3/16/2022
I get up, can't resist looking at Facebook. The time on my iPhone betrays that it is already afternoon. I've just finished the 200 A Yoga program.
I perform a Nauli Kriya round, rolling my belly muscles around, expelling the toxins, puff, puff, puff, out alternating nostrils, then another big breath in, exhale and repeat. This is a good exercise. Often enough the exercise is difficult, and on top of that, it brings me promptly to vomit all the water and whatever else is left in my stomach trying to protect myself from the hangover I am currently in the grips of. I've learned to do this out on the back steps, where I let the cat out. You can blow your nose like a snot rocket, and in case I need to puke over the railing where the air conditioning unit sits.
The comparison game. It always hits us. Why are we not doing as well as the Jones... Pleasure is the line that catches us. Wouldn't it be nice...
When it's the universe all along taking perfect appropriate good care of us.
But you cannot write until you are in tune, in touch with yourself. The Universe has brought you to a particular place, and you cannot deny the wisdom of having been placed so, recognizing the opportunity in it, even as this place to must be tweaked, in accordance with intuition and meditation. And of course many people develop survival techniques, which are generally excessive, such as anger and control. Believe me, I know. My mother, who could be bipolar, or who could be Borderline Personality Disorder, or just neurotically angry and anxious, unsettled, unless she is talking to herself, I've had to deal with her my whole life. Add to that her selfishness, her lack of empathy, now exacerbated by feeble mindedness, dementia, hard of hearing...
Sunday was the last day of the yoga course. I was up 'til 1 into the morning absorbing it all. I did not think I would get through it. It had been a struggle, and a strain, and I didn't even know why I was putting myself through this awkward teacher training of the yoga with its elements and instructions, and the whole body of yoga, beyond the basic poses new to me. I had gravitated to the philosophy, and the lazy things about it, which turned out to make for the finest aligned meditations as I had ever have, with a new calmness from practicing some basic pranayama. I had no hope that I would survive these sessions. But I kept up with the chanting of ancient Sanskrit Mantras, and Aums, Omg, pranayama breathing techniques, and the whole world view assembled together into a trusted body of philosophy a long long long time ago.
I pour myself some of the Jesus medicine, in this case a simple red from Lisbon, available in bottle and box. I've been hiding all day, upstairs on my green air mattress in mom's cluttered office. I ventured downstairs once earlier, had a sandwich, retreated upstairs, after a knock on the front door summoned me from an exhausted rest. It takes days for me recover, indeed. Physically, and mentally, as if you'd suddenly came to a bright light, and it opened up a whole new world, a way of seeing things that rises you above all the dissatisfactions of life and personal history, as if you'd been put back in touch with the original self of yours, removing, as they even say, in yoga, the dust that gathers.
The wind was blowing all day from the west with gusts above 23 mph off the lake, shaking the front of the house. And I did not mind being here anymore, even in the clutter. I was taking care of mom, even if I had to shout at her, worn down, for her to stop saying "this is not my home..." "Your home is upstairs. Go to bed!"
There was no more joy for me anyway, back in DC, before, doing my job. There was always a phone call, a panic, a crisis at the other end fo the line. At work I had gotten use to panic drinking with the wine, on the rocks, just a bit to calm myself, after the phone call on the way to work, then the one later... then the one early in the morning. Calls no one else could take. I'd order her groceries delivered to her door, then then would lie out on the counter until the helper felt obliged to throw them away, the wings, the chicken quesadilla, the sandwich, the rotisserie chicken. My asking mom to take her pills...
It was better, for me, to just have left everything behind, but the very basics. A suitcase. My Martin D28. Winter gear. My blue blazer. An old laptop.
As the wind blows heavily, rocking the spaces of the walls of the apartment siding, I hear mom rise and go down the stairs, hello, is anybody here... Ted, where are you? I rest, hearing her carrying on. She insists she can take care of herself, and feed herself. The cat, kept in her bedroom with a closed door starts to cry, so I let him out and take a comfort break, and go back to my slumber. Over the last few days I heard I'd missed a few homework assignments, to my surprise, and I want to get them done and downloaded, so that my graduation and the 200 hour Hatha Yoga certificate can come.
I hear her crying help, help, help, I need help, can't someone please help.
She's shouting, crying, yelling, cursing her fate. All of it comes like waves. She'll let it subside, then quiet, then she'll start all over again. The problem is she's downstairs, right in the middle of things, and there's enough food where we can get by without needing groceries. And I have wine, and she, reluctantly, there's wine for her too, and for Pepsi. Everywhere, Pepsi, little plastic bottles.
We all have, so it seems, defense mechanisms, honed from childhood. Some are controlling. Some shout. Some continually panic. Full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
What has been mine? I probably just dealt, rode it out, take the Jesus red painkiller, try to have some fun, in a modest schoolyard way, nothing too personal.
