Writers have to be, by their very nature, personalities.  Perhaps of a peculiar kind.  It's necessary for themselves to be true to who they are.  They have to be of a style appropriate to their skin.  This is the hardest part.  The rest is in finding a decent typewriter, and just having the faith to put the fingertips upon it.  

The thumb hits the space bar.  The swirling rainbow circle comes up again on this old laptop.  It takes forty minutes to get to my blog.

It was one of those grim days, following upon my failure at The Press Box to be a bit more expressive of my interest in the prettiest most attractive woman I've seen in Oswego, (but it's always that way) and there are many of them, but dark hair, blue eyes, she looked me up and down, eye contact, then honed in on my pants, which are indeed comfortable and lightweight.  I had already sat old monkey in need of a lost tribe of chimpanzee humans, and mom is placed facing this stranger, with her lovely pale face, and now Jesus Christ I regret it.

Talking.  Trying to be a whole family unit of monkeys, and I can't take the necessary chatter, and I'm sick of the drama.  It's ruined me, I have to say.  My aunt can handle it.  She's a retired school teacher.  She's tough.  I can't handle mom.  She's getting angry at me.  I'm cooking dinner, but she's mad at me, because we can't hear each other, or something...

I pick up the phone.  Please.  Trish.   Can you talk to mom?  Well, can we FaceTime you in fifteen minutes?  

Never mind.  I...  We'll be eating dinner soon.  We can talk tomorrow.  No, Teddy, stay on the line, just put her on.  Thanks Trish.  

I leave them be, talking on my iPhone, mom on the couch petting the cat.  I can go back to the kitchen.  I can overhear a little bit.  Aunt Jean, driving back to (from?) Reading in a blizzard, snow storm, drive thru window...  Aunt Jean doesn't do drive thru...

Things are back in order in the kitchen.  God, I needed this.  Why didn't I do this earlier...

Mom needs girl talk.  I don't have girl talk in me.  The night before it was Sharon, mom's professor colleague from the Education Department, Reading and Language Arts.  It was a snow day, and she lets me know, as we took a walk a couple weeks ago together (which made mom confrontationally jealous, "you're going to run away with Sharon..."  standing there in the door), that she didn't have to drive in from work, using that two hours to go skiing along the Canal.  (Forgive me;  none of this is compelling.)  So.  Mom, how about we call Sharon.  No, I'm not in the mood.  Mom, she's your friend.  She's kind.  Easy to talk to.  No, I can't be forced into it...  And then all of a sudden she's mad at me.  Mom, look, you're telling me you're lonely, you need someone to talk to.  I'm sorry, I'm talked out.  Well, why don't you call her then.  Mom, she's your friend!  

Finally I give up.  I text Sharon--we keep in touch to keep up to date with mom--that she's in one of her moods.  I go upstairs and lie down on the green air mattress, just to chill out for a spell.  I hear her, boo hoo hoo, boo hoo hoo, sob sob sob, the baby downstairs, boo hoo hoo.  "If you feel like calling her landline, that would be good.  But if not, maybe we can all talk tomorrow."  I lay back.  Minutes later I hear the phone ring.  At the fifth ring, enough to make me nervous, mom picks up.

Later I come down.  Oh we had a nice talk, me and Sharon.  Oh.  What did you talk about?  Oh, just girl talk.  Sigh of relief.  Now I can bear her for the dinner hour.  Makes a world of difference.  The Cross is lifted for a bit.  I forget what we had for dinner.  Oh, the chicken thigh stew I made the other night, slowly cooked on the stove top, added a can of crushed tomatoes toward the end, flavored with ginger, cayenne, turmeric, red chili pepper flakes, skip the black pepper's acid.

I don't know, I guess you get used to being depressed, though that's not quite the right word for it, it's more about a need for some inner exploration that has yet gone undone throughout history even though we wake up and find ourselves completely volatile, different, that's the writing life.  "No one listens to you anyway, so just keep writing," you think on the one hand, but that's not it, it's more like you're a particular kind of being that needs privacy, time... You come to think that depression is a normal state of things.  A normal part of adulthood, rejection, competition.  

