January 6, 2022

The loneliness sets in.  We went out to Canale's on New Years Eve, about 6:30.  There's a pretty waitress there.  I just needed to see other human beings.  Mom enjoyed it.  We got home without arguing.  The memory of the pretty food runner reminded me of the waitress, and when I asked, McKenzie only works Sunday day.  We'd run into her as our server weeks before on a Sunday night, after I got out of a yoga weekend I really had to struggle through.  Then we went out.   Mom got difficult at the end of dinner, and getting her to the bathroom and then helping with her coat I forgot to sign the credit card tab, such that the beautiful young, kind, somewhat sassy waitress, maybe 20, if that, had to follow us out to the