And life was pretty empty, just go an entertain mom, and absorb all her defense mechanisms, going back to childhood days of hers.
There is a validity in the new circumstances where I be here now. A relaxed way of encountering has come over me. And the luck of taking this yoga course has given me the new direction of an old one.
I do not look back at my days of being a Jesus with publicans and sinners, a period of my life that lasted as long as the entirety of Jesus's life, with too much shame. Wine and comfort of company in public is a reassuring thing, just like church.
Yoga teaches you not to bother with defense mechanisms, rather to make a shrine or a temple to your own inner peace, and to practice in such a way as to sustain that. The Universe is your teacher, and as at school, at every level, teachings and lessons you must accept and seek to understand.
The great teachers realize this.
I had always had an impossible time finding jobs, because jobs need meaning. I felt I had a truth in my in need of expression. To just go and be a teacher didn't seem to be the thing. Tending bar was satisfying for me. It's what the universe handed me too. That's the way it was. For me, such a thing was preferable to the corporate success ladder, but this has to do with my own psychology, which being immersed within it, is difficult for me to see from another perspective.
To at last find your calling, as they say, upsets the apple cart. Borne out in lives before, the story of Jesus. The yogis.
The contrast between my father's peace and my mother.
But where did my life go, the wife I should have met. Was it the beauty from Ukraine who came to the bar after yoga, and I neglected to treating her and her friend to a tasting along with the beet terrine and the veal cheeks they split. I wasn't sure she wanted to engage. I could have given her and her friend a splash of bubbly, good for the appetite. Never saw her again. "I could not be more single," she had said. The boss looked at me when she walked away and down the stairs. We could at least have talked about yoga.
I did my yoga this morning, the sadhana, and mom starts to stir right after I lie down in corpse pose, shavasana.
I take a walk in the winter Saturday up to the power grid station and back in the wind, flakes falling. I help a new neighbor moves some things in, out of her van. She has a little boy.
I get an unexpectedly friendly message from a new online date sight friend. I text her, I have to feed mom first. 50 minute drive down to Syracuse. Sexy. Come feed me, she writes. And then I get distracted, or lazy, or cowering, nervous, reality too heavy for me to make a move.
I take mom for a ride. I tell her, I'll take you for a ride, but we aren't going out to dinner, okay? This it turns out, is the act that blows completely and irrevocably, as she seems to always manage to do, a potential new chapter in my life, my love life in particular.
I take her by the lake. That's scenic enough. She ought to enjoy that, right? A stony silence grows over her. She stares forward. Nice ride, huh. I get back to the apartment parking lot. There's her mood again. I've wronged her.
Okay, we go to The Press Box. A cowardly move, concerning the new friend who's asked me if I can still blow a good load. In your case, yes.
I get home and I feel worn out. I need a nap. Further cowardice, retraction from the possibilities, even as I say, I've made a new friend. We'll have a nice conversation tomorrow. Yeah. Right.
The next day, after my big failure, of not getting myself down to Syracuse, begins with an early call for my brother, who's gone over to check on my apartment. "Shithole," he mumbles, half under his breath. "This place needs a good cleaning." He's checking on the 100 year old guitar, to see if it hasn't dried out and broken apart without the humidifier thing in its sound hole. He's looking around for one of the sponge humidifier things for the guitar. As if I'd remember from a year and four months exactly where I left a thing the size of a cigarette pack. And it wouldn't do any good anyway, if someone's not keeping the inner sponge wet weekly. I'm left with a sense of his hatred for me, his care, but largely hatred and disgust, not a human being, an idiot, a fool, a child. Be a man. Be strong. Yeah. "You need to get out of there," he says. "Talk to the lawyer..."
The next day, I get mom breakfast, a Pepsi, cauliflower pizza. I need to do my yoga sadhana. Mom remains in the kitchen, oh please come talk to me. Kill myself. Alright. I'm going to commit suicide, slightly louder. No body likes me. Everyone here hates me. Kill myself. Ohhh. Please, no one here to help an old woman.
I wake up from the long nap, a habit showing you I'm not living life. I get downstairs. Find a bottle of soda water. I sit down. Then my iPhone is ringing, FaceTime. Elizabeth. She's driving back to Annandale, after going into DC for dinner and drinks with a mutual friend, who has also lost it. Covering the bases of the usual misery. I wasn't in the mood, but I picked up anyway. I didn't real feel much like talking at this point. My feelings of the moment get buried a little deeper. Support is good, but sometimes you just want to try and have fun. Let the old life go. Fuck it. I avert my eyes as she takes her shirt off. Her room, like ours here, is a mess. She does a lot of good in the world, but I want to live my life now. MY life.