You can say, oh, I was too nice a guy, too shy.  

But on the other side of that, an entitled female parent, an Aries, born 1939, "what are we going to do for fun, what are your plans, what can I do to help...  what's for supper, can we go out to somewhere fun, or are we going home..."  Mom, we don't have enough money...

She came to my college, senior week, the week leading up to my graduation, a week to party, a week to be in touch with friends before you have to say good bye farewell.  Again, even back then, I'm saddled with, but what are WE going to do for fun.  Well, Mom, even then I was trying to explain it to her, I let you come out here, you know, to see Joan Keochakian, you know, visit, but don't put this all on my like I'm going to entertain you every day this week, and even then she was treating me like I was her daughter, and nothing is worse for a son, a male child, particularly now, going out into the world, and now I'm suddenly responsible for every moment of her feelings too?  Fuck me.

Her self-image problems passed down to me.  The childish, I'm going to pick up my toys now and leave because you're not playing it the way I want to...  Yup.  The same as her old age I'm no good.  Nobody likes me.  No one wants to talk to me.   They all hate me.  Cat, you're such a good cat.  At least you're nice to me...  Humphhh.  Stalking away upstairs.  Fuck you, I mumble silently.  Then, oh well...

Sometimes she comes down and sits down in her chair.  Expecting conversation.  Like after dinner.  And even with chocolate and Bialleti coffee, I don't have the energy.  The nervous system might be fooled, but I'm done, that's it.  And I even took an hour walk today, and a surprisingly gentle conversation with the big boss, my brother.  Mom, if that's what you're telling yourself over and over, yes, no one is going to want to hang out with you.  To which she will immediately get angry about.  Go stomping about.  Reminding me of her yelling at the best, most decent, most gentle gentleman, who always had his act together, the consummate old school college professor...  "You're a failure, you're a failure, you're a failure..."  and then later asking me, age 10, was I being too rough on him...  Yeah.  

The poetic mind opens a page of news, and it's all Buddhist news, meaning that it can be known before, along with the vastness of the universe and the vastness of time, meaning it's somehow recognizable.  Like a dream one already knows, just needs to remember.  

Because of my "low self-image, low self worth," fine going along with things as usual, as if dragging around were normal and jobs involving office work mental stuff are simply too much, too tedious, must be in physical motion, yeah, I'm a people pleaser, a restaurant guy, talked into it, dragged into it step by step, and I never really should have ever been in Washington, D.C., unless I came to work at Congress, which never happened, because I had the writing demon about me.

And that all was pretty useless, a childish, a juvenile thing to do.  The depression, at least, was interesting, and it remains so.  

On the other hand, children like story books.  They know how to keep the imagination alive, cartoons, drawings, Richard Scarry illustrated books, like What Do People Do All Day, and still, do we have an answer?

I got up at noon, today, Thursday, February 11, with the new moon coming.  Thank god, a Lunar New Year, and a benevolent at that, a water oxen, from what I've heard.  That's pretty good for me.  I was up cooking sausage with peppers and onion on the stove top, bacon in the oven, for my break at night.

It wasn't easy getting up, I had some cold green tea, a can of V8, toast with almond butter.  I looked outside.  My stomach not ready for coffee.  The pickup truck with Seal Coat logos was pushing the snow around the parking lot.  I went up to say hi to mom, whom I'd hidden from at the start of my day, and then I got the blockage in my nose and I had to go throw up, embarrassingly, just as I get the first talk from mom, and I shut the door, acting quickly as  I can, take my glasses off, heave, kneel, look down at the V8 looking like Kerouac blood, a few chunks of gluten free bread with efforts of detox almond butter, all of it recognizable puking in some shitty toilet bowl, god knows why, the heated air, the claustrophobia... the collapsing snow drift tunnel of child Ernst Road Central New York snow drifts at the top of the dell, brought down on me by my gleeful always joking and therefore loving and kind, even as he collapses a suffocating amount of 10 degrees out snow drift off the farmers field Himalaya on my claustrophobic self, and he'd planned the whole set up probably, to "build character" upon me...  But after that, I felt better, and I put socks and old L.L. Bean boots on and went to sweep the snow off the car so I could move it straight across to the other side of the parking lot, cleared to the rising snow banks, and Ben, going by with a snowblower, when I looked over at him with my arms out, as if to say, My God, he says "we're running out of places to put it."  I clear the car off, let it run for awhile, go check the mail, still no forwarded mail from my apartment in D.C.  I could use a food stamp card, and the other stuff, my W2...

