, a nice sort of heavy-set woman, a mother of four, proceed.  She won't sit still.  She keeps closing her eyes.  The woman calls another woman, also heavy set and in blue nurse attendant smock, in to help.  Do you make a lot of money for this, mom asks her.  It's going slowly today.  We're supposed to get across down, really just over the river, to Fulton Prime Care, overlooking the curve in the road where the railroad tracks came through, the big old brick Nestle plant that made the town vital, with factory houses all round.   Do you see a green X, the woman asks mom.  I see some lines...  Yes, look at those, dear.  Finally, either they give up or they get the four pictures they need.  Back to the waiting room, mom wanting to stop and talk to everyone along the way.  

Driving down, flickers of visual memories processed in the brain, two white rubber lawn chairs in a green yard 'neath two pines in a yard as Ellen Street curves to meet 48.  The garage door of the hydroelectric brick plant close to the falls is open, and looking in I see the green metal turbines standing, then the road rises with the golf course sloping down to the left of the road with a line of hemlock, pine, tall evergreen, a flag flying by the country club main hall at the top of the hill beyond the green, and above that a bulbous water tower with cell phone antennae wired on top of its silver metal.  The river below on the left, trees, more trees.  Americana the whole way.  Beautiful.  I switch from NPR to the classical music station, and Bernard Hermann's score for Vertigo comes on as the clock nears the hour, and in Minetto, passing the boat landing and the Stewart Shop and the World War Two bridge past the brick mill building and the lock dam, an old hydroelectric plant, onward, we're already late now.  Mom sitting on the bed, refusing to get up, or to understand the nature of doctor appointments and how they're good for you, pleading with her, and no, I'm fine staying here, it will all work out, after I've put aside her plate on the cable box and put her shoes on, after asking her to pull her pants up.  There's a triangle garden tucked neatly in a grove of trees where they rebuilt the small bridge over a marsh.  On into Fulton.  

Then we go back to the waiting room until we're called again, and it's the woman who was helpful, Shannon, like the river, yes, she's Irish, and in this room we're now in after we rise again from waiting, mom sits in the optometrist exam chair and given eyedrops, and then asked to look and read back the lines.  Each of these rooms visits is running long, protracted, delaying things.  

Back to the waiting room, and mom says she needs to pee, the whole room hearing it, and someone's in the bathroom, so we wait, and there's a woman mom asks her, so where did you go to school, and it turns out west of Rochester, Victor, NY, and once upon a time perhaps she was a pretty farmer's daughter, and now she's waiting somewhat uneasily in a room full of other aging Americans, the man with a sort of hunting camo jacket with his wife, he has shorts on and you see the vertical knee replacement scar, and later mom tries to talk to him, and he's polite, says he's doing fine, how are you, but ignores her next attempt at questioning.   I take mom into the restroom.  I'm waiting for her when the Caribbean skinned blend of humanity comes to the open doorway to call us, as the doctor is ready, as she takes the measurements he will later mumble and enter them into the laptop.  

I'll come back in five minutes and now a sort of desperation has come, regarding the 2:15 across town with mom's primary care doctor, Dr. Oauno.  Bernadette is her name, as I get mom out after having her wash her hands, having to take a used paper towel out of her hand, we have to go now mom, and in the hallway, I say outloud, after mom says something, oh, that's... is that Portugal, Fatima?  Oh, yes, that's Lourdes... why... 

In the final office, there's the lean white coat doctor, Dr. Spitzer, and he asks mom to uncross her legs in the examination chair so he can shine a light and look at her eyes, I don't want to hurt you.  Does anyone want to kill you, she asks him.  You'd have to ask my wife, he says.  Where did you go to school.  Syracuse, he says, having nothing of it. 

Bernadette comes back in and I get mom's water bottle out of her way.  I think I just wet my pants, mom says, and I go out in the hallway, and say to myself, but outloud, NOoooo.  

It's 2:12 now, and I call Fulton Prime Care, to see what to do.  I thought we could get there, but... The woman at the other end of the line understands, Dr. Oauno has a full day of appointments, so, no, after 2:30 he doesn't have any availability.  I'm still monitoring what's going on the exam room.  Shining a light in her eyes after sweeping the lens thing on the arm back away.  It turns out we have a 1:45 physical planned next week anyway.  First she says he won't have anything for a month out, so it's good to hear.  

I go back in and the good doctor, who reminds me of Henry Fonda, and sounds like him, says there's only the slightest sign of macular degeneration, the lenses look good, everything looks good, we don't need to see her for two years, and I say that is fine.  Eye drops as needed, after I try to stutter out some small concern, pulling the non-prescription little green eye drop bottle Refresh out of my shirt pocket.  Mom tries to talk to them more.  Okay, mom, let's go to lunch now.  Where are you taking me, I hope it's the most expensive place...

Bernadette, tall, mom always comments on her hair, what nice hair you have, smiles at me in the hallway, as I kind of sigh in my body, have a nice lunch, she says, and you have a nice lunch too, I say, playing along with the big joke this all is.  How long have you worked here, mom asked her earlier, 19 years.  I think of that later.  Do they pay you well?  I don't know, she says, and I sort of chuckle at that.  I've looked at the poster photography... It's all from New York State, one of the girls told us earlier.  

Okay mom, come along, and past the checkout window women and the eye glass display of all sorts of things I'd like to look at and past the two openings to the waiting room, and the old people smile at me as we go, for taking the time and having the saintly patience.  It's all going as fast as I can process, but there's a note of relief as I get mom to the door as she keeps up her tirade, jackass, you don't know what you're doing, and it's all a grand cosmic play of male female in the universe.  

Was it her having to fast before yesterday's trip to get a blood sample that did it?

