There was a squabble over the bedtime pill, mom protesting, she doesn't want to be medicated.  No, I'm going to run an experiment.  Mom, but the pills help, I promise you.  No, they don't, they interfere with my sleep.  Mom, you sleep just fine.  They make a difference.  I can't tell.  Well, I can.

Okay, don't take the pill.  See if I care.  I give up.  I go back downstairs.  I got her thus far today, it's almost 11:30 at night now.  The ragweed pollen is up again, even in the rain somehow.

Later, she comes down, still resistant.  I want to see what the medicine does.  I lost the piece of paper from the pharmacist for the Memantine, so I show her the one on the Aricept.  See, mom, they help you.

But it takes me telling her, okay, I'm not going to give you the pills anymore.  Then we'll just see what happens...

I just don't know what to do anymore.  She's upstairs still.  I don't want to engage with her.  Sleeping dogs lie.  I'm feeling bitter.  I'm not getting anything done.  I can't do yoga with her around, can't go outside to do it.  I can't go for a walk without feeling half dead two hours later.  I can't get a job, because she can't take care of herself.  I can't write, not in the day time anyway, and so I do it at night, when I've been into the wine, when I get a little silly.

But now, at the suggestion of a guy who went to my same high school, Mat Ward, older than I, a basketball player, I write now, by daylight, this, at his suggestion of writing as catharsis.  He was a barman himself once, when he worked in Utica at House of the Good Shepherd.  A pastor, a social worker.

"I think you should take some time and write.  It has a Catharsis effect for the one writing.  I think it would be for you on many levels."

It's as if I never thought of that, almost.  Never occurred to me, beyond the blow by blow.

Mom asks me about Raymond P. Tripp, from Amherst days.  How we went to go see him way up in St. Johnsbury, Vermont, Mt. Washington in the distance, when he had his brain tumor.  He gave Mom and I books, mainly about Thoreau.  "I won't need them where I'm going," he said.  In his cabin, attended by his wife, Myoko, who tended to the Master, as he laid in bed upstairs.  I went out for a walk, and let mom have some time with him.  She used to be head over heels in love with him, she always says

I wish I knew what books he'd given us, mom says, put a mark in them.  Mom, they're here somewhere.

I feel very sad later, the pollen effects coming in and out.  Trying to entertain mom.  The farmer's market, tomatoes, collard greens, two little artichokes, a cluster of beets with their greens, from the tall vaguely Thor-like guy, not quite hippie, just down to earth, well spoken.  I ask him how he cooks Collard Greens, as he's acknowledged my good taste, because they taste so good after all.  Oh, put in a ham hock or a turkey leg...  the old school way.  It's hard not to like the farmer's market.  There's a slender child with her slender father, a few stands up.  I pick out a few things.  "I like the dirt on the tomatoes," I tell her, and she tells me how it got muddy with the rain over the last few days, in her quiet brave voice.  Some peaches, a little pint size of ocra, $4.  I hand her a five.  Ah, keep it.  I turn around and look to see where mom is.  

We have our Garofolo's mild sausage and peppers and onions on a roll, and a sliced steak, also peppers and onions, kind of tough, tastes better when you're eating the roll too, but we eat with plastic forks and I watch mom tear at the sausage link.  We get back home.  I'm tired again.  I unload everything.  She wants to talk.

"What's for dinner," she asks.  Mom, we just ate.  Remember?  Oh.  I try to feel her out if she wants a glass of wine.  No, not saying anything about it.

I need a nap.  Maybe a post office job is the way to go.  When I get back up, she's reading, or looking at a book from her high school reunion, an update about how everybody turned out.  Doing well for themselves.  I might like a glass of wine, she says.  Okay, you could have gotten one for yourself.  But I don't live here...  Okay mom.   What are your plans for today?  Mom...

I can't.  I sneak out the back door with a couple of cans of ciders in a health food store shopping bag, needing to get away, feeling guilty about it.

The Billionaires are playing, a band, up from Syracuse, very good.  Down by the river on the band stand.  Park the car.  The river is rolling strong.   There were flash flood warnings throughout the day and the night before.