And none of this helped my ability to show up the next day to see if I can make amends with Rakia, the beautiful treasure of a young African American who might want to have children with me.
I'd like to drive down to Syracuse and meet a woman for a hook up. But I keep running out of time. Things to do. It's cold and it's windy and at the very least, I have to make a grocery run.
I can't write at home anymore. Unless it's late at not. All I can do is yoga, and even then it doesn't work. I need a woman here and now.
Monday, The attractive African American woman dumps me and our conversation from the dating sit, once and for all. Bye bye.. I figured. "U have issues," is the last thing I hear from here. To which I lamely shared, Being a caretaker isn't much fun sometimes. I had earlier saved a screen shot of a couple of pictures she sent along from me. My inaction. I dropped the ball. Big time. Maybe I was suspicious of something too good to be true.... It actually depressed me to have such a great offer laid upon my plate. I'd have to be decisive. I thought I'd get mom her soup, then she lobbied for a ride, and that was my mistake. Stone face on the ride. And somehow I cannot feel I can ask anything of her. Mom, please, let me go.
Bitter Monday of seeing my flaws and being cut off by the hot black girl... And now, Tuesday, after driving her down to Fulton for a checkup with her doctor, the bitterness grows worse. The nap was where I blew it, Saturday night, after dealing with mom, ending up at The Press Box to placate her.
If you are that depressed, you need to do something about it. But how long have I been depressed, and just soldiered on, soldiered on. Route 81. All alone, the whole way. So much passed by. Days of wine and roses. Then coming into DC, the real estate wars. Parking on the little dog leg road behind the public school, taking a shirt out, wobbling in from the rental car after driving seven hours, stopping twice, a double Whopper, a gas stop south of Harrisburg after getting through that misery, of construction, a younger brother trying to adapt to an economy that's left it behind. Trump flags. Some nice cars, but what does one do in Harrisburg, and at least there is the cleanse of 15 through the Catoctin, coming up right to the back door of Big and Little Round top.
Then the final merging of traffic after Fredericksburg's own misery, then 270 onto 395, merging again. Slogging it to work a night at the bar... The creativity of wine not making it very far onto stage or the newspaper.
If I can't even make a hook-up, how will I ever find the strength and the fortitude to find a job.
Or did I just have a sense, what was the point, the beautiful young woman 50 minutes down the road needs a delivery four times a week.
I feel too rattled most of the time to do that, maybe because of the booze I use to numb my pain and anger and the sense of wasted time, the constant anger from mom if I don't pay her the attention she wants, all of it turning to anxiety.
Down the stairs she comes, clomping on her Keens, hello, help, is anybody there, just as I was about to sit down and write, to journal some, to work on this depression which is getting worse. "Here he is, the man with the food." I feel her staring at me. I just cooked a steak in the iron pan. "Where are all the people," she says, standing, staring at in the hallway, in her jeans, a sailor striped shirt in red and cream from J Crew. "I'm hungry," she says. I get her to sit down at the table, a slice of pizza into the toaster over. The steak is out on the cutting board, resting. I cut her off a slice from the end. "Best I've had a in a long time," she says, and I'm surprised, because the steak is rare. I bring her the slice of pizza heated now, and a chicken wing. I sit down and open my laptop. She always hits me just as I was going to sit down to write.
Mom stares at me now. Just sitting there, at the table, slightly hunched over, dumb. And if I don't acknowledge her she will start in on "you hate me," or, "I'm just a poor stupid woman," on top of "what are we doing for fun today..."
She stares at me at the table. Looks down. Sighs. Looks up at me expectantly. "Talk'a me, you dope," she'll say. "I gave my mother such a hard time," she'll say, over the peas. "I was such a fussy eater."
"I'm just a stupid woman... I don't want to take anyone else's food..." Mom, I made that food for you... Enjoy.
I ignore her, and start writing. "What are you working on..."
"Mom, I'm writing. That's it. That's all."
"You're a good typist," she says. Repeats another version of that a few minutes later. Thank you, mom.
"Well," she sighs, "I'll get out of your hair. You're more important than I."
Mom, I need to do some work, that's all.
She picks at her teeth with a toothpick. Mom, you could brush your teeth...
She says something about putting her coat on. My home is over there. That's where my mother is.
Mom, you're home. You don't need to put a coat on.
"You ruin everything..."
Mom, your bedroom is upstairs.
Anxious, as she might sit down on the couch and fall asleep right in the middle of everything, I monitor her and where she's going. She puts on a black open pullover. I hear her say, "they hate me," to a stuffed little polar bear doll, and she turns to pull herself up the stairs, leaning forward, her hand on the railing.
And I go back to a depression that takes away my will do to a thing. After the doctor appointment, and the obligatory Press Box 3 PM lunch, and the grocery store, after a brief cold walk in the rain to the gates of the power grid and back after getting mom inside, the groceries put away, all I can do is go up, lay down on the air mattress and take a long rest.