The bacon cheeseburger American cheese with ranch wrap, a green tortilla wrap, rather than romaine, as I might have been thinking, as I order mom a Pepsi, and then her usual grilled lemon pepper chicken with wild rice and zucchini, myself a soda water yesterday about 3:30 at the Press Box, was pretty good, and I had a few of the onion rings, I got for them for mom.  Then taking her along to see the new pedestrian pier, than a walk out to Breitbeck Park, where she sat at a picnic bench and took a dried tree leaf structure apart as I walked a little further to look out over the vast lake, careful with my mask on still, and hat, after we met Toby the dog, a Shitzu blend, with a young man who had just moved from Grand Junction Colorado who turns out lives on Polock Hill.  

Mom asks him repeatedly where he found the dog.  I want a dog, she says.  Originally he was going to be my mother's dog, but I decided to get away from my family and move her, and they say, take something you love along with you, he says in a sort of almost Southern or Western drawl.  Do you have a wife, mom might have asked him at some point, and there's a slight awkwardness, but it's cool, we've made friends and he's a neighbor.   I don't want to give him the wrong idea.  Oh, yeah, Polock Hill, the church there, St... uh, St. Stephan's... we live over at the Cedarwood Townhomes.  I know where that is, he says.  

When we get back, from the rain on 48, as mom eats a packet of annatto colored peanut butter crackers, her mood improving, making me wonder if this was all, despite my feeding her, an episode of low blood sugar, we get in and she takes to the couch, soon enough falling into quiet.     

I go out to the store to pick up a rotisserie chicken and a few other things that seem dutiful enough after getting mom home and she didn't even question not going out to lunch.  

Now at 3 in the morning she's still on the couch almost 12 hours later after our appointment and our failure at the second one.  The cat came in, he's next to her, and she's leaned over on him.  

When we got in, not ten minutes back, she looks up at me and says, that was fun.  I look at her.  I look her in the eyes.  Seriously.  Are you being real?  Fun?  Are you kidding me?  I let it drop.  I let her snooze off, make another pot of tea out of the same leaves.  

I called the car mechanic shop about the slight oil leakage, the drip on the strut, as I've looked underneath the car, an awkward angle, to find the plug, not seeing any drip, and finding from above the oil filter down there in space between the radiator and the oil pan, but there's definitely a drip and I've put newspaper underneath the car, with little rocks found in the parking lot so the wind won't take them away, seen the rainbow mark of water drop on the pavement, yes, something is going on.  I give him the quickest of sketches about the discovery, mention we were there on the 11th to get inspected and then the oil change, which isn't a bad idea and I wasn't at all sure when we were due...  "It could be a number of things..."  He's a cool guy, I enjoyed hanging out in his shop with the girl who was his niece, helping organize the old garage storage area to the left, the east of the shop as it faces out on 104 out near the farmland where now there are fields of solar, the niece also working at a stable, and I ask her about horses and their demeanor.  Thoroughbreds versus regular horses I forget the words, and her Arabian is more flighty than the usual regular horse, a draw horse or something like that.  The man at the shop, who has taken over the shop from mom's long time friend and political difference of opinion, Mike, aka Mr. Torbitt, who became my friend too, is a sturdy fellow too, mustache, strong, well educated, and spoken, taking everything in easy stride, there was a minivan with a blown head gasket and I saw him shake his head, no, I'm booked solid and that's a big job, and later said, the guy isn't going to make it back to Alexandria Bay, or was it Watertown, well, he found the appointment from the previous service, and tells me, oh, bring it by, how about Friday afternoon, and I'm grateful.  Sharon is going to take mom for the day, I hear, and I have an appointment with Ron my therapist friend, Mary's husband, but I think, why am I telling him about my Friday appointments, talking on almost like a woman.  Well, if he knew what I'd been through and eaten silently without much expressed verbal complaint out loud, yeah, he's a man who gets stuff.  The real world.

The Year was 1965.

 8/14

The year of this musical hit, Prabhupada's Pattcha Tattva Mantra, was, and is,1965, at least in the sense of the year of his arrival in the U.S., from India, when he came to set up shop on the Lower East Side of Manhattan.

The same year The Rolling Stones' Satisfaction (I Can't Get No) hit the charts and dominated the airwaves and even the thinking of many a young man, once young, including me.  The depths of the heart were looking for the light, and along came Mick Jagger singing on TV, and the world, for better or worse, was hooked.  A spectacle.  Who knows that the older people thought at the time, they kept it to themselves.

Things that happen in the world on the year of our birth might be said to have a significance somehow.  Why did the great Divine send off a vibration of the great dream to look back at the Great Self of Creation, picking a particular and highly appropriate time and situation.

My mother was born in 1939, in March, the later half, the year Hitler ran the Nazis into Poland, the year Ted Williams came up from the Minors to take up playing for the Boston Red Sox, her hometown, and in fact her father, a chef, who may or may not have had some humble connections, brought her to his last game, in 1960, on a drizzly day, when he hit the greatest of towering home runs in his final at bat, circling the bases, and refusing the gesture of tipping his hat.

Philip Larkin, in England, in that famous year, 1965, was hitting his stride too.  Writing poems like Going Going Gone, considering the pollution of the marshes as the Northern England economy discovers consumer materialism, having left the small stone churches to rot and for bicycle rides, all of which too would be a part of the ethos and the realities of the world one lives in. Poems with a wry empathy for those doomed to sit on park benches, "nothing to love or link with..." And he was the perfect Egghead, a librarian bare to mockery in another society that would come, but did okay in his day.  

JFK had been shot down in the motorcade, a year, two months and few days before, a few days early, scrawny, with poor skinny legs, I was taken from my mother's womb by Cesarian Section on what I imagine was a cold morning of a cold day when the sky was deep blue purple that night in the small house up the quiet street with the Holyoke Range comforting us, the South Amherst Common with its ice rink.  Politics has never been the same since, his speech at Amherst College, about the corruption of power, and the healing offered by poetry and imagining and thinking, becoming part of the strange legacy of the Transcendental Town with its hills of Emily Dickinson's.  An Eden, of sorts.  My brother remembers Tommy James and the Shondells, Crystal Blue Persuasion, playing on the blue Volvo station wagon to go pick up dad from the science halls over at UMass.  Amongst the early words I tried to utter, to clarify the world, before we moved away, in 1968, was, turned out to be, Flower Car.  Apparently, somewhere around the Common, perhaps, or along one of the many fine old roads, there was a VW Bug with flower stickers on it. 

