From upstairs on my sleeping pad air mattress, wiped out by the danger of taking mom out across frozen icy landings and sidewalks and sets of steps down to the silver Corolla in the parking lot so she can accompany me for a little ride, utilitarian, to get the newspaper from The Stewart Shop so she'll have something to read while I'm in The Big M getting the groceries before tomorrow's snow storm, even under the comforter half draped over my torso I'm feeling cold, I hear mom getting into trouble, exuberant with the wine and I didn't want to deal with her after my walk up the road under the power lines in the snow, we picked up a rotisserie chicken for dinner, but now she was talking about "just order a pizza," which ain't cheap, and she's suddenly proclaiming how she has a life, that she likes where she is now, and that she'll live the rest of her life and die here, and I don't have the energy to figure out what to do, as a pizza sounds good, or we could do Food Chow City Chinese delivery, but both of those would cost as much as I just spent on groceries, so...

"I need another cat...  We need a dog... I've figured out the rest of my life, I have a life, I'm going to survive, I have a plan, and my sons will be in the background...  I like it here," she says.  Exuberant self laugh, and the monolog goes on and on.  Is she shouting out the open front door now?  Oh, shit, I should have fed her earlier, besides the tuna wedge we shared overlooking the lake, the far horizon of the water's end obscured and darkened by reaching clouds...  I should have postponed the walk...  I should have gotten her a piece of cheese before I went out for my mental health walk maybe make a few phone calls walk up the dreary road in the scruff woods by the National Grid power line station, the gravel, the railroad tracks with all number of small trees poking up, a low area with marshland ponds in between higher ground where two bulbous water towers stand strong and metal.

But, in the cold, that feeling of a zombie cold coming within you, taking you away, exhausted by all her verbage, her Burbidge, all her heavy complaint filled thoughts as she looks out of herself, dissatisfied, her sense of humor running out, without a constant wine, I need to lie down.  Just to meditate.  To pray.  To remind myself of my own pretend life.

How fake a life of writing is.  This you learn.  And then it gets worse.  How fake emotions are, a fleeting up or down, passing through us given what we do to ourselves, the extremes we feed ourselves and enable...  This terrible but necessary piece of wisdom is now directly.  There is little reality to emotions.  It's all a passing hollow thing, the stream of it.  

She's bellowing like a clown from Shakespeare, rapping on the door, from what I can tell through the floor below me, maybe shouting out the door, hello to everyone, I'm going to live, hello...

And then sitting back down on her chair, carrying on with her conversation with herself. 

I lay there for a little while longer, a zombie in the cold room with all her infinite piles of clutter everywhere.  I could shout too.  Please, shut up!

I finally rise, down the stairs, go into the kitchen, and when I come back, after ducking into the bathroom for a quick pee, she's almost shouting again, "hello?!?  I didn't know you were here.."  What?  Panic.  Mom, I just walked past you...  (Granted,  I need to hide, from time to time, and it is awfully tiring, having all this dumped on you, a personal present, "fuck you...")

So, I take the rotisserie poor little bird out of the plastic shell, heat the oven to 250 or so, place it on the Lodge iron skillet.  Mom's telling me she needs a cat, she needs a cat, and I tell her, look mom, he's up by the head of your bed...  I turned the TV on, PBS, British stuff, cultured, Jane Austen, how the folk of her time read her...  Oh, my cat's upstairs?  Yes, mom.  I need some more wine, she says.  What can you do at this point.  I fucked up.  I'd fed her a pretty good breakfast of bacon, and egg over medium, slice of turkey, salsa...  I didn't dawdle too long taking a shower, I got her down to take a ride...  Storm tomorrow, might not be as easy..

Please mom, please, she goes up to bed, to talk, coo, to the cat, what a good kitty, what a good kitty, what a good kitty, you're not like him...

I got her back in, up the stairs, into the townhouse apartment.  I should have fed her something then, planned it better taking my walk in the snow of tiny pellets beneath the high power lines of the grid...

Quinoa...  I'll get a pot of that going, reheat the chicken, add stock to the cheddar broccoli Big M soup of the day, extend it, lighter.  I don't need any more dough, the way my gut is going, and my thighs seem to hurt anyway, from the horsing around I was doing late Saturday with tree poses on some silly self-entertaining clown recording of me doing T'ai Chi, and "Feng Shuy," and Yoga poses and Giotto haloed saints and Jesus with a golden cross about his head, and other crap, half silly, three quarters serious, part tongue in cheek...

Spinach, sautéd.  Tired of spinach.  Where is mom?  I hear footsteps thumping around upstairs...  At least she's not shouting anymore, and no more "HELLO?!?!?" at every little sound, which might be the single most thing that drives me wild...

I get into the wine, the Chianti, too, what (the fuck) (else) am I supposed to do...

Later on, I remember it's still Valentine's Day, right, so why not say hi to my guitar friends, my restaurant friends, old college buddies.

Now it's quiet.  I can write now about how silly writing is.  How pointless an art it is.  All's it is is therapy.  For me.

We bluster and we blow...  we strut our hours upon the stage, we roil and rumble, shout and cry, Learing on the heath with jester clown, the only one wised up as I to the bleakness and the hi ho the wind and the rain, floating upon a stream til we do now know ourselves well and separate enough from boggy weeds and reeds, cattail, to keep on floating, not in a garden no more, oh great randomnesses, water flowing throughout.

I keep with the Chianti, after prepping, cooking the quinoa, the poulet safely reheated, and still she's not coming down to bother me, I forget, perhaps she does, I'm too tired now by all this to remember.

I take the bird out, put foil over it, she still is quiet upstairs.  Later I carve it, breast meat, wings and thighs, bones for a soup later on, perhaps.  Put it all away, after it cools.

And I don't even drink too much wine...

Every now and then I post something on Facebook, something the Dalai Lama might say, for instance.  "love and compassion strengthen us," some thing like that.

Rhetorical questions...  rhetorical complaints.  Pot shots, unfair, they all did their thing, best they could.  They sacrificed, like Larkin, "your mom and dad, they fuck you up, they might not mean to, but they do, and throw in a little extra just for you..."  I read that to her, accurate or not, and she laughed, and I didn't strangle her or hit her about the head like I wanted to.  I took my nap and she was crying, and crying, in the dark insanity of old age realizations of the closing in of complete abandonment, obscurity, being stuck in a home somewhere, her circuits fried out by all her self-created stress, my own grandfather her farther ruining my life through all he did, making her up at night, pretending by the sound to her little ears that a great war was happening, and better to be in an actual war, outside forces, than it coming from within where you can't protect yourself, the crazy legacy of all families, perhaps, the only ones who'll drive you to madness, destitution, skid row bum, and this, why must always wonder, behind that beautiful hedge, within that perfect mansion, there is murder going on, step by step, if not by action, by inaction, by some pride.   That's how it goes.  That's in the genes, how a family is extruded from the clay, each with their roles, their attitudes...  Too naive one is to say anything about it, it goes on, ever mentioned....  but it's there, sure it is.

So what does this all show?  I'm too fucked anyway, will never have a steady home, so...  why not be a sort of Desert Monk, if this is all there is, in my own way, cheap as possible, on the road, in a van, who cares anymore.  Tend bar till I can't anymore?