What the hell are you doing in there?  HELLO!?  Is anybody there?  

Yes, Mom, I say, reluctantly going over to the living room from the kitchen as I absorb some bitter green tea from the fridge, get ready to soak the dishes.  

She comes to the kitchen and lets the cat in, as I'm running hot water.  I'm never coming here again.  Nobody here.  Nobody here who'd talk.  She goes back to her chair, crunching on a saltine.

Where the cat went, I don't know.  Just as well.  He doesn't tolerate the clanking of silverware in the tub.  I wash the dishes, including the meatloaf pan, and I see him back under the larch trees in the shade across the mowed grass.  

So as I heat another can of Progresso soup with added bone broth and find ham and cheese to put on the frozen Paleo bread to heat and then toast, I call mom in.

I was watching an Anthony Bourdain Parts Unknown from Japan, accompanied by Masa Takayama into the rustic Japanese countryside last night, tired of the Tour, even the time trial through St. Emilion.

I feed the cat.  Oh, God, what a beautiful cat, mom says, after letting him out.

It was a pouring rain when we went out to the Press Box on a Saturday night, rain running down from the eaves like a Kurosawa film, a captive waiting list of groups ready for dinner as we sat at our booth by the opening to the kitchen and the inside waitress station, pitchers of ice water, the screen computers for ordering.  I endure it, a dull piece of fried haddock.  I resort to dabbing it with the soybean oil laden tartar sauce and have a second Woodchuck cider, alarmed at its sugar content.

And by Sunday, I've had it.  I can't even face mom.  I take my shower and sneak out through the backdoor to do the usual grocery shopping, the Sunday New York Times, without her bugging me on the way and then by waiting in the car pouncing on me as soon as I get back, "what took you so long, see anybody you knew?"  Well, just the usual people at the checkout counter and the deli counter.  It's hot out, AC on full in the car, and I drift over to the health food store, for gluten free soy sauce, forgetting to get decent salt, wishing somewhere along the line I'd tried being a chef.  

But it frightens me that I don't want to have anything more to do with her, cringing at her passing by overhead, running water, all the things you hear in the basement, back and forth, opening doors, calling for the cat, looking for imaginary people and myself hiding.

And all my own bad habits that I've knitted too solidly in my 56 year old life to change at all...

Was it the pornography I made use of last night in my ill laziness not even wanting to play the guitar amidst all the clutter, that has made me ashamed, or is it the damp cinderblock mold in the basement where I hide out getting into my lungs, or is it the dread of high summer when there is no turning back.  

And so, I slept.  I napped before dinner after my walk up to the National Grid station, I heated the Turkey American Chop Suey, microwaved spinach for dinner, and then I didn't even feel up for a ride taking mom along and went back downstairs and disappeared again and rested for another three hours.

Bukowski, most pictures of him he looks fairly beat up and middle aged fifties, so maybe a ripening is involved.

Isolation is not good.  Mom is right about that.  Were that there were bars for older people...