What else... 1965...  The Vietnam situation thickens, develops a kind of cancer, by human reaction to the action of other humans...  Politics, votes, the M'uhlutu'ary, which indeed had one the war against Facism, but now had less of a reason to exist in a productive fashion, after the Marshall Plan, I suppose, to give a quick and unnecessary sketch of History.  There were protests against the war in the old town, Amherst, where people gathered under the great trees of the Common near the churches, my aunt remembering them well.

The man, once a boy, who heard those songs, who was largely defeated by society and its shaping, not able to quite fit in, having played too well along with it, and given the many gifts and talents he could have developed, spent to far too long and too much on the fool songs of This World, as charming as they might be, to play upon a lyre and sing and laugh along to with friends growing up.

And finally, after 60, almost, years later... one discovers the songs he should have been listening to, as once Tibetan Buddhist Monks had come to the auditorium of the Musical Building and chanted, multiple notes, almost like a triad, deeply vibrant, came from the throats of their shaved head saffron robed faith.

From the year, of his birth, something one should not exactly ignore, if he's looking for meaning, if that would do him any good, 1965, the world having inherited much faith and literature and theater and a fine tradition of music.  One comes new to the world, innocent, a babe... and it can take a very long time to grow up, as I suppose he would listening to Jacques Brel, and less and less to the mind blowing moment in Pop Music when Keith Richards steps, with heavy click on a Fuzz Pedal, a new thing, to sound like the saxophone, plays that simple rhythmic three note riff, up, then back down again, while Charlie Watts clicks away almost with jazz beat, but driving, and the whole thing comes together, and Bill Wyman thumps away at the thick strings of the bass and Brian Jones plays perfect blues licks with tasteful and knowing interjection. 

One fine day comes, metaphorically, when you realize it's not about all that, Getting Satisfaction as opposed to No Satisfaction, when the song turns, and must honor the realities of old age, sickness and death, of the finite being who must go with all the grace he or she can muster to face such days.  The importance of the day itself rises, in addition to the original year, and the importance of the Mantras themselves, better in Sanskrit, for effect by the nature of how the language works on the body and the mind becomes a life boat, a way home.  

 A sketch for Julie (the loss of her Werner)

A therapist will tell us to avoid letting your own life be narrowed;  broaden out, volunteer, find fresh new activities, gardening, hiking, write for an ecological outfit for free, make new connections.

And then there's life.  Particular phases of life.  I find myself inhabiting my mother's basement, as a peaceful place to go where it is quiet and spacious, not cluttered with academia detritus and books and papers.  

And one can look back at life, and test the past, and find unexpected disappointments therein.  Things didn't work out in the happy golden autumn freshman bright way.  The relationship bonding with a mate didn't happen.  One can even torture himself.  The recording Walkman a friend hall mate borrowed for basketball practice and broke, didn't even bring the broken thing back to you, shrugged it off, sorry, without replacement.  I played in bands back then.  One cassette tape recording from the summer before, taped to a wall in a kind of fraternity house.  A gift from my mom, proceeds from the house.  All the voices one could have recorded, a career in oral history that never was, voices and ancestral stories lost to the mists.  Keep the batteries fresh in your answering machine, so the recording of your dad's voice will last beyond him.  What do you do?  The shrew you ran into, couldn't read so well, bright, but... etc, a real piece of work, toxic, dismissive, angry.   Just as I was a disappointment to her, apparently.  What's supposed to be good for you, advancing your life, turns out the other way, it doubly hurts and causes pain of a lasting sort in a world of comparisons in every venue.  The things you learn the hard way, feeling shame upon yourself.

But then you look back, as I do.  I remember my father speaking of his mother's tuberculosis.  "Life can be pretty grim," he once said, when we drove into town to pick up the New York Times, relating a story of a schoolteacher back then checking on him.  With TB one coughs her lungs up as they deteriorate, the digestive system is eaten up too.

And if not that, something eats the brain, if the cancer hasn't gotten through you already, shutting off life's flow within in particular spots spreading throughout.  A blackness coming to the mind, or the spirit, so that you can no longer lift life and limb.  

While Kerouac writes beautifully of Fall in New England alleyways, and sets a trail we follow of his own spirituality, there is behind it all, unseen, an awful subtext of life being rather saddening and unsatisfactory.  He took refuge in the common man, people of Lowell and Lynn, the alley bums of San Francisco, the Bohemians of New York.

It that enough, to make a life?

Even one's own vices don't work past a certain age.  The heart-rate soars when trying to sleep it off.  And all the things your therapist warned you about sort of come upon arrival.  

I think of Larkin sometimes.  Many of lines might occur, but "fools in old-style hats," comes to me, from This Be the Verse.  "They fuck you up, your mum and dad." "But they were fucked up in their turn," by the ones who came before them, everything in turn.

With no way forward and no way back, it's like the world, in at the broadest most universal sense, is asking of you to turn inward, to find the glories in the meditations that bring your spine back up straight, your chin parallel, your shoulder blades back and hugging your ribcage as you take the deepest of breaths from bottom to top and out again then inflate.  Exhale. The inner light of the chakra system.  

Not much to go on, huh.  Or is it enough.  A quiet changing of the equation, the sense of it building over time, yes.  Over the subtext we all share, successful or not.  

It's a rainy day here.  I make mom a BLT on Ezekiel bread, the cat's in, and as I do my sadhana, down in the basement, I hear the steps up to her room creak from her weight just so.  Not like yesterday where she berated me every time I passed through the living room, and I don't remember starting it that day.  I'll go down and finish up with twenty minutes of silent mantra, if I still can, and then a quick shavasana, and there's a beauty in all that.  She took two of her pills, the main ones for her condition, though not the calming one.  I'm trying melatonin gummies on her, and last night I stayed up too late with cans of cider, beer too much for my pipes.  

