I've suffered through another day, just like the one before.  The ups and downs of my mother's dementia.  There were the phone calls.  Is my mother there?  No, mom, that was me who left the dinner table and I said I'll do the dishes later, I need a nap, feeling a cold coming on if I don't get some sleep, and I how I get her out her laptop so she can see Claire the Scottish Deerhound win best in show at the National Dog Show broadcast on Thanksgiving, figuring it will keep her entertained, just a five minute clip, then hopefully she'll be quiet and go on up to bed, as I am suggesting she do.  I've already repeatedly explained applicable local events such as Sharon's nephew Mario's pneumonia and how he's been taken up to Schenectady and how he's responding to the treatment there in a favorable way.

She's up for another few hours, as my nap turns from ten minutes for digestion on my left side upon my air mattress upstairs in her old abandoned study full of papers into an hour and beyond, unable to muster myself upward.  I find it quite exhausting dealing with her, her detachment.

She began whimpering before we'd even left Oswego, with the big river to the left as we head south, to Sharon's house past Baldwinsville to the south, climbing up the hill with the green of the golf course, dampened by the drizzle into grey, off we go to Thanksgiving dinner, lucky to have a gracious hostess preparing the entire meal, mom's old colleague, they go back to grad school at Syracuse University, she starts in, "please slow down."  Mom, I'm going the speed limit, here in her 2003 Toyota Corolla, 35 mph.  And at this point, after I point this out, I must admit, I push down on the accelerator gas pedal just a big.

Soon it will be shrieking.  And the whole way, almost, I chant my Sanskrit chants, while she bellows on, hurling devilish insults at me, as the rain streaks down the windshield, as the farmland farm's pass, ups and downs, cows free to move in and out from the muddy yard back to their pen, the hills changing from north south drumlins and moraines, into the valleys of my youth to the east, the skies changing too, the gloom overhead of Oneida County...

And damn if I don't feel tired every day and nighttime is my only escape, my imposed way to avoid her, resting, such as this morning, my morning around 2 in the afternoon, when the door was thumped upon and the doorbell rang, I come down, and it's two guys in black coats almost like trenchcoats, Mormons, and I haven't even had my morning tea, Jesus Christ.

Mom questions about them, after I politely humor them and express the hospitality of interest, as any decent person would.  Mom says something crazy in front of them, two guys, clean like FBI agents might be, after I say, "I can't even afford one wife," and I roll my eyes at her response, and they can grasp this strange situation of mine.  Later on, as we drive to get the groceries, after the break of a few days, as the darkness comes and the sleety snow picks up, walking down to Erie Street, bareheaded, walking together on the side walk past a house with a Trump sign.

Just keep writing.  That's all you can do.

No great artist ever sees things as they are, wrote Oscar Wilde.  If he did, he would cease to be an artist.

And like Dostoevsky, once he had experienced some things in life, we lived and worked at nighttime, getting up around 1 in the afternoon.

I too lived at night, not having much beyond my own distilled perspective, mom boring the hell out of me. Coming down, coughing, and what relatives do, older ones in particular, becomes disgusting.  On top of the same clueless conversation bytes.

And that's where I get my point of view from, from artists.  Not necessarily a good thing, not at all. But that there is inherent symbolism available to any one curious of his own life.

Things have become too boring for me to chronicle anyway.  The number of shirts you threw into a suitcase when I came up;  mom's reaction when you only want a brief word with her, you walk away, okay, and she says, "hello?!"  The constant blahs from trying to drink away your own troubles...

Things to boring to mention.

After another day of exhaustion--they seem to add up, on top of winter's coming with a light covering of snow, with the ice, with the cold air blasted by a western wind--I make a pot roast.  If I con't seize the nighttime, the comforting dinner to be picked upon for a few days, getting better each day, will never happen.  Mom is quiet upstairs.  I haven't been able to administer her nightly pill.  I woke up from my heavy nap, tried to slink past her bedroom door, taking a quick peek in, yes, the cat is there, that's good, but she calls, HELLO?  Shit.  I go in and sit down, and see what might be on television, between the BBC, PBS, the news channels, TCM, classic movies, History Channel, nothing inspiring.  I'm barely awake, groggy, unable to talk.  And she cannot hear what I am saying, she's telling me I interrupted her sleep, I say, Mom, I was just slinking by your door, I didn't want to bug you, but she can't hear what I am saying, and then it gets to being an argument, with her telling me that I "hate women," and it's just getting worse, okay, I bow out, and she stays, and thank god.

Pizza from the Steward Shop friendly people.  In addition to the sandwiches, tuna salad on marbled rye, cold cut Italian combo, worthy for later use, maybe on frozen pizza.    It's winter time, you need calories, even if it's dough, cheese, sausage, tomato sauce, on bread.

I start the post roast process.  I've got the things I need.  It will let me process things, and maybe I can clear my mind and get ready again for the yoga course.

Kerouac and his mom...  Left no room for a relationship with any other woman...

Kerouac, a recluse, he wanted to do his work, 

and my own life is so formless now... I can let the cat in the door, pick him up and give him a hug in my arms, then put him down so he can crack his teeth with moist interest over the new kibble I've poured him, and then say his word to me, in peeps and purrs and and three syllable talk then hearty wheezy purrs of remembered happiness, his nails on the linoleum of the kitchen floor as I pull him lightly holding on to his tail as he brings out his cat jaws more wheezes of cat pleurae, tail up now, rubbing against my leg, looking for all his pleasures, while most of mine have gone away.

He mews his "MEH!" as I get up to open a can for him, then he goes and looks up at the back door, and how come I have time for this, for recording the small things of life, so gone off chart a writer can get, just through trying to keep his chops up, but the chops distort his way of looking at life, as happens with all artists, they go crazy.

So I pour myself a little more wine, even at 4:26 in the morning, wondering what to do with the rest of my consciousness that was so sleepy and unproductive all day, but that it needed rest, lots of it.

Might as well play a little guitar and call it a night, before mom gets up to terrorize me.

The thing about writing is, that if you keep at it, it can lead somewhere, just that you don't know where it will or would lead, or if at all.  The listening to the sirens singing?  Your own human flaws that you might then share with another being?  

Then you find yourself at 5 in the morning, a time most people balk at, go to bed, sleep two hours, but at the point where the log jam of your mind connected might free itself.  This is yet another problem in the great insignificance of the addictive pleasures of trying to make an art, and one out of thin air and thin wisdom.  The first bottle of pinot noir is a tune up, as was the phone call to an old buddy, the most forgiving friend you have

By the time you are in the creative channel's flow, most people, to be responsible, need to go to bed.  This the stories of artists, the Caravaggio's of the world, not easy to fit in.