I sneak pictures with my iPhone camera here and there, warming up, seeing what my eye might want to capture.  Caravaggio scenes by the little tree and Johnny's Roadside Barbecue Stand.  Just shoot, when you can, not trying to intrude, being subtle about it.  Pretend to take a selfie, or talk into the phone as if on FaceTime.

If God and Jesus are out there, They are everywhere, and that's why you let the camera open its eye and let it happen, you will see the Disciples, there before you where you look in the every day and the townspeople.  Gethsemane by the river, under the shadow of the relative high-rise building, apartments for the poor and the elderly.

But none of this encourages me as I get up finally and plod up the cellar stairs out of the cool, knowing mom is in her chair, bringing up my pair of pants, wallet, iPhone.  Mom is cooing out loud as she looks through a bound alumni book.  She's talking personally to the individuals she remembers, based on their biographies, their reports on life.  "Oh, you should have cats, too, not just dogs...  Nice hair.  Ha ha ha.  You've aged so well.  You made it this far.  I should..."  Every now and then exclaiming a name.

I go in and look in on her.  "So what have we planned for fun today," she asks.  Almost shouting in a way, as she does.  Like a stamping of feet, authority, I Want This!  I Want That!

And I feel a great grave sense of depressing worthlessness.  I was up late completing my U.S. Postal Service application.  If I take the next step, taking the exam, will they want me to take the job right away?

My aunt shoots me a text.  Maybe they are starting with the booster shot.  She and her husband are getting their shots today.  "Okay, big boy...  he's hiding from me.  Where's my cane, someone stole my cane...  I don't know...  This hat, ooohhhh..  The man has taken over the whole damn house...  I'm freezing."  

I step outside in the yard to place the little filter on mom's portable Dyson vacuum out into the sun to dry, a funky smell to it from the last cat who widely soiled the carpet in her last year.  There's one little tomato on the tomato plant, and it's red, 

She comes into the kitchen.  She goes to the back door.  "I'm going to get some warmth, seeing as I don't get any from you..."

Yeah, sorry mom, maybe it's the ragweed.  Maybe it's the depression of thinking how I might apply for a job at the U.S. Postal, but then what will I do with mom during the day.  Maybe I need it for my sanity.

I try to keep us organized, food in the fridge, etc. 

I never know when mom will tell me, she's starving.  Or, what's for supper?

Yesterday I take her for a ride, in the afternoon, south along the river.   Over the bridge in Minetto, one lane, traffic light on both ends, for construction.  The weekend nights are pained.  Back up northward along the river, looking at the neat houses that back up low to the river, which is high and eddying bubbles of current on the flat surface of the brown water, green debris along the edges.  An old historic cemetery.  Part of the road, Route 57, is supposed to be haunted, a farmer who murdered his wife and child.  'Slow down, you're going too fast..."  over and over. "Mom, I'm going ten miles an hour under the speed limit.  Look in the rear view mirror."

She's not satisfied as we come back from the Big M with modest groceries and the newspapers.

I thought we were going out to lunch.  So it's Friday evening, about 5 PM, and the Press Box inside tables are full.  We end up at the bar.  I mean to order a cider, to pace myself, but knee jerk I order my usual Chianti, and after dinner, mom wants another one, so I have one too, and then another.  Coming back from the restroom I tell the waitress talking to Mr. Canale, the owner, to tell her boss, drinking a beer with his old buddies and his son in law, that the men's room is out of toilet paper.  And some jerk threw in a long sheet of brown paper towels, which will inevitably block it up.  As a restaurant guy, this bit of an intelligence report, seeing as the entire front of the house is female, and young, is practically quite valuable, even if it is a stupid thing.  I looked for toilet paper under the sink, but there wasn't any.