We're all waiting around, not ready for the tragedy to happen, but it will, and when it does, maybe it's a good thing, in some small way.  

Maybe in that way, acceptance, you learn to love again, the meek, the frail, the broken people dragging on you, a broken heart mends, feeling better the next day.  A half an hour, not chewing your guts out.  

 3/27

Sunday, cold, but the sun was out.  I get a decent sadhana in, silent mantra, then my round of Maha Mantra, then yoga outside on the mat, on the walkway, facing the sun.  I try headstand on mat on green grass over damp dark earth, three times, no, then move mat to the sidewalk, and that flat surface works better.  I count.  I count to 120.  I count to 120 again, and then beyond, I'm still counting, but the wind comes up and I've done what I can, and this time I want to focus on the recovery pose accompanying headstand, child's pose, which does its work, real work, relaxing the back of the rib cage and the organs within after the holding in of upward.

I go in and mom comes down, again, and sits on the couch.  I made her a sandwich earlier, very tedious, and she won't take her pills without a big protest, stop bossing me around, so today, after a horrendous dinner after the ride on Cemetery road, across 104, then along the big pond wetland of Rice Creek before it winds its way out the big lake in the distance, before her manipulations on my pity for her, she wants to go out for dinner, oh, wherever you'd like is fine, today I'm just going to leave her alone.  I hear her talking to herself, as she does when she looks in the mirror, and of course her footsteps, but last night she was telling me that she can take care of herself, doesn't need any help, then asking me every five minutes how come I look so miserable, you hate me, you hate me, don't like it?, there's the door.  And the other table, one man with a dark sweatshirt from the local church, St. Paul's Catholic, on the east side, a party of six, are dining, able to ignore us.  She has trouble trying to handle her chicken, lemon and artichoke dinner, whilst I have Fish Italiano, wisely ordered with a side of gluten free penne, tomato sauce to save my palate from boredom, and finally, over entrees, I don't even want it, but I'm trying to be more of a sport as her voice rises at me, and then asks me, again, and then again, and then again, so, what's next for you, where are you going next, I order a class of Chianti, and I don't even want it, but I'm trying.  I too have my doubts about going full Krishna consciousness, even though at this point, it makes indeed perfect sense.  I reach over to take the steak knife that came with her dinner, to cut the chicken breast into pieces she can then take with the fork.

Honor, dishonor, happy things, miserable things, that's all the dualities of life, and you just weather it, it's all the same anyway, while inwardly you vibrate with ever growing consciousness of Krisha.  With his divine help, friendship, and guidance, reading from the proper lineage.  

I reflect back on the highlight of the day, Sunday, cold, but sunny, windy, walking, barefoot, up the hill, the road perfectly smooth, as they spray a salt solution, rather than spreading crystals, or, as the used to, sanding in the winter.  I'd taken mom for her drive, back around through the town, I'll get you a Sunday New York Times at the Big M, and when we get back to Erie Street, mom's aren't we going to go out for lunch, making it clear that she will not like going straight home, and I don't even know what to cook her anyway... Okay, fine.  Continue the birthday celebration, except now, it's no fun, and even worse than the first.  She's looking at me, and I know I'm miserable.  So, my chakras aligned I do my best to address it honestly, the next time, the next round of where are you going next, how's your writing, where are you headed...

Well, Mom, as it becomes clearer to me in my own head, I start.  You and I have different approaches, different ways of thinking about things.  You believe in academic learning, in footnotes and references, and studiousness, and that's great.  But that's not me.  I am comfortable with--I try to find a way to explain it, so I think...  received learning, passed down learning.  And that's spiritual, about belief, and faith, and that's just not your thing, I explain to the creature across from me in the booth.  And I listen to her with another round of contradictory observations.  Oh, they've done a nice job with the place, the architecture, the decorations.  Oh, but they have a ways to go... I look at her.  Mom...  I was in the restaurant business, she says.  

When the waitress, a friendly woman, dark hair, has waited on us many times over the years, comes over, mom says that embarrassing thing, "we're easy."  No, you are not easy.  Later I tell her how I used to immediately distance myself with a bit of despise at the insult.  I'm a professional, I can deal with whatever you throw at me.   It's like the guy who tells you, and women, lawyers, who play ultimate frisbee have told it to me to over the years, along with a lot of other types, "I'm a good tipper."  Yeah, right buddy.  So I waste my breath a bit, how I was really in the restaurant business, not just a kid taking ice cream orders at the Howard Johnson's, as if mom was a real on her feet waitress like her mother was... and how I took a dislike to such people, even if it was a joke, and she's said it many times.  Oh, we're easy, huh huh huh.  The way you express yourself to a server is with eye contact and grace and body language and complete calm acceptance, for the gifts they will bring.  They're professionals, you're paying them.  

So this is going on, and I go through the misery of ordering for her, asking her in a stage voice what kind of dressing would she like, Caesar, or crumbly blue, along with her baked potato, as I sip my soda water, and I say, well, mom, you're just not a faithful person, a church goer, a believer, and she can accept that.  So, mom, if I explain to you what I'm up to, that I live in the present moment, which is all we got, get up, pray every day, do my chanting and my yoga and then write, that's the day right there, isn't it.

Meanwhile in my own mind, horrors face me.  What will I ever do for gainful employment after all this... I'm ruined, just as I always have been, as an adult.  My father's way, as Keats says, education is the process of remembering what you already know, awakened from within.  

Happiness, joy, of the kinds that doesn't come within, I don't have much of that.  On top of the shames of my own choices...  Jesus Christ doesn't really have material happiness and joy, now does he, Holy Week, coming.  I look at her.  I wanted to take her to Joanne the neighbors funeral around the corner at St. Stephen's, but she got terribly antsy, and we ended up, sadly, at Rudy's telling ourselves whatever...  They were bringing the coffin in up the steps out of the black Cadillac hearse when we drove by, and over on the back side passing the large parking lot, we even missed the figure of Sharon going in, who would later tell us how it was beautiful, with singing of Irish songs and Oh Danny Boy.  I'd made the drive the night before even, and gotten us up in time, and then I guess I chickened out, or didn't want to do anything but read how to placate her, causing myself trouble of a deep unhappy guilty kind.