Then I woke up, organized the refrigerator, a tub of dishes.
There's a little bit left in the 1.5 liter Lab Lisboa vino Tinto. I have to admit, it tastes good. I take another half a tab of Escitalopram for good measure. Swallow at the thought of another thirty years of regret, for not getting off my ass that night and driving 48 to 690 east in Syracuse. What's wrong with me... I even like driving. It's relaxing.
There'll never be another opportunity like that, trust me. I could have made room... if...
It happens. The depression of your whole life, hidden away, as you made your claim on holding down a job, it all catches up with you, not in a good way. The depressive feeling is so mighty that you cannot really have fun anymore, outside some sort of studious exploration of the kinds of meditations and acts of self therapy, attempts at positive take good care of yourself things like a study of yoga,
Men don't understand women. Women don't understand men. It's all a form of selfishness, no place to meet in the middle.
The only fun you have now is stoic. Play a song on the guitar. Administer tapeworm medicine to the cat.
The depression stalks you, and then it catches up with you, catches up with you in actual hard real life terms, the running out of money feeling, the losing of an inspiration to find a career at this stage...
You'll never get out of this alive.
Every time I would try to stand up for myself, raise my voice, speak up, a timid I could use, or I want, it soon would become such a big issue that you never wanted to do it again. Wasn't worth it. Just go and do it, but then you don't do that thing you want enough and it atrophies.
It's like getting caught, like that's the right word, for jerking off, for self pleasuring, through exploration. A Federal Case.
Mom, your sister is on your side, she's trying to help you. GO AND TAKE HER SIDE WHY DON"T YOU.. oh.
We need to divorce, she tells me, over the pained lunch she demands after the doctor's office. Her will, raging against the dying of the light.
The woman nurse who takes mom in, blood pressure, weight, oxygen, at Fulton Prime Care, her son, 27, works at the aluminum plant. A physical job making good money. He owns his own house. Has two cars, one for winter, one for summer, and just purchased a '58 Del Rey, to tinker around with.
If you're a bartender, by habit, you let the burdens of other people become your own. Mr. Nice Guy. Nice guys finish last, or not at all. You let other people take over the show, unless the people are observant. The bartender is part of the show, but in my case it was largely due to a particular burden placed upon me. Rebel against a mother, not wanting her shit, and you'll just get more of it. Such a grand self view of herself.
There are no more moves left on the chessboard. Only radical unrealistic ones that have nothing to do with the economy of a town.
Now the panic and the anxiety have grown. A second tranquilizer pill for mom, as the doctor said he had started her off on a low dose so she could tolerate it, but still, she is angry with me as I put her to bed. We went out for an open mic night. I needed some contact with the musicians, and it felt good, it felt like a break from the panic. I didn't plan a set.
The sexual beauty of the black woman from Syracuse fades just slightly, thankfully. Another thing he's blown.
I'd run into Terry, a man of the town, former Air Force, in the parking lot of the Big M. He's just endured the pain of recuperating from a knee replacement. He was there at the Press Box bar on the Saturday evening when I had too much going on in my head, blowing my personal desire to meet this woman down in Syracuse, out of fear, out of stress, out of anxiety.
Mom having more bad times than good times, getting slightly worse, though it's hard to tell. She fights against the slightest criticism.
The pills for the cat's tapeworms came, but without the little eyedrop squirter tube. There's a complete one here somewhere, but I can only find the plunger, here in all the clutter, which I have added to as much as I've tried to organize.
What will happen to me, after all this, and even this is nowhere near over, and I can't seem to gain any ground, and I haven't even cleared out any space any larger than the green air mattress upstairs.
I have the same disgust, here toward myself, as anyone of this situation, the craziness, the endless clutter of a neglected life.
And on top of that, the hurled bitter attacks. What is this pill? What does it do to me...
It won't stop, it can't stop, all of it. And between trying to remain calm, through journal, through yoga sadhana and asana practice, walks--I was out for an hour today, but largely devoted to the nitty gritty of spending down--along with a little music therapy
Yes, of course it's all confusing.
Where even to find the tool you need, the piece of paper, the pile of books by mom's bed she swears she knows nothing about. "That was here when I got here. I didn't do that." Oh.
And I hide in my fool's paradise, my self medication.
Whatever happens, it will all be blamed on me, and there isn't even a way to win here, or to make a graceful departure or end. When I get out of this, all of it, my lack of a career, my lack of a life...
The lack of love is the worst thing, the worst thing that could happen to a son, sabotaged by a crippled old mother, his nerves shot, being driven into hiding, insulted or squashed at every turn.
