But how can I feel anything but shame when I wake up and find myself with such a headache from the night before... from what, cider.  I must have mixed in something else.

How pathetic I am.

Bright moments late at night, pretending I'm JFK reading his speech about poetry and power, the one at Amherst, a month before Dallas.  I think, I believe, that I am eloquent at night, and all the would have been and could have and should have beens come out, I mean, at least find yourself a suitable career or profession, we all need to make money and support ourselves.  

Not getting anything done here.  Mom needs my help and I'm failing her.  I shout at her when I have to explain something too many times, and that's a cheap shot.  My failings.

It's weird when you see things differently from the main.  It's not a good feeling.  It's waking up with great anxiety.  But it's also keeping some sort of truth you see in mind.  You can't put it into words, so you try again and again, a wavering fish swimming elusively in the mind.

Mom's not feeling so well today.  She's in bed with her books.  My headache is going away, but I feel useless.  Why and how did someone who can understand and recite a JFK speech end up as a bartender...  Irish genes, the liveliness of the public house?

But how do you find your way to been a tee totaler again...  just so you don't wake up in shame and headaches and then waste the day completely.

It's like you've been destroyed once, and then you need to bring back your confidence level, but can't find anywhere solid to base that self-confidence on, because everything melts away when you try to look for an accomplishment of some sort.  It's cringe-worthy every single place you look...

So, on what solid ground can you find, to build a foundation, and then to build a house undivided against itself upon...

By the time I've fed mom, who comes downstairs wanting some soup as I get out of the shower, my verbal capacity for the thoughts in my head has been disrupted.  She goes upstairs, but then come downstairs saying something about needing to go home.  But mom, this is your home.

Then all accounts of the anxiety I'm swimming in are still with me.  

Concentration for a writer...  writing is concentration.  Reeling in the loose thoughts, after the fishing has been disturbed.  Mom groping for an understanding of her own situation.  I calm her with the promise of a ride.

Empty the dehumidifier bucket container, bringing it upstairs, pouring it out in the toilet bowl.  

Mom, soup.  Slice red onion and tomato, sliced turkey, but I'm getting sick of deli turkey.  But you can't have mayonnaise, because of the soybean oil...  Grocery store list?  Mom seems calm enough.  I have to go down to the bank to pick up five years of records for the Medicaid application. 

The Post Office too.  It's hot out, eighties, muggy.  

I was up late, early into the light of the morning playing guitar on the basement steps.  I'm getting better.  Folk songs.  

To be a saint is a subtle and secret thing.  You might not even realize it, even though you are acting like it and carrying through, onward, with it, whether you know it consciously or not.  To do so and be so is automatic.  It’s been a pattern your whole life.  And saints, by the way, can be short tempered.

But you are not fully a saint until you have been tried, by circumstances, then the self knowledge awakens.  But even that is simply part of the natural world, like the weeds with flowers that grow unrestrained out in a field, or by a rural road, on the land cleared decades before for the high power lines.  Just like Jesus said, of the lilies of the field, perfect raiment.  It is the most natural thing for you to be a saint.  Just the basic reality behind being human.  You don’t have to do anything in particular.  

It’s simply a matter of the subtle intelligence of the insight.  Then you will see it.

Lincoln had to deal with Mary…  this was part of what made him a saint, along with all the other grim…

This is a day of dreading taking mom into the dentist.  Impressions, for partial dentures, after long neglect.  And the teeth preserve the architecture of the face...

Every day is some form of dread.  

The morning is small.  I get up, come upstairs without really feeling like it, empty the carafe I pee in.  I let the cat in, hearing him call through the door.  

The dentist hangs over me, and when she comes downstairs, to encourage her to take a shower, I tell her what's up.  

Get her soup. slice of turkey.  She finally goes upstairs, but where's the bathroom?  Mom...  Where do I take a shower?  Mom!

She's in there forty five minutes at least, and it's close out, so I come upstairs, sadly watch another Tour de France stage ruined for me, and wait, and then finally say, through the door, mom...  I need to get in there...  