Don't like me, there's the door, she says again.  You hate me.  I can take care of myself.  Yes, mom, think you can take care of everything, figure it all out with any help, and here you are being the greatest burden and drag on me I almost wish, from conventional stand-point that I'd never been born.  Stupid stubborn bitch staring at me and moving her silverware around on the table like she's in control of everything, everything at her mastery and command and her references, and her I'm a woman, or, the other way, I wouldn't know I'm just a stupid woman, or, you have a penis, and on and on.

Finally, as I seek out the tomato sauce's comfort over the gluten free penne, I stare out at the wall behind her four booths away, a tan stucco, been there for every, terra cotta, warmer than a Bistrot's tobacco smoke wall yellower color with a faint nod to Provence's warmth and Garden of Eden vegetation.  What are you look at, she demands of me.  I sit up straight now, from yoga practice.  I am capable of slipping into a meditation light or deeper.

But it feels okay to sort of plant a flag, to figure it out, how I am happy with A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada's translation, the Bhagavad Gita As It Is, marvelously clear with Sanskrit and then phonetic Sanskrit with each term broken down and defined, and then the commentary of Purport.  What's going on, who is saying what to whom, who is speaking, what does this name term mean for Krishna, as the name terms slip around a lot, such that without a guide it's very easy to get puzzled, and then baffled.  

I regret the wine as I drink it.  It's not making me anymore jovial in the slightest, plus it represents many a problem and wasted year of my pathetic life of seeking out learning in the less common way for those of us who have tried to deal with academia in tangential ways at least.  

But we've learned, because I asked her, if she'd been working out or running, she says, oh, I'm running, and I get it, but she adds how her eleven year old, they've been going back and forth to the hospitals in Syracuse, and in another trip over to our table she tells us that her daughter woke up paralyzed, but that she is relearning how to walk.  Oh, wow, thank you for letting us know, I try to say, as gently as I can.  Yeah, I'm doing my yoga, I add, as if I have ever had a problem as severe as paralysis, though I have read how serious back nerve issues have been healed through Tantra yoga, not that have ever fully experienced that real lovely thing of a man and woman bringing their chakras together in communing harmony of intercourse.  

I needed a nap when I got in, and, as I'd blocked her from sitting on the couch by the two guitars in their cases, offended she went upstairs with her coat on, and soon as asleep, I hid in the old office on my green camping air mattress, and fell asleep just out of stress.  

Waking again, dryly, fogged a bit, but gathering myself to read from Chapter Two, verse by verse, saying the Sanskrit terms to hear them better, then reading the commentaries, which do add a lot to one's understanding of the Holy Book of Krishna Consciousness.  In the Eames chair, the dishes gathered in the sink.  Illusions have rested upon me, for so many years, distractions, but now it's all clearer.  

But still in despair, even after a good Sadhana day and yoga and the good walk up the hill and back, the water seeming to rise on the sides of the road, as the beavers are up to something, around 4 in the morning I find the cold bottle of Sierra Nevada Pale Ale, just for, I don't know, something to give some form of comfort as my life falls totally apart.   By God's will.

And, at 2:26, here she comes, my way, down the stairs and to the kitchen talking to herself with commentary.

And I'm angry.  And as I later regret, when she comes towards me my voice rises in anger, though she doesn't remember telling me any of the things I am now repeating to her.  I said that?

And when I finally apologize and calm down a bit, as goes up the stairs with a packet of peanut butter crackers and an oat bar... she tells me I'll regret this, and I say, yes, I know I will.  But the outburst came, and maybe it had to come, though I am not proud at all, but rather ashamed.  

Maybe it was the moment she caught me in, the latent two beers in my system, the short hours of sleep, the weather, I don't know, she probably won't remember it anyway.

As she goes back upstairs, mom, would you like a sandwich, do you want me to get you a Pepsi, she says, I want you not to shout.  And she is the calmer one.  Great.  Her, you hate me, settles uneasily into the air, and now what do I do.  Go for a walk?

Fortunately the anger in my throat dissipates.  I think of cooking some fried eggs, but as I make mom a turkey, lettuce and guacamole sandwich I realize I'm very hungry, and when I take the plate with it upstairs, cut into fours, she says, I can't eat all that, so...  

A headache comes.  Along with a wave of weariness, and whereas yesterday was a good day, as far as reading, and yoga, and mantras, and the readings of the night before, today the clarity is gone and clouds and drizzle have come.

I make myself a sandwich too, mindful now of how the turkeys suffer, knowing what's going to befall them, so as I finish my plate, I pick up each little shred of turkey breast flesh.  

Jesus was a good sport in all this, maybe that's why he took the wine they gave him, or why he made it himself to keep the people at the wedding gathering at Cana happy, as the Lord loves human happiness.  

But when it leaves you, at 58, now you just feel stupid, anti-social, trapped in worse chemistry than you had before, the old hangover.  And it was even quite clear to me that I didn't want to drink at all, not when I drove the car straight rather than taking the left up Hawley towards the Cedarwood Townhomes.  The depression, the feeling sad about everything that is the after-effect suffering of trying to please yourself individually.  

The neighbor two doors down, not unattractive, utters her first words to me in months, as I go back out the door after getting mom in to retrieve my iPhone, her dog, a black German Shepherd bitch scuttling over to sniff me, "Sorry," she says, and I say, oh, no, I like your dog, but she probably doesn't hear that as she closes the door with the dog back in, and her little boy there in the mix.  I think she thought I was a creep. I cleared her Jeep station wagon SUV off of snow, early in the winter, maybe that was being too friendly.  Or maybe it was because sometimes when I get home, after peering in through the front window to see if mom has taken over the couch in the living room, then if so I traipse along the back of the row of townhomes, coming in the back door.  I always give her space a wide birth, so I don't know.

