But writing, I think it's just been a sort of safe place for me to go, a place where I could go, or had to go to knowing that I had messed my life up. It represents a place where I can think things over a little more carefully. It's a safe quiet place away from big egos, away from the professional pains of not having a profession. It's a way to be a kind of monk. It is nerves.
When you get up the first thing one does is worry. What should I be doing with myself to be productive? What should I be doing for my longterm financial health, my mental health, my physical health. Most people try to solve this more or less directly.
But the writer is a philosopher, one without a guide. A youthful personality, lost in his own faults.
No shouting, no yelling, no demanding personalities derailing your own peace, no names, no accusations. No demands.
But if a writer stays here, then he must build higher walls of personal defense, and ultimately must seek out a refuge from the anxieties that well up from within. Buddhist meditation come to mind, seated in Lotus Pose, or a walking meditation, or laying in Corpse Pose.
Then the irony. Later in life, after fruitless work, you find yourself with King Lear, your own mother. You are pulled from the safe place, you can barely get back to it, the clock is ticking, and you are running. The clock is ticking, and you're already behind. Way behind, and you can't avoid realizing it, every moment.
I took her to the library yesterday. We got library cards.
Oh, shit, here she comes down the stairs whispering to herself. What can I do... Looks like a decent day outside. I'm up before noon. I only had cider last night, and not many of them, and no wine. My health already feels better.
Small battles. Where is my ankle brace... I brace myself for her entry, and what to tell her. The weather looks decent out. I'm tempted to get up, close the lap-top and go hide.
This is where I add the image of Jesus on top of the Buddha and yoga practices.
When I was with my father, I always felt like noble, like a king. Not talked down to. Not bossed around.
She comes downstairs, first going outside. She has her explorer canvas hat on, wide brimmed, with a strap for the wind. Then she comes into the kitchen, first looking into the bathroom. "Oh," she whispers, noticing me at the table, "a big guy..." Sometimes she talks about the children, the little kids that are present here in her own mind, sometimes they need feeding. She turns the switch on for the light and the fan, but I hear her whispering to herself, "oh, shit," other little things, and then she wobbles over and looks out the back door, picking up a roll of toilet paper as she passes back toward the front door. I hear her sighing from the living room, then more whispering sibilantly, as if she were talking to the cat. I hear her tearing at papers, then "Jesus Christ," then she's dragging herself back up the stairs with the copper bracelet running along the railing.
Hmm, strange she has not demanded anything of me. Should I have offered to feed her... She didn't even say much, hardly anything to me. Did her spirit respect mine at what I was doing? Last night was we watched the Tour passing by the vineyards and geologic features and the green of the South of France she was wishing she'd travelled more. "But mom, you don't fly..." "I'll never get to Paris now," she says quietly.
I can't walk over to the mail boxes at the corner of the parking lot without feeling conflicted. But the blood needs to move, to wake. A walking meditation. I put my socks and the brace and my Brooks running shoes on, and look out the back door at the sunlit yard with red and white clover blossoms and yellow birdsfoot trefoil arising from the grasses. Yes, I could see wanting to get out of here, to go somewhere, anywhere... Is there some where, some form of love between a son and his mother left anywhere?
I entered into all of this foolishly, without necessary preparation. It has psyched me out, an uphill battle, subtly worse every week.
I walk out with an odorous tall white garbage bag to the dumpster, the light bright on the parking lot, the grass greener out front, then to check the mail box with the little key in my pocket. The strong young man, wearing athletic shorts is walking two tan boxer bull terrier mixes, one male, one female, I think, and the dogs smile and look over up at me as they cross the parking lot down below to show their happiness socially as I walk back along the townhouses on the sidewalk. I straighten my posture, and think of Jesus. The mind’s pictures of him, or Him, absorbed from Giotto frescoes and the vague sort of literary literate images that come to us. Images that sort of dully shine within our own bodies and beings and in the mental self mirrors we hold up before us, all of it vague, general, half formed if at all. But can we ever live up, we say to ourselves, if we even have the time to ponder such things even in a stunted abnormal life.
Okay, mom, antsy, getting huffy after our breakfast, let’s go for a ride.
A dish of coffee ice cream, the newspapers, then down to the lake blue under a clear dome with boats in the marina and out further on the surface. Mom wants to finish her ice cream, before going out on the walk, holding on to it, even then taking it with her out of the car, cane in the other hand.
Should we make the drive out 104 west than north, up toward Pulaski, to Spy Island?
We walk further along the park path on the bluff looking down. I watch the pontoon boat leaving the marina out for the Light House Tour. I sit with her at the park benches she chooses. It’s close to three teenage girls sunbathing on a towel. An older woman comes along with a small doggie on a least. Shiatsu Yorkie mix, cute. What a nice dog, mom says.
Wearing out, okay, mom, let’s go to the Press Box…
When I get her back, she’s “you hate me. I wish you didn’t hate me.” “I’m going to kill myself.” “If you’re sick of me, I’ll just leave.”
I go quietly out the back door and to the car. I guess to get a 6 pack of cider, stay out of the wine…
I go and park and do a headstand 5 minutes looking upside down at the lake.
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