And gradually the day seems less useless.  I go in, take coat and boots and socks off, make a pot of Dragonwell, timing the fresh dried leaves in the strainer, do the dishes from cooking last night.  Mom's staying upstairs in her bedroom, snug, watching the Impeachment.  I put a can of Adzuki beans on, after toasting the herbs just a bit, the usual ginger, turmeric, cayenne, salt, in olive oil, throw in a little bit of flaxseed meal, as I put in my loose leaf tea.  And mom stays quiet.  And not coming down to haunt me like ghost of Japanese old ghosts who stare at you, wanting something from you, you don't know what, possessed.  I cross myself.  Child rosary beads.  I try to be careful.

I come back inside after clearing the car off and letting it run for awhile, the engine running fast at first, so that if you were to put it into gear it would run faster than you'd want, then calming down, dropping in pitch, purring at a lower pace, released from the night, and I go over across the slippery parking lot then slouching over to the mail box.  The tread has worn off the L.L. Bean low Maine Hunting Shoes George handed down to me.  They are too low.  They're years old.  Slipping easy.  I've taken a foot ride in several tiled linoleum floors like you'd find in a supermarket or the Stewart Shop.  I've been asking around, what are good.  Mucks, the guys here tell me.  Tractor Supply.  I like talking gear with them, Ben, Chuck who drinks canned light beer.  Works building bridges in the summer.  Thick skin like a tomcat from working out in the elements.  The Red Wings were good for a year, but now my feet are soaked, Ben says.

Massive ice buildup along the high gutters of the townhouses, icicles 7 feet long, a foot in circumference hanging above, mom at a corner, the cycle of melt off drip.  Ben is over chipping away at them with a long yellow pole.  Backing off as the icicles fall and shatter on the concrete landing.  

I'm getting a few small things done in the kitchen, a few things to straighten out just so we can still walk around here in the living room.  She comes down.  I'm hungry.  What would you like, mom?  A turkey sandwich, a BLT?  I don't feel like making scrambled eggs... Do you have any soup?  Sure, I say, more brightly, since I've been given the rare respite of being able to come downstairs without immediate questionings, a lonely wish for conversation.  What kind of soup, chicken noodle, chicken with rice... or the chicken stew we had last night...

She's in a good mood.  Shocked by the horrors provoked by Trump at the Capitol building.  Why are young people like that, she asks.  This is a great country.  Why are they angry?

We have a conversation.  It's nice when she gets something.  She's always been an Impressionist.   If you listen carefully you'll find wisdom, political and otherwise, with a spicing of understanding character in a shrewd and intelligent way.  She's psychic, as many of us are.  She gets it, they, the rioters, feel that they are getting shafted.  Yes, I say, many of them have fallen for Trump, the demagogue who claims to be a populist.  I'll never lie to you, he says.  They are hurting.  They buy it.  They're poor.  That part she gets.

But the real answer, as we talk, is, like FDR, Biden, who's going to be a great president.  Put the people back to work.  It's the Wall Street Reagan gajillionaires who've fucked the American worker, and Trump is just exploiting it, and he couldn't give a fuck either, and can't tell the truth, and lies to Americans, all the plants he's built, right, bullshit, how he's on the side of the American farmer, his own tariffs having totally fucked them too...  A great con man doing one of the great con jobs of the century.