And today I hear her speaking to a girlfriend who brought her own kids over in her own white Jeep the same, about Mike, and about how it was a pointless conversation...  I would have stayed and liked to hear more but, ah, not my business, though there is some entertainment value in it, I suppose, or to see if I might strut my own plumage, ha ha ha, I don't think so.  I thought we were friends last Fall, and I took the dog for a decent long walk, at least one poop, to the watery area and back...  We were sitting out on our front stoops then, and she offered to bring the dog over to meet mom, and I thought that was nice, and she asked me about yoga at least once, and I told her, yeah, it helps me from going crazy and she understood.

The garbage truck comes around and bangs the dumpster up and over and then back, and I took two boxes out of the cellar this morning, and one large one yesterday from an old printer.  

I take my pills, one Wellbutrin, and the BrainMD capsules and soon start to feel better.

Why has Catholicism retreated in the light of the Bhagavad Gita....

What do I know, I don't know anything.  There's nothing in us, we have to get back in contact with the source.

I go for a walk.  Was it the one glass of wine to deal with mom over dinner at Canale's?  The two beers in the middle of the night?  

The world of alcohol's imaginative un-reality.  Hemingway grandiose destroyed but not defeated kind of stuff.

Later my rain coat damp on the inside and my left toes feeling damp in my hiking boots, I go down to the store.  Grey, still drizzling.  A sea-gull screeches overhead the parking lot shiny and I tighten my belt, go, "oh fuuuck," to myself, it's that kind of a day.  

Inside I do better, have a talk with George the manager guy, who has quit the diner because he has everything including his truck paid off, and got himself a 1985 reissue MG, black, of a 1952, with the fender running board style.  He sold his big Yamaha roadster motorcycle, the arthritis in his hip flaring at every ride.  Just some human interaction is all you need.

And I feel I am not good enough, not pure enough, am headed for such a disaster that reading the Bhagavad Gita won't really help so much.

I leave the market, the parking lot, onto the main road, through the four corner traffic light intersection, the YMCA old armory building and the Dunkin Donuts, the lights along route 48 on the other side of the river as grey dusk falls and night comes, pulling in to the parking lot just past Bame's, to park, shop for wine.

3/28  Two in the morning.

After a fitful nap, trying in half my mind to read mom, if she needs anything, half to leave her alone, and then the other moments just trying to take care of myself, give myself some space.

I am reminded of what Dostoevsky wrote in Notes From the House of the Dead.  How the smartest most highly intelligent men he met were those on the inside, society's deemed criminals, and indeed some of them had done acts horrible enough, but he saw them brightly.  They were on the inside, too smart really for anything else.  Rich not in academic learned knowledge of the kind you sit and study for and then are graded, and then round after round, constantly adjusting, but those who must run forth into learning wherever they can, right in front of them, from life, from the occasional nuggets of wisdom they find in the stream.  People who don't fit in, who gave up on rules and tiresome obedience to the order of artificially constructed modern societies, because they couldn't stand, couldn't tolerate, not longer than a short enough time span to be cast out.  Rejected.  Pushed away, with no option but to do something else, spur of the moment, disagreeable as they are, but in some way realizing that they too must fit in somewhere, and so, as a last option, they find criminality.  

Dmitri Karamazov, who is innocent of the murder of the father, though he is charged and found guilty and sent away, is one of those brave rash men who cannot fit in, burning brightly through their clenched teeth with the fire that God imbued and entrusted them with.   Because society tends to want people to conform, it leaves no room for them, and so they live desperate lives, ones of passion, as passion guides them as much as bright intellect.  

Thus the passion of their patron saint, Jesus Christ, who too is taken as a criminal, outsider to society, even as he is its most central insider, as if at the beating heart of all humanity and all human ventures, such as he sees with the same passion.  There is the miracle of the first, the wedding at Cana, the youngest brother Alyosha experiences at the wake, the body of the Elder Zosima, in dream.  The happy miracles, but there are the sad ones that are true as well.  The rejection, the sadness, the brutality...  The first miracle seems but a candle, even as it might provide some form of safety and support.

Notes from the Dead House brings forth a wide variety, a cross section of a humanity far away in geography, ancestral position, and time, but a range of the same people you might still find in Mother Russia and the greater part of that world, the handsome young pious Chechnian, who takes interest in Gospel readings, all sorts, forgotten to me, but for the vignettes of the imprisoned of the Siberian labor camp of the 1870s or whenever it was.  The Christmas play, put on by the prisoners.  The card games, the unfortunate cycle of the smuggling of vodka and what it does, bit by bit, until the crazy are crazed and then blow like fuses.  

The criminal, waiting to become the holy man, the holy man, waiting to become the criminal...  It is a good thing that God has allowed us to be in touch now with other cultures, that we might find our own, ourselves, in what was foreign, strange, interesting, compelling, and now guiding us.

How strongly I do not even want to touch anything that changes my mind, and yet, just one disastrous evening, unprotected, with no place to put her so that I might get a break and she might have some social pleasure without me and my misery and my fading life juice.  

The grocery store and the buying of supplies, including meats, and then a stop on the way home for that anesthetic, I agree it's not facing the problems of life squarely, but one has to eat, has to rise from the drying out nap and wish to find some energy in order to cook the ground beef, or whatever, of the pan of bacon for mom's sandwich for the next day, just to keep moving, the soothing wine.  It does not work, out of the house.  The imprisoned must feed himself, alone, not ask for help.  

Eating a hamburger, having some wine, in a tumbler, over two large ice cubes for each, topped with soda water, listening to a lecture on Krishna consciousness over the computer, for a moment I can catch my breath.

Anyone still read this?