Feeding the cat now, everything frays my nerves. I find an eye dropper, and use that to administer his tapeworm pill, breaking it up in small cup with a wooden spoon, adding the small amount of water the eye dropper will hold, mixing that, than lifting the cat up by the back of his neck, inserting the nozzle then squeezing.
Writing. Is there a worse most desperate choice in life than to try it.
Where am I going to end up?
Wouldn't I just be better off playing music... Open mic night with Steven Watson down at old humbler beaten down Bridie Manor...
After Sadhana, Friday, the sun out, I have mom stand out in the sun for a moment. She's been talking to herself as I chant and develop my pranayama session. Later I look at the crows, black birds gathered in the trees and on the blue snow crust by Bonnie's bird feeders. How do they learn to be the crow? They land gracefully, talk to each other, each taking an equal perch in relation to a moving center.
How does learn to be a human being? What's the secret? What's the trick?
I feel better after the sadhana. Since open mic night I've slipped into the wine again.
People, some of them, face the existential. A sense of meaningless, even as they have sought meaning their entire lives. When there are no external reasons to be joyful. The seeking of fun leads in the direction of wine, a liberation that leads to a prison the next day, of one's own making.
I was up late watching an episode of The Chosen. Of course I realize the point about the joy of wine...
But that myth is also about the purity of the container, the stone purification jars.
And this reflects the basic problem, desire, a taste for pleasure. Things which stir up waves on our waters, deluding us, putting us through rolls and swells of very vivid emotions brought up from the depths or who knows where. Waking in a state of ruffled anguish, exhausted, vaguely ill, tired of life.
The world seems to run on desire, well-handled, so we try to handle desire.
How truly important is peace.
The old patterns come at us. Have some wine, and drink it until you reach a certain buzz.
Saturday, after taking mom out to Canale's and the usual bitterness coming as I get her back to the house, after midnight I wake up and go out to get a six pack of cider. Which hurts less the next day, but gets too sugary sweet after a certain point. I drop by the bar there on the main drag.
At the end of the night, the chicks go off into the night with the guys, passing me by on the way. I follow slowly enough after them, keeping them in sight. "Is the old guy following us," the angry guy with the green felt St. Patrick's Day bowler, asks, which drains my enthusiasm. And rather than go get in the car, I go to the late night Johnny's stand for some of his brisket. The old guy.
Mom. I go up and call her down for soup. Eventually, after I call her again she comes down, wearing her boots. You'll make me trip, she says. I ask her to rinse and brush her teeth. She nods. Five minutes later, she's still sitting at the table. Mom... I"m still eating, she says, picking at the skin of a reheated baked potato. Ten minutes later, she's making me nervous. Mom, you're going to forget.
So finally I end up yelling at her almost at the top of my lungs.
Contentiousness. I go for a walk, as she goes up the stairs.
I go out for a walk. Almost a mist out. I run into the old guy with a Honda four wheeler, whose dog Chopper, a mix of Jack Russell and Lab, is out for a Springtime romp.
Oh, yeah, you're mother, she's bipolar...
I ride around with him in his rugged buggy up the road. The muddy dog comes up running alongside of us. We go almost all the way up the hill. "He'll cross the road up there..." Tire him out.
Cars slow as the dog paces, around them.
Later I return to my walk. Slow pace. Fascia limber. I feel sometimes like I can almost look through things, beyond the sky, beyond the earth at the horizon. Deeper reality. Where things are at peace, making sense.
I get back, fill the bird feeder. Let the cat out. Deer venture by, stopping at Bonnie's feeder.
The equation of everything being as it should be, in the non dualistic Tantra view, and the callings of desire...
I get a small comfort out of hearing stories about Jesus. I've watched the older color movies on the subject, and more recently I've taken to watch The Chosen series to light my imagination. I get a small faint pleasure out of the old stories, even as they get dressed up now and again with new scenery and a new cast of characters, a jump forward in cinematic technology. I stay up late, and let my mind wander, with Jesus turning the water in the ritual purification jars at Cana into wine at the budget wedding his mother and friends are at. Doesn't seem to do me too much harm. But for the Quixotic sense, of an old guy reading books on chivalry that go to his head and coincide perfectly with a softening in that old guy's head, thus informing his body and spirit with the notion that he himself is a legendary knight. One of the most beautiful and true premises of all literature, and it goes way back, and kind of instinctive utterance in an old time when the imagination of humanity leapt out of the old theatric style into a new more novel form, as Cervantes, who'd been through some shit, as Shakespeare too became temporaries, working on similar things. I think it was one of those things where they almost died days apart from each other, but I could be wrong.