He comes back, and then I watch mom teeter with her cane back from the restroom, and the men say hi to her.  Hey, we saw you down at the vineyard, you were good.   (Caught my open mic night act, three of four songs, Rainy Night in Soho, Lullaby of London, Flyswatter/Icewatter Blues.  The last I cut short, figuring no one wants to listen to this kind of weird mellow music, unrecognizable.  No warm up.  Mom, grumpy, complaining about being abandoned when I went to get us glasses of wine and water from the bar, in tow.  Some kind person moved her up to a front little table in front of the open band stand.). I shrug, say something like, well, each night is a discovery, a work in progress.  Maybe make mention how I didn't know the family would be there to torture.  I mention a few developments over at the other restaurant, but maybe I over emphasize, and I don't know the exact relationship between the brothers.  Later, I think to myself, I was a drunken asshole, a strange person for a man of the normal, get it done, a man of the kind of town we're in, friendly, but, every cog that works has its place.)  Next time: Switch to beer, or cider, be one of those guys watching football or S.U. Basketball.  Wings and burgers.  Works for me.  He's a provider, with a family, grand kids.  His son-in-law married his high school sweetheart, got a degree in nuclear engineering so he could come back and work at the plant down the road.

And what man, what person, wouldn't want to, more than anything else out of life, get a solid responsible adult jog, so as to take care of himself, his career, his wife, his family, his elders, with the power of showing up to work and doing a professional job with compensation.   Forget this worthless artist stuff.  That's almost the work of the devil.

By the time I get home, I realize, wow, I'm pretty drunk from four glasses of wine, at this time of day, just getting dark, so I pass out, and then I'm awake at five in the morning, hungry, not knowing what to do with myself.  A memory of stopping by briefly, mom waiting in the car, to see Steve Watson, who hosted the open mic night at the vineyard, playing as a trio, doing a Ton Waits song, Downtown Train, cool.   "Yeah, Steve," and I have to get back to the car.  I want to go out later, but pulling up and getting mom back in, she's shouting now, "oh, help, help," get her inside, I realize I'm too drunk to go out.  And this doesn't strike me as right.  Is it the histamines?

I climb the stairs about six in the morning, and mom's still in her Eames chair with her shoes on still, with a towel over her in the air conditioning light chill.  I sneak a peek into the fridge, rummaging for what I can, and now that I'm awake I need something to soothe me after another "experience" with mom, dragging me out, and then I get into the wine, out of some kind of desperation trying to be convivial and entertaining while at the bar with your 82 year old mom.  I grab a can of cider and go back down the stairs and try meditation.  Nothing else is going to happen.  Dirty dishes, at least I got groceries earlier, for that crucial first feeding of mom during the daylight.

I've been feeling pain in my left breast, maybe there's a little lump.  Or is it fat deposits, from an overworked liver.  Is it a compound found in red wine?  Google tells me a few possibilities and all of them seem grim to me.  I'm on DC Medicaid, as far as I know.  

Later that evening I get mom through dinner.  She doesn't push it about going out to eat, a major achievement given that's two lunches, dinner, and then the later, I'm starving announcement.   I go out, because my horoscope says I should and prospects are decent, so I get in the car with the guitar in the back seat under a towel and some newspapers, to track down Mike, who played earlier, watching Dave Hawthorne play at The Sting.  Which was a blur, and a bit of a waste, but that's how it goes.  Not to get oo close to the mad ones, and this I succeeded in doing, and when I got back, I opened another cider and took the Postal Service prospective mail carrier test 474 on my phone screen, figuring I wouldn't be able to get in done before the quick deadline of 72 hours from applying for a local job, and who knows about that anyway, all disheartening.  

Today, hot it was, earlier, and I got mom to the park land of Fort Ontario in front of the old ramparted gates for the car show under the lindens, enduring getting her to the portopotty and waiting a long time just standing there, then moving her on closer to the music, but more in the hot sun, so she wants refuge in the shade behind the sound man's mixing board pop up tent, just enough space, but embarrassing me.  I get us some of Jonny's Roadside BBQ, the brisket, and he's not as chatty as he might normally be, been working hard the last few days, and he must be hot, waiting for six o'clock, and I have to get back to mom anyway.  