TESTING

 3/21

The monk, HH Romapada Swami, is speaking over at 2 in the afternoon over at Rice Creek Field Station.  I get there and Dolly as prepared chick pea stew and a salad of ice berg lettuce.  She has a vegetarian's body, and is the mother of a three year old.  She hands me a plate with some cake, very graciously, and I see my friend over there who is an MBA student visiting with the Syracuse Mantra Central house contingent.  Real sweeties, as people from India quite often are, maybe as a rule.

I've never had any goals, or ones so vague that there is no clear road map, but to, what?, write every day.  The writing is market is such, it's not a job, it's a side duty, at the cost of other things.

I'm upstairs dreaming of being a bad misguided college student again, thinking it's all about me, and that I'm so cool.  Hunter S. Thompson.  Acting like I don't give a fuck.  My brother comes up to me and says he saw me passed out drunk under a tree.  There's a sequence where I arrive too late to the dining hall, not even capable and responsible enough to 

Honor and dishonor.  Cycles.  Like the weather.  Like women.

I fed mom baked gluten-free chicken tenders.  With hummus and pesto dipping sauces in small amounts on the plate I bring upstairs for her.  

It's my birthday, where is everybody, where are my mother and father?  When are we going home?  That's what I get when I get home from the grocery trip after my initial foray into the world for the Hindu Krishna meditation lecture.  

I interrupt the flow by asking an off topic question, which he is kind enough to field.  I thought it interesting, but now I see, to my embarrassment and mild horror, how foolish it was to ask, bringing in a topic I heard him speak over in a recent YouTube lecture.

On Nirvana, and the materialism of the moment.  On how to deal with negative emotions.  And mom's birthday is coming up.  I haven't gotten her a card yet.  I think I need another doo-dad for her.  Will this be her last here?

I heard her go downstairs in the middle of the night, around two in the morning.  Calling for the cat, who heard me go downstairs after my first round of sleep, so to put the pot of beef ragout in spaghetti sauce out own the back stoop to cool off, and fortunately it didn't burn on the bottom there on the electric range of unpredictable burners.  Maybe I'm bad at pleasing girlfriends with birthday gifts because my own mother female constant presence is so anxious and hard to satisfy, unpredictable in other words.  

I think of my embarrassment at my own voice and question before the monk I feel like Kerouac's red face in front of D.T. Suzuki.  

So I come down about 8:30 in the morning for a start on the day amidst all my bad habits and patterns and laziness and misguided misdirection, to sort out the dirty dishes from yesterday.  

Quietly I start with the dishes, after finding the two jars of green tea second steeping in the fridge, and carefully sorting out  back from the right sink to the left to be scraped of detritus, before going back to the right with the silverware on the bottom to fill with soapy water now that most of the grease has been removed, the little bits of dried cat food, the muck from cooking on the wooden spoon and the spatula I used to flip the chicken tenders and the Oreida crinkle cut French fries mom didn't even want.

After an argument rising over her concern for the children, getting her some water, and then asking about her hearing aids after she asks me, What?, three times... I get her to go upstairs, go check on her, bring her a cheddar cheese and almond butter sandwich and a piece of dark chocolate...

And I haven't even done my sadhana, though at least the dishes are clean and drying.  Oh, mental pain and minor lasting anguish constantly begging at you...  

How can I ever go free from such shame of being too kind and open and agreeable to people, to let them lead me around in my life, a weak person.

But at least I've found some new fresh impetus and direction, even if I was forced to go back to eating meats and drinking wine and being worn out too much to be mindful, just plod forward.  

I can only think of the madness and the brokenheartedness within the writer.  That's why the meditation and the sadhana and the spiritual practice and study and imaginative thought are so important in this loneliness we experience.  

By 12:20 I rise from my shavasana to cool down.

We too have our eyes looking down at the ground like the horse.

We feel the ground below us, and our limbs and muscles immediately respond.  

Beneath our eyes the worlds of the past fade away, sinking slowly, smaller and smaller, gradually. 

Our eyes feel, feel the light, feeling the distance, let things pass.

We are running now, after the past has faded sufficiently to not hold us back

so that by running and reconnecting with our motions of inward spins

we heal ourselves, mend the broken heart and the troubled mind, and our throats ruffle a neigh from deep within the chest.  An exhale, to comfort, a self-hugging, support.  We shake the back of our long neck, toward the height of the base of the skull to shake it all free, what's in our head, so we can see.

Ahead, in the distance, growing larger and moving slowly, like colored clouds coming toward us, spreading out to welcome us, to sooth with the quiet of the cooler woods' protections ahead, our home.  No need to crouch, we leap forward.

Then we turn, after we are comfortable and calm, confident with our motion, and our eyes are raised, as they were by the spreading clouds that came and were the leaves of the trees and the cool and warm fluttering comfort alive with life.  We leave the woods, to our right, running left, back in the open space's edge.

In shavasana, new sensations open, the fascia, I relax it all over, down the back from the top of the head, down the spine's run, down through the legs and up the feet and then back up the front, up the throat, to the head again.  The shoulders open to comfort.

By the end of the day, with far too much to think about, the left bands on the back of my neck are sore and tight, pulling my body to the side to hold the pain and the head up from it, until I can no longer bear writing at the kitchen table, nor the chair, and must go lie down.  The pain is frantic, and I must rest.  

Like Kundera's father, depicted as laboring on a horse in his travels toward the birth of his end, no longer able to speak, I watch my mom going through the rainbow lights, and she sleeps, because it must be exhausting, and I'm so rattled by her I shout at her about her hearing aids, and this isn't good.  

I could cry, to tell you the truth, and there's the to-do list, on top of pleasing her in the few little ways I can, straining over each.

The sun is half out maybe.  I stand at the door and feel the wind, before checking the mail, my hiking shoes on, and I need the three layers still and the heavy black knit hat for a walk, needed to quell the anxiety of mom's birthday in two days, am I prepared, what will we do, what will happen?