Mom can come down and bother me anytime day or night. I dread when she stirs. Mary Lincoln. She might come into the kitchen, where I'm writing, as a ragu of sausage and beef bubbles judiciously away, saying she's starving, and if I don't pay her much attention, there we go again. She'll go sit on the couch babbling to the cat then refusing to upstairs to bed. I hear her clunking around now, above me
But let's face it, if Jesus were to come back to us, nobody, not a damn soul, would listen to him or take him in in the slightest, without deeming him a stranger. Prophets get used to it. They get used to their own society's mysterious hatred, addressed and directed toward anyone who can't seem to abide by the rules in the same way, for thinking too deeply on nonsensical things like the True Nature of Reality, or of how we ourselves are the very consciousness of the Universe, spun off as an individual of some free choice, to look back at Itself observantly to experience How It Is, the great visible truths that might appear to a mind too used to independent wonderings and thoughts.
There's all sorts of fossil records of such things. The Rejection at Nazareth. That's a good one. Even his own family tries desperately to restrain him.
And so, my friends, as Mr. Vonnegut, of a scientific mind toward this reality in the Universe we are all stuck with 100 percent, what does it all mean, would write in his famous book, "So it goes." Tralfamadorans arrive to tell people of earth of the plight of their planet, try to communicate their enlightened understandings and knowledge of deep reality, and what happens, the humans bonk them on the head, done with it before it even could start, this imparting of knowledge.
But take anything old Jesus did or said. You have to like the guy, no? I mean, Jesus, there He is at the wedding of the poor, and He has them fill up the ritual purification vessels with water, and boom, now, holy shit, it's wine. Not bad.
Or the old one of the knowing people and things through the fruits they produce. A good tree makes for good fruit. Yes, look at what Putin is doing now.
But it all sort of says to me, in a kind of poetic way, maybe reminding me of Whitman, not that I was ever much of a serious student, that even in spite of ourselves, we are as the ritual purification jars. This is what old Jesus is trying to tell me right now, as I sit up somewhere toward 5 in the morning now, at peace, without any more disruption than the cat wanting to come in, wanting to go out, the new dishwasher rattling softly away as a deep watery voice gurgles within so that cone could imagine the spraying arm revolving around at an unseen speed, the clomp of mom's feet gone back to bed. And I only poured myself a glass of wine after a very brief sadhana of purification, having done a great one earlier today...
I have seen these pure vessels get into it, the pleasure thing, the desire for adventure and carousing that I have often observed coming natural to our walk of life. I always took it for myself, because I was the one waiting on all these people as they got a bit ramped up, I always took it merely as a self administration of Jesus's own personal red painkiller, brought forth by good masters and servants and owners of the vineyard, spoken of so much in his gospel recorded words that one might gather He had a fair almost obsession with the business of vineyards, and hey, you know what His First Miracle was, don't we all. And a journalist's eye, say that of a Dostoevsky, is always welcome to suss this whole First Miracle out. Because as much as there is very little to say about It, there is also, when you look at it another way, very much to It.
And maybe this is why, like an obsessive Jesus, I don't mind my purification rituals. The air in mom's apartment is quite lousy anyway, with mold spores, as I see it, that make my lungs feel like an old bicycle inner tube with a leak in in.
All part of the great cosmic joke, that moved high Spanish grand theater, rococo as I might imagine, like an El Greco or something, to move away and on to a quite a different and mind blowing form, the novel, or the soliloquy of Hamlet, or Lear with his fool on the heath, or, as Kundera, essayist, novelist, art critic, personality of democracy and freedom and Prague '68 and exile, puts it, the same in a portrait done by Francis Bacon, capturing within the essential unique thing of say, Pope Leo, even with all the apparent distortion.
But anyway, as a barman of more than thirty years personal experience, and often hungover, as happens to lonesome people of contrary style and hours, having ingested the modernized version of Jesus's red painkiller and nerve soother and observation of the consciousness of the Universe down to the tiny pebbles that live beneath a vine, perhaps not as pure and as simple and as direct as the original farm to table Jesus Original Red Painkiller, boy, I've seen it, people being people. Laughing, even howling, sometimes, or stoic, or maudlin, all kinds of ups and downs that lead one again back to Shakespeare's "a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, but signifying nothing." Indeed. I've seen it. And then, as I would imagine, they get through Sunday, and by Monday morning they are all back to their so-called normal householder lives. Good for them.
But it still says something, about the purity of the vessel, ourselves, redeemed from all the impurities we might ingest. And I've seen people get quite smug and happy about themselves, puffed up, in a way I didn't really fancy too much, but to chalk it up, that's what kind of a tree this person, say, Kyle, is, and that's the way it goes, and the Universe saw too it to create him just as he is, and the Universe took joy in doing so, and the joy continues out of Kyle, that's how it is, and I enjoy him too, and should have listened better to his way and his life, that of Kyle, who gave us much business, a definite rain maker, even if he might have kept me late at the old wine bar on certain occasions. That was my choice, by having made the deeper choice, and Uli was there too, a heavenly observer and deep confidant of the heart.
