There are the things of yourself that fall away from you. You regret the losses, the missed opportunities, the old selves that should have developed into something fine and good and honorable.
But then, as they say, things happen. Unfortunate choices, burdens, events... maybe a mood came over you, more bad choices.
Failing to learn languages you could have, if you'd applied yourself, had not been a sorry excuse. Full of a rich fantasy life of imagined sensuality, where nothing really ever happens, moves forward much, ever reaches completion.
Like all things.
You went on your way, for bad or good, who knows, life itself being a queer and honest mix, more about change than anything else in particular.
Hopefully you did not leave much wreckage behind, no space junk swirling above the atmosphere waiting to collide and disrupt.
Real positive attitude, huh... Rationalization written all over it. And defeat, permanent defeat. A departure from the typical Western Civilization attitude, perhaps...
Who's to say, or know.
So I vowed not to drink any wine at all. I tried the organic but still, to drink wine you'll end up mixing in shitty wine.
So time changes things. The situation changes, you can not change what you would like changed. You can not turn the clock back on the health of an elderly, nor your own circumstances.
But what will you turn into, what will you become? There are no other options left.
These are long miserable nights, and dreary days, not wanting to deal. Where will all these books end up? A dumpster?
It is unfortunate that the souls of your relatives, along with all of their problems and bad habits, come to haunt you and form you when you are young. The pull of their egos is hard to escape; they bring all their sins to your doorstep, the dark side of the gifts of life. So am I my grandfather, on my mother's side. The sins impinge upon you, take over, for you yourself have an ego, and this is what makes you vulnerable and susceptible.
All the old family dramas and fights and bitterness will rise and attack you, engaging you with a great stickiness. Aggressions, bottled up like devils, flying out at you, old failures ripping through your life. Ripping at you, ruining you, where you were once an innocent, and it's your mother, trying to escape, so she thinks, who drags you back into it.
No one can mend this lack of unity in a family. You're fool to try.
Some nights, there are no distractions to find. Just rent and misery, the third visit in the night watch, mom coming down to crinkle saltine packages, then to talk to the cat. You hate me, she says.
(All a bartender is is a samurai, in the terms of the film. An expendable.)
I guess I was the only one stupid enough to fall for it. Every other family member knew themselves well enough. They knew the hatred, the mean streak... I was more like my father in temperament, perhaps, who knows, but I had enough of the darkness in me, and I was the one who fell so hard into respecting it and reliving it, the shitty put upon drinking life of the restaurants... My mom cried when I told her when I was going into it. I was a fool.
How can I get out of it now... Maybe just turn off the bad habits... cleanse... then the bad karma will be short circuited, disconnected.
So do we stumble into the paths of the old egos, the ghosts of family members past. You offer respect to one who has had a tough life, and then you take up subtly the habits, the bitter mindsets of such, and then as if by accident, you fall.
Let that be a lesson to you, boys and girls.
So much anger, so much mean spirited bristle from her, and all of it directed at me.
May 1st, what a good day to start never drinking again. But all I can do is quit the wine, and wait til the old woman finally goes up to bed and stays there, no more shit about "but this is not my home." In the morning of the day I asked her to change out of the high water jeans that she's been wearing without a change for three straight weeks, her socks never matching. My socks are always matching! she says, ever since I was two, you (whatever insult she was leveling at me.) You insult me! she says. Mom, I'm just saying... I've given her a pair of purple socks. One of them is on, her right foot, but the left one, after her sneakers are tied, is black. I point this out to her. Who Cares! she yells at me.
So she's bitter and angry at me, out of the box for this, as I take in my tea, wisely made the night before. What the fuck. I bite my tongue. I really do not want to take her for any ride, my mood this time of day.. And one day, I will honor this, and just not put up with the bargain. Or, more likely, I'll just keep on here, doing what I can, whatever, okay, sure. She'll even ask me, are you sure you want to take me for a ride, then being bitter, saying, well, implying that she has the privilege of the car to dangle over me.
We go down by the lake, after we go for a walk in a cold but sunny field up Rice Creek from the SUNY field station there. So many dandelions, as she has been saying day in day out. I guess it gives her something to talk about. I want a dog, she says. I want another cat. Okay. The wind is blowing.
The book store, maybe that will help her, and at least she's not wearing her high-waters after me looking at her swollen ankles with different socks.
I'm tired now, already, and thinking that feeding her might be a good idea, okay, let's go to Port City Cafe, used to be deli, but it almost falls apart there, my disgust with her, and her escalating observations of "you hate me, you hate me." More true every day, I mutter. But we get to our feet, mom uses the rest room, and we pass two young college student women sitting in the window full of life and opportunities that they will be open to rather than depressed and shut about as the sun shines and I get mom into the car parked here on the main drag of 1st Street.
Big M, back home, carrying a big plastic jug container of kitty litter and the newspapers. I reheat the beef stew for dinner with frozen squash. I go up for a nap after getting mom to bed. I've made it all day, but around eleven at night I need something to take the edge of, so much for my not drinking the whole month of May, cracking open a cider from a little stash I had. What a bum I am, but at least I've got some room from her, and I'll go and distract myself with the poor old samurai in Kurosawa black and white, each shot framed, full, a masterpiece.
I'm feeling shaky though, don't know what's going on, no job, my vital papers are back at my old apartment and I'm stranded here, where to go... It's a rainy day, a straight band of green radar rain with intense yellow like a spear coming down from Canada aimed at us on the weather.
My karma theory doesn't hold up so well, gleaned as it was from readings of Gnosticism... I'm just the bad actor here. I'm the one who feels bad about having a cider or a glass of wine, my bad attitude senior year of college...
So, I get up and have my tea. Let the cat out so he can sit on the stoop under the eaves and watch the rain and the birds and the green grass and the honeysuckle.
Mom comes down. I've got a few greetings from Bumble, and as I address them in a timely fashion here comes mom, so I get her some turkey, and I get her her pills, and then the rest of the Greek salad in cardboard paper bowl from yesterday's placation. I listen to her, chat with her, make the small talk. It goes okay for a little bit, but I'm drawn back to my iPhone to send a message to Veronica, 52, out in Irondequoit, who has picked up the guitar in pandemic times, and what kind of music does she like, "rock and roll!" she says. Cool.
But the chickens have come home to roost. The psychological burden of dealing with her my whole adult life, and I should have known it when she came to visit me for my final week in college before graduating, a last time with friends... "I won't get in your way..." sure.
I guess I've thought a fair amount these last months here about putting an end to it. It's ugly now, and it's only going to get uglier, and it's going to stay that way. Yeah, we should have done something earlier about it all, mom, moving her, etc., but it was too draining just listening to her and dealing with her from week to week, on top of my own sad situation, to get much of that done.
My first nervous breakdown. I guess... well, let me start by saying, mom had moved to South Salina Street in Syracuse. A couple gay guys owned an Italianate set back from the street, near the Church's Fried Chicken. My brother and I, back then, would drive up, renting a Lincoln Town Car, and we'd smoke very good cigars along the way, and finally get there for mom and a holiday, thanksgiving.
That was a long time ago.
And then, she needed, or wanted, to move up to Baldwinsville, now, closer to her next place of employment... This happened in the middle of winter during a storm...
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