3/25/2022

 So finally around 3:30 in the afternoon, without wanting to, with a twinge of a headache from mixing sweet "sangria" cider with a bottle of Chianti, while finding some peace and entertainment watching Marlon Brando in Last Tango in Paris at the kitchen table, disturbed at the end by mom's arrival to the table, and feeling like the biggest loser there is, of course through my own poor choices solely to blame, and bad habits, without even trying my hand at being an actor, waking up miserable not wanting to move, I come downstairs.

Mom is in the bathroom with the fan on behind the sliding door.  The cat has been crying, shut down in the cellar behind the door just opposite.  I've been waiting, hoping mom would hear, or figure it out, as I hear her open the front door and look out.  But she hasn't.  I open the door and the cat sticks his head out, pissed off by the way he looks up at me, what the hell.  I open a can for him, mom's still in the bathroom with the fan whooshing away, I pour some cold tea, some lemon water, text my aunt to celebrate her husband Barry's birthday, try to call him, get a doctored up cauliflower crust pizza into the over.  Mom's story will change many times, but the first thing she does, sitting down at the table and looking at me, what's on the agenda today...  I tell her I have work to do.  Yoga, writing, and I do.  First thoughts out of the morning mind are good to gather before forgotten.

But I feel like a bug on a hot surface in the sun anyway, as if it weren't hard to get up out of bed anyway, in these circumstance, not enough to worry about my own life and trying to plan a way so that this doesn't all end in perfect homeless disaster...  A career?  A new one at 60?

Being the prince of peace doesn't work for mortals, not as a career.

And maybe Marlon Brando isn't such a good role model.

I know I'm too old for anything new, old dog, who worked too long, too willingly, should have rebelled, was a sucker for all the nice people, and gave the best part of his life to it, missing all things life, his father, being a helpful presence in his mom's life, etc.

Tantra is the only thing that can save me now.  So, after mom huffs off to the living room to sit with a book after I go upstairs and get her new one, the Margaret Atwood essays, having taken off the book cover so she won't be talking to the dust jacket author photo for an hour, then telling me later that something is wrong with the woman, after her initial enthusiasm.  The War in Ukraine goes on.  Can we make for greater peace through pranayama, calmed nerves, mantra chants, nauli kriyas... 

I can hear mom whispering away with her sss sounds, quietly intoning, then louder, is my mother here?, then going back.  I remind myself not to cower and allow my shoulders to hunch and slope forward, and the yoga in the school chair works pretty well for spinal alignment.

I am no literary genius.  I'm just putting some words down, to get back into the labor of it, the feel for the fingers across a MacBook Pro keyboard.