Okay, mom, you want to go for a ride?  I don't really want to deal with her, but, maybe it entertains her, the adventure women want.  When I get back in from the Big M, "see anyone you know," and that shit, hand her the New York Times, happy I have carrot and celery now to make the stew, and then to the wine shop, because I need some wine for it, too, a sort of Bourgignon in the making, in my mind, I say, well, you want to go by the lake, sure, of course, but when we go by the promonotory and look over the lake and see its watery star edge far away in different light every day, and then drive back west to connect with the street that goes by the McDonalds, and Cheap Seats, the sports bar, known for their local brand of chicken wings sauced, and I want to find a replacement for the bird feeder I overfilled then broke with a snap of the top thing lid, cutting myself on a dried left thumb like a paper cut, she's telling me she wanted a scoop of coffee ice cream, that she's hungry and has a migraine, mom, you have to tell me these things...

I say, mom, I'm going to run in and find a cheap bird feeder...  I feel guilty... because when I refilled it, there a good number who came.  Oh fuck, she wants to come into the hardware store with me to look for a bird feeder...  so that's another project and when we come out into the 4PM cold bone ice winds, she's poking at little icicles coming down from the front bumper and grill of the old Corolla with her green cane, picking at another little bit of car ice crust, I can't help yelling, MOM, GET IN THE CAR, and she's "nothing I do is ever right," and I get in start the car, her door is open and I'm seriously ready to just pull away, except but what would that accomplish but a tiny sickened moment of glee spread around the whole peace seeking and vengeful human race, as sometimes she doesn't know who I am anyway, and i'm probably muttering, as we drive the last few roads, six of them, with curves, fuck you fuck you fuck you fuck you fuck you bitch, fuck you fuck you .... and then we turn a corner, oh, here we are...  and just to get her in from the car, with her trying to hold a folded newspaper to her chest, a small plastic bottle of Pepsi too, and her cane, walking across the cold parking lot, to the stairs, then the next set of stairs, that's when I too have finally had it.  And if I get her into the house, up the last fumbling steps, a sheet of ice without her calling me, yelling, you're a bastard, you're a bastard...

And me saying, as I get inside, dragging in one two three shopping bags or items, fuck you all humanity fuck you too.

As I say, I go out for a walk, with a water bottle, hydration, and first it's too cold and my goddamn boots are too loose but I can't really find a knee down in the road to tie them so I keep sloughing along, just to get a break, get the dreaded monthly phone call in with the higher powers, go up, come down, go up the hill by the water tower as I'm doing this, then back, careful to crouch by the bank when the cars and pickup trucks with plows on the front come toward me, go hide in the Toyota listening to the 6 o'clock news on WRVO NPR news, scribble maybe two lines in a notebook that fits in my technical gear insulated windbreaker over my green North Face puff feather sweater...  just not to face mom and dinner yet, god help me.

"Ernest Hemingway, 56 years of age now," wakes up after the post dinner nap, even forgetting what dinner was, just a nice nap, falling into droooly dream, and then with the coast clear, mom silent asleep before the television, orange cat tabby male laid out at the foot of her bed, he goes downstairs, pours himself some wine.  He's awake again. Jittery from the quarter bar of chocolate and the coffee mixed with chocolate milk, nervous, practically shaking, like it were the booze...  He strips to his bathrobe, gathering the colored wash of his gear, thick black socks, tee shirt, two flannel Beans shirts green, two pairs of pants, one heavy, one light but waterproof and easy.  Down into the basement, spraying some Shout spot stain remover, after some spray difficulties on the pants and the shirts...  choosing out the cycle to put them all through.  Don't have to put quarters in, like back at the shitty apartment he likes back in DC?Paris. Coming up to work on the great stew assemblage.

Sear the stew beef, in three batches.  Bacon.  Pork side, cut in small strips.  Add onion then celery and carrot.  Scrape bottom of the pot.  Add Chianti from Wildman Imports.  Add stock then.  Simmer down.

Mom is right asking that question, so, what are you going to do this summer... Its a good question.  Hemingway, trying to write, doesn't have the patience for it, but he knows he should write like his life depended upon it.