But every story reveals the story of how the narrator wrote the piece, the story.  Intrinsic to the DNA of the story, I suppose.  Instinctively, the narrator has to have a voice.

I finally took a shower.  Days.  Layers of bugspray.  Outdoor airs.  I'd watched a combination of Chernobyl, The Civil War, Untergang, Tokyo Story thrown in, PBS The Buddha.  Father Barron's Life on Fire series on Catholicism on in the background.  Scenery.

I changed the rear tire on my old celeste green Bianchi Veloce road bike, flaking into little bits, read out on a pile of books behind the bike, after I tried to superglue the tire surface back down, as I rode on the trainer stand.  The new one has a blue strip where the tire meets the road.  My index finger is still a little delicate, reluctant for full use as the stitches dissolve, living tiny bumps.  I get the old tire off, and the new one on.  I wash my hands again.


I picture myself as a patriarch Wyeth artist actor.  Dress up.  Costumes.  Telling stories to children.  "So King Tonowando goes out to meet the settlers.        It was a fine day."

Trump.  All for power.  That's it.

A full moon.

I'm hungover Sunday when I wake.  The Lexapro making me feel numb down there.  I have a headache.  Anxious.  Heart beating.  Wine last night to calm the excitements of putting myself out there for a new line of work, tutoring, the need for a job, the reaction of friends who've known me through the years...

Buddha is right once again about attempting pleasure.  Now I just feel more miserable afterward.  Pastrami for dinner, that wasn't enough.  Thinking of my new life as a tutor.  Makes my head feel funny.

I have a good doctor's appointment.   He'll refill my prescriptions, the beta-blocker Propranolol, the Escitalopram.  He'll call them in by six, ready tonight, or tomorrow, as first bands of rains from the hurricane arrive, pattering on the window air conditioner unit.  The nice woman at his office, the one who told me it was good to talk to plants and to play them music, passed away from a stroke in February, before the Covid came.  Thunder rumbles, distant growls.  "It wasn't a good month," Dr. Patel says quietly, in his understated way.  He's not so concerned about my GGT liver enzymes in the Fall.