So now I've added a touch of nutmeg and cinnamon to the pot. The carrots had a best before early February date, and I didn't have time, as I was cooking chicken tenders as well, with onions, in the black iron pan, with getting the dishwasher going, to for a real celery carrot onion voyage.
I've sipped the last of an open bottle of Beaujolais, and have moved on to a previously opened Lisboa red with a Lab doggy on the label. I've learned to be suspicious of the latter. I think I've done okay today.
If we accept the tantra idea that we are already in the perfect place, as ordained by the greatest deepest meanings of the Universe itself, that we must first completely accept, and then understand
I can only write for so long without returning the wisdom of Jesus, or that of Buddha, which works for me too, of Tantra.
I forget how much my customers, the music, the constant motion, buoyed me up.
Three in the afternoon. I feel groggy still. Mom's downstairs. I tiptoe down, yes, there she is the Eames Chair, with her coat on. I turn the heat up, pass into the kitchen. Tea. Lemon turmeric ginger water. Put some soup on. I feel strange. There's a thing at the college tonight, but I don't want to bring her along so much. It will be dark.
I feel that sense of impingement as she falls into a nap. I practice a few kriya to expel toxins with the breath after rolling my belly around until I almost pass out, then gasp in some air and out alternating nostrils. I got things done at night, including cooking, which is indeed vital in the battle here.
The thing at the college has to do with Jack Kerouac.
Mom likes the Campbell's chunky gumbo soup I doctored up a bit. Do I need a grocery run today... Yes, we're out of turkey. Or I can't find it in the fridge. Amidst cooked cauliflower pizza, meals on wheels trays, the rotisserie chicken,
When you're not doing anything conspicuous and obvious as a member of the economic society you'll feel weird.
Mom had a nice cuddle with the cat. She gets his name right. The cat, not "cats."
At night, in the temple, the kitchen, amidst a taste of incense smoke, the monks do the dishes. The dishwasher is an amiable dish rack, and seven cat food dishes, the spoons for soup and knives for butter and the glassware are scrubbed, ready for use tomorrow. 4 am. The useful time of the day.
There was a Jack Kerouac event at the college, quite impressive facilities. Bright. Even. An auditorium. With seats. A great jazz band, playing the style of the Kerouac Lester Young Dizzie Gillespie, Charlie Parker era. I found people I could talk to. Barbara's son. Emil from the bookstore. He's reading Visions of Cody, but seems to have put aside the book I wrote and dropped off for his father in law Bill, the bookstore owner, to look at.
It feels better to wash everything by hand. That way you have some time where parts of the brain shut off, to listen to the music, even if it's muzak, elevator music. Cheese. Montovani. Henry Mancini.
My friend Masha, I ask her how she's doing. She has been vaguely Pro Putin for a long time.
I am beginning to project the field, the matrix, of my mother's constant mental illness, her disorder, of narcissism, bi-polar swings, something borderline. Graph that out and you will see how there's hatred between us all, the survivors. I struggle to find the meaning of my father's life. For my brother it means hardworking discipline, dedication, practicality, and all respectable things, hard work and family. My dad seasoned as a twenty year old student going through bootcamp, an air base weatherman at a training field in Arkansas, then going on to work on radar, testing how it worked in different weather conditions at different altitude.
For me my father means Theosophy, for one thing, along with all he did for me, lifting my budding music career, praising my personal style. He'd drive me around to events, and even jams.
But now we all hate each other. The successful are narcissists, who make me feel hated. I can't speak in front of them, without being sniped, without being hated.
The yoga kula, it's always good to meet with Emily, Dawn, and Lisa. "You can still be a man, as a yoga guy. Men with money can be deep as a puddle. There's lots of money out there, what's the point of that anyway..."
I've gotten through Thursday evening, all day Friday, all day Saturday sessions, of the free yoga retreat included in the $75 Kula membership, and all that remains in is the homestretch, Sunday morning, the morning sadhana at 7 AM, then from 9:30 to 1. But Mom has been difficult ever since I asked her to go back upstairs after lunch so I can do my yoga in peace. Saturday turns hellish, over dinner, I'm tired, and so I get into the wine. Then there's a phone call, later than I want it to be, and it ends up lasting two hours. I wake up late, past 7, with a headache, feeling awful. So I stay in bed. But I'm feeling much better at 9:30, and I hear mom's downstairs anyway. I don't wake up until 1 in the afternoon, and I feel bad about the whole thing. I mean, if there were any proof I can slide into a drinking problem with the wine, a bottle and a half to feel jolly, there it is. In mud mind this was the whole weekend's sessions meaning.