I can't find my bra.  I can't find my glasses.   

Finally, I shout, "Help me OUT!" pounding with my fists against the wall above the stairs.  Help me out!

You're sick.  You need to go see a psychiatrist.  You're a sick sick man.

So the saint is not much of a saint today, though the casting process for dentures goes reasonably well.  

The return to the dollhouse of your own childhood experience, the claustrophobic reliving of it, the sense of treading on eggshells, the volatile explosive quality of the matriarchal, making you nervous about everything except going out for a long walk.  Cross country skies, a bicycle, running,

Too anxious to sit and study a language.  Better to be assigned something physical.  Where you don’t have to make decisions, you just do, and in the moment.

Either you go against this imposing figure, or you go with it, a tyrant of your own, imposing your crazed demands upon the figures of the world…

I come up the unfinished wooden steps from the basement, mom is in her Eames chair, picking cat hairs from a dark corduroy pullover.  "What can I do for you?"

I go up and check what's going on with the television coverage of the Tour, they climb, climbed by now, the Tourmalet.  Upstairs, I pull off enough from the roll of toilet paper to honk my nose.  "Hello?!?" she cries in raised panic.  "Are you alright?!?"  Yes, mom, I'm okay.  "What?!?"  Mom, I'm okay, I say, further down the stairs and she looks over at me.

I go past her.  What can I do for you, she asks again.  I don't know.  What can you do?  Make you a cup of coffee? 

Overheard in the kitchen, as I go up and face the day:

"What the hell are you doing in there?"

"Someone stole my cane."

"I need some scissors."

"Oh, my nose, my nose..."

And the inevitable:  "What are we going to do for fun today..."

The water in the kettle is getting along on the back burner.  I have chilled green tea.  I'll make some detox tea.

Mom comes into the kitchen.  

Is someone going to take us for a ride?  Have some lunch, mom.

Oh, something smells good.  Soup.  (She says soup in a particular way.  As if in a dialect.  Childish.) 

Did you sleep well last night?  Are you going to talk to anyone today?  Guess not.

She doesn't remember anything about the open mic at Collocca.  (I sang two Pogues songs.  Two Lyle Lovett songs.)  It wasn't much fun.  The whole Canale family was there, just back from the Cape.  New baby boy.  I try to leave them along.

Well, you know what Helen Brown said.  

Yes, mom, I know what Helen Brown said.

"It's wicked not to have fun."

I get her her pills out of the plastic pouch.  A small glass of Pepsi.  I come back to the table.

"You had a wonderful time last night.  I can't wait to go back."

"The drive out there is a little much for you.  You can't handle when I drive over forty..."

"I thought it was a lovely night.  You did a good job."

No one clapped.

They didn't know you.  Those people all knew each other.  I had a good time.   

I don't say much.

"It's so much fun having a conversation with you.    Pepsi Cola hits the spot.   I think you did a great job last night.  You were a hit."

Thanks.

So what are we going to do for fun today...  

Not much.  Okay, we'll go and get the newspaper as soon as I put some pants on.  But I'm going to eat my breakfast.

You men have all the power.  I'm just a stupid woman.  She picks at her teeth with the tweezers out of her pocket.  I need a dog.  You're no fun.  

The Canale woman said something nice.

I didn't know the Canale were there.  

Yes, the woman came over and said hi to you.

You're coming up in the world.  Did they ask you when you were coming back?  I'm sorry you don't have any other woman to go with...  besides stupid awful me.  Not worth talking to.  Well, I'm not wanted here.

Okay, mom, but first I'm going to have you rinse your mouth out and brush your teeth.

"I've been brushing my teeth and taking care of myself since I was five years old."

"Are we going to join the people we were with last night? "

Yes, mom.

"Then I need to change into something..."

Okay, mom, put your toothbrush back with the others right there.  You might want a lighter top.  It's hot out.