Panko parmesan crusted chicken tenders ready to cook from the Big M, and also some sausage and peppers, as we missed that earlier outside watching the live music.  It's a huge relief to get to dinner without arguments, and the daylight peters out, the full moon has yet to rise, and I'll do the dishes later.  I avoid alcohol, the cider I thought of remaining un-cracked-open on the kitchen counter as I got the peppers and onions ready and the heat right for the chicken for mom, the sweet potato, the link of sausage into the small iron pan into the oven, finding odds and ends from the Farmer's Market in the refrigerator, and I'd like to cook the two little artichokes, but, looks like it will be spinach tonight.

I forget to tell mom, over dinner, how I saw the woman we picked up over at the Stewart Shop so she could get her five dollar pack of Seneca cigarettes and a ride over to Flat Rock, I see her there at the deli counter, looking cleaned up, almost normal, and with a bag, like a purse over her shoulder, and she walks out without paying, but I'm not going to say anything.  She made out with some fried chicken, I think, maybe a sandwich or two, then just slipped away.  Many people up here work on their suntans, knowing full well what winter will bring.

My poor liver.  

With the power of the Full Moon to change I try my best.  I give mom her midnight pill, and find the Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid I figured the cable channel would be running for free for a while.  I ask mom, do you want to watch the History of Sit-Coms on CNN, or Butch Cassidy.  "I don't know, what do you want to watch?"  Well, mom, I've got to do the dishes and sort through the fridge, I'll be back later, and I slink away and have myself some more water with lemon.  Fill the trash bag to full with the Meals on Wheels trays, sadly.  Is this mold on the peaches?  Are the plums over chilled?  For much of the week I worked on defrosting the freezer, a first step, and then making adjustments to get the refrigerator down to forty degrees where it was closer to fifty, to my horror, having sensed something bad about  all this.

So I wrote, at 1:30 in the morning, Dostoevsky time, under the full moon.  I've taken a shower, washing the pollen off under the shower head that doesn't pour evenly in any mode now, and mom's asleep, and I turned the light off.  She'd switched it away from the Butch Cassidy and Sundance, and there's an interview with a man who is a quarterback from what I can tell, for an entertainment channel, how he empathizes with the horror of any African American man pulled over by the Police.  He being recognizable, though I don't recognize him.  

And so I have real really mixed feelings about having a cider now.  If you make it so far on one day, why go back?  Look forward, to the direction your moving into, not the way back to the past.  But I'm also depressed, which should tell me something, that I feel just a bit of numbness, maybe in honor of Pani Korbonska, and her late night full moon invites for Tadzio, going into the wee hours with wine and pate and cheese and maybe something stronger from her chest of entertaining.

The dreadful awaken-ness comes to me.  The soothing of the cider as I get burgers ready to cook in the big iron pan, gives me energy to remember the thoughts.  The cider provides relief, after one, cracking open a second can, pouring it the same mug over ice cube tray ice cubes, and just for a little while the problems feel away from me.  Who knows, this might be a good thing, this sense of relief, and the possibility of my playing my guitar, as I haven't in a good while comes to me in my solitary state.  You can always practice.

But how do I face decent normal people with jobs and duties, performing in real ways to make kids educated, everyone ready for society, group behavior, the great democracy.

What happened to me, the Idiot.  Dostoevsky's best friend, his own inner self, the version of him that could be used as an explanation in polite society, before society clamped down and put everyone to work, or maybe that was the beginning, or maybe it's just gone on forever like that.  Get a job.  No money, no honey, and we're strict about that.

To be wounded, and to continue to go around so, this is not the point.  Society is supposed to be able to help you, even when you are at the fringes.

I mean, if you don't even try to fit in, well, you're already beginning your own slow suicide.  Attempting to be your own remember-er of things, of bringing back an artistic effort to look back at the history of human doings and self expression, well, either you keep on doing that, or you change, or something.

At two thirty in the morning the stupid stubborn boot hiking shoes are heard clomping above, the bathroom floor above the stove and the refrigerator, water stains in the ceiling, from her child oblivion.

Attempting to be individuals, we turn into creeps.