Later, that night, exhausted with mom, who, just as I'm about to drive off after I start the car, let it warm up, sweep the snow off in the wind and cold, mom comes walking out the front door with her purple woolen coat on, not the warmest one, clutching her hat so it doesn't blow away, with her purse draped from her arm. She has to look for the poor woman in dire straits, she tells me. There was mention of this earlier as I prepared her breakfast of soup and slice of cauliflower crust pizza. There's a poor woman up in my room, she says, she's in trouble. No there's not, I just was up there. YES, there is! Why do you always doubt me... Mom, there's a nice PBS show about Ireland, the Burren. I thought she'd find it calming. But again, she finds something to be agitated about. And now she's out wandering off in the parking lot. I watch her walk away, after going back in, bringing her needless purse to drop off, to pick up her cane. You could help me, you know. Mom, where are you going? Over that way, she's up the block over there... She wants me to get the car, but she probably needs a walk anyway, for exercise, so I let her walk, advising her not to walk in the middle of the road, met with, don't tell me what to do, why are you always bossing me around, who died and left you God...
I finally get her back to the car. I open the door for her. She attempts to knock some snow off on the front grill with her cane, as she likes to stop and pound the cane down on any snow patch on the pavement or steps. Great. She loses the idea of what side of the car to get in on.
So, we go for a ride. Which calms her, but makes my life worse. So she's starting to wander now, great.
I get back with the groceries. But I forgot tall kitchen garbage bags, plus the frozen Stauffer's Lasagna I wanted to try out, as I read a good review of it. Something to present mom with, when she comes down and bugs me. I pick up dinner at Canale's, calling from my resting place, The Stewart Shop.
I'm in a gloom still, for missing my yoga session, hungover. I'm mishandling things, I'm misaligned.
So what kind of soil am I for the sower in Jesus' Parable...
But I feel real headway in this yoga class, today, Monday, finding mom has not left the couch in the living room. I load up the dishwasher with last night's dinner dishes and cat food dishes, soaking the batch, before the load. I go back upstairs, as mom has fallen asleep again, take a shower, and commence my sadhana with the recording of yesterday's with Todd, which I missed. I still feel like I've brought shame upon myself.
Mom has fallen back asleep, after the slice of pizza, and then twenty minutes after that, I make her soup, back on the couch. I've done what I can anyway. Mom, did you take all your pills? She slipped two away in her coat pocket, which she has not taken off, even if the heat seems considerably warm to me. I get her to down them.
And then I quietly leave the house through the bag door, with my Nalgeen water bottle full of still warm detox lemon lime ginger turmeric water tea, the old laptop, wrapped in a towel into one of those polyester reusable Price Chopper shopping bags. The car is started, it's warmer today, so I'm ready to go, just not sure where, after checking the mail, finding my US Postal notice that they've processed my forwarding mail from the old apartment in Washington, DC renewal up here in Oswego. Out the parking lot, right, the corner, then turn and then I'm turning right onto Erie, and down Fifth, north toward the lake, the Stewart Shop at the corner of Fifth and Utica Street, the bridge to the left, East, over the river. I'm going down to the water, a walk along the river. I end up by the marina, parking the car, still wondering how mom's doing in the back of my mind. I walk up the hill to Breitbeck Park for a view, pull up the Mantra Todd is teaching us to facilitate our chakras. There's a view of the cooling tower, standing by itself to savor, seen from marina western point, way to the east.
I'm walking along, no real purpose, looking down from the higher ground, near the old fort territory overlooking the lighthouse and the breakwater wall, mumbling the new mantra for the chakras, and then up by the old civic center building where they have a good open mic night on every other Friday. Cold enough, after the sun goes behind the clouds, to be wearing a mountain gear worthy windbreaker over a down sweater, the bright fluorescent green one my mom found at T.J. Maxx here. I see two teenage or college girls having a happy afternoon walking up to the overlook bluff.
As I pass one has climbed up out of the sunroof of a BMW sedan talking on the phone and laughing, and she is cute.
On I go, parking closer to the river, down by the business district. Maybe I'll stop in at the book store we go to. There's the offices of the Palladian Times. Well, why not. I'll drop in. And I do, not really even thinking of what I might want to say. I ask about local color... A brief conversation with the publisher, who recommends I take a card of the appropriate guy.
Cross the street. new building on the river side of First. Corporate pizza on one side, go through the line, pick what you want, and on the other side, bagels, another good looking woman passes by, who looks down, seeing that I've noticed she's attractive, in a business mode, rings on left hand anyway, I walk on. Milky sunlight. There's the Murdoch's bicycles and sports gear and wear, where my mom would go, supporting them, having a friend there, who cut her deals. Across the street. River's End. I enter quietly, not in much of a mood to speak with anyone anyway, and my friend Emil is there.