By the name I am not going to allow anyone to pull any of my teeth.  ...  I've been taking care of myself for twenty thirty years.  (leaves kitchen.)  Everyone here hates me.  Wish I were dead.  Are we just going to sit around here all day...  Itchy.  I don't do itchy.     Oh, shit.  (Burps.)

I put the expired chicken breast cutlets still in their frozen packaging into the tall white kitchen trash bag, knocking drain catch over it.  (If I get the trash together that's a small triumph.)

I'd over to help but you'd snarl at me...  (More small self talk.)  Coughs.  Help, I'm choking to death and no one here cares...

NPR weather forecast in background.

Oh, I wish I were dead.  No, I don't.  Shut up.  (Thumps on book cover.  More sybilant whispers.  Sighs.  help help help.  Well, are we going to get going or are we going to rot.  Help.  Guess we're going to rot.  Okay.

I feel like I have assumed a sort of caricature role, something out of a Richard Scarry What Do People Do All Day, like Glip and Glop, the house painters, or Sven the farmer, a sort of loser, out of Kafka, from another different country.  Schtompisch is how my own mind renders the name of this character.  "My name is Jan Jansen, I live in Wisconsin, I work in a lumber mill there."  Thank you, Kurt Vonnegut.

I remember the host of the open mic, Steve, a bald guy, a guitar player I met the other night, telling me as I was getting my legs under me up on the small gazebo stage, "don't embarrass your mother," as I was explaining my sunglasses, like Father Guido Sarducci.  Okay, I put away the sunglasses and went through several dragging songs.  Killing the vibe.  "I've been loving you a long time..."  Right.  "May the wind that blows from haunted graves..."  Right.

Bangs book closed.  Slaps newspapers.  

I've brushed my teeth.  I notice a pain underneath my right shoulder blade that I did not have before.  Must have been trying to do two things at once.  

I go upstairs, a quick look at the Tour, as they near the top of Tourmalet, shrouded in mist, newspapers being stuffed, I hear from the announcer Phil Leggit, under jerseys for the descent.  The roads are dry but the fog isn't, he tells us.  I go over the tub and splash some warm water from the spigot on my face.  I turn off the TV to save energy and go back downstairs.  I take an Advil, and a milk thistle tab, on top of a dissolving B 12.  Still without my tee shirt off, I hold a washcloth dabbed with hydrogen peroxide on a skin tab, a Jesus spear-mark on my side.  Ha ha.  Down to the basement for my wallet, turn the dehumidifier back on. 

Mom has brightened, sensing my readiness.  "That's a nice outfit," she says.  "You did good last night."

Thanks.

Are you getting ready for something, she asks as I wrap my ankle brace around my left ankle, preparing for working the clutch.  Yes, mom, you've been complaining the whole last hour about not doing anything.   I've been reading.  I'm always happy reading.  This Abraham Lincoln stuff...

I lace up the Keen hiking shoe.  "Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, this mighty scourge of war might speedily pass away..." I half shout at her.  She's been reading about the Second Inaugural, a recent book.

How much time do I have...  I don't want to be holding up an important man like you, she observes.

Walking over to the bathroom in the Keen shoes she never takes off...  "I should be getting back to my animals, back home...  Instead of sauntering around with you!"

The great amorphous equalizers, frustration, disappointment, fear, stress, hatred, eating away at your humanity, your capacity for kindness and care, patience, tolerance, whatever great saintly ambitions and desires you ever might have had… disappearing, cast into the wind and vanished years, to reflect upon, or even forget.

Back after the ride… a walk in the park on a hot day, lunch under the awning of the old tavern from the barbecue stand, the breeze along the big river… back home.  The credit card was not left behind at the vineyard, in a rattled pocket.

I calm myself watching the Tour riders spin along, the descent of the Tourmalet, sunny, after the high mountain cloud, and on through twisting valley roads along the river gorge, over the arched Napoleon Bridge, on through the beautiful old spa town leading to the final climb, to Liz Ardiden, switchbacks nestled in the town, stone walled.