I think of the hill up to the water tower, still a receding bank of snow covering the side of the road, so I opt for no traffic, the two beaver lodges on either side of the access road to the power substation and the railroad tracks and the wetlands under the high tension power lines.  The road ends and I'll walk along the tracks, avoiding the puddle and the mud dug up by tire track wheels, and I listen to Jonathan Roumie recite the Sorrowful Tuesday Mysteries of the Holy Rosary with its five mysteries and it's run of ten recitations of the Hail Mary, with one Our Father for each mystery and a Glory Be to the Father prayer, and then a Fatima Oh my Jesus.  My sorrow in the garden is on a hill overlooking the mechanical electricity of the chain link fenced-in substation itself, standing looking back on it before dropping down the bank to the road cul de sac.  Mom was fast asleep on her bed with the plate on her lap still.  The cat is probably under the desk in mom's old office.

Walking back on Ellen Street finally, after reading the top of the hill and the water tower, May the Lord's peace be with you, and at least I've gotten a walk in with Christianity after my sadhana this morning.  What to do now, in the hours before tentatively heading to the library for the second of Dolly's public invite events featuring the Swami HH Romapada, disciple of Prabhupada, the man, the great sage, who brought Hare Krishna to the United States of America with humble beginnings.  The latter so tuned to Krishna, God, that he, I find on YouTube, spits at sexuality.  

From the road, passing the last houses, the one where the guy died, then the big white one set off the road, then the small weather beaten one, I come to the filled in railroad track ditch where as Charlie tells me there used to be an iron bridge, the slope muddy and deep tire tracks, coming down the slope carefully in the middle where the field grass still hangs on.  The back way to the townhouses.  

My mood is not much better, but I'm trying, and mom, when I go check on her, says oh, some sunshine, and then she falls back into the breath of sleep, not feeling my presence in the room and I go back to the kitchen, in bare feet again, the heat on, turning on the Bose to RVO, then taking out the celery stalks from the fridge, to assemble a tuna salad, mainly to soothe myself, as cooking does.  I pull the stalks of a bunch of parsley from the water, shake, pull the leaves off the stalks, pad them dry with a napkin before cutting.  Neither Krishna nor Prabhupada would approve of the violence that goes into the can of tuna fish and the habit, but I'm not feeling so good about myself anyway, and even the sense of going off to the library to attend a lecture feels like neglect.  The phone's weather app blips silently, light rain in twenty minutes.  

And Sharon coming at ten tomorrow morning wishing to help me box up and throw out and sort and all that is weighing on me unhappily, as is the 3 pm with Sally my counselor.  Is that the toilet flushing upstairs now I hear?

The knife makes chop noises on the sturdy plastic yellow cutting board and I remember Oscar and German, the working line cooks from Salvador back in the kitchen of the original Austin Grill.  Years ago.  Guys with children.  

I look in the refrigerator after finding mom in a good mood upstairs.  After several efforts and cord plugging, I get the television to work, and she requests a turkey club.  There is violence written all over the refrigerator, and after bringing mom her sandwich, the bacon cooked, toasted on top of the Ezekiel bread, and asking her if she wants to go the Hare Krishna talk with the monk at the library, nah, I find myself very hungry and make myself a turkey romaine and tomato slices sandwich, having the cutting board right there, and with mayonnaise, with olive oil, not just soybean oil, it tastes too good.

I'd gone in yesterday to the talk with too much ego, too much pride, too much thinking I'd figured it out and would become a devotee, looked after, sheltered by Krishna himself.

Face it, I'll never figure it out.  I get too nervous, anxious, too much a realist with his habits that walk the line. 

3/25/2022

 So finally around 3:30 in the afternoon, without wanting to, with a twinge of a headache from mixing sweet "sangria" cider with a bottle of Chianti, while finding some peace and entertainment watching Marlon Brando in Last Tango in Paris at the kitchen table, disturbed at the end by mom's arrival to the table, and feeling like the biggest loser there is, of course through my own poor choices solely to blame, and bad habits, without even trying my hand at being an actor, waking up miserable not wanting to move, I come downstairs.

Mom is in the bathroom with the fan on behind the sliding door.  The cat has been crying, shut down in the cellar behind the door just opposite.  I've been waiting, hoping mom would hear, or figure it out, as I hear her open the front door and look out.  But she hasn't.  I open the door and the cat sticks his head out, pissed off by the way he looks up at me, what the hell.  I open a can for him, mom's still in the bathroom with the fan whooshing away, I pour some cold tea, some lemon water, text my aunt to celebrate her husband Barry's birthday, try to call him, get a doctored up cauliflower crust pizza into the over.  Mom's story will change many times, but the first thing she does, sitting down at the table and looking at me, what's on the agenda today...  I tell her I have work to do.  Yoga, writing, and I do.  First thoughts out of the morning mind are good to gather before forgotten.

But I feel like a bug on a hot surface in the sun anyway, as if it weren't hard to get up out of bed anyway, in these circumstance, not enough to worry about my own life and trying to plan a way so that this doesn't all end in perfect homeless disaster...  A career?  A new one at 60?

Being the prince of peace doesn't work for mortals, not as a career.

And maybe Marlon Brando isn't such a good role model.

I know I'm too old for anything new, old dog, who worked too long, too willingly, should have rebelled, was a sucker for all the nice people, and gave the best part of his life to it, missing all things life, his father, being a helpful presence in his mom's life, etc.

Tantra is the only thing that can save me now.  So, after mom huffs off to the living room to sit with a book after I go upstairs and get her new one, the Margaret Atwood essays, having taken off the book cover so she won't be talking to the dust jacket author photo for an hour, then telling me later that something is wrong with the woman, after her initial enthusiasm.  The War in Ukraine goes on.  Can we make for greater peace through pranayama, calmed nerves, mantra chants, nauli kriyas... 

I can hear mom whispering away with her sss sounds, quietly intoning, then louder, is my mother here?, then going back.  I remind myself not to cower and allow my shoulders to hunch and slope forward, and the yoga in the school chair works pretty well for spinal alignment.

I am no literary genius.  I'm just putting some words down, to get back into the labor of it, the feel for the fingers across a MacBook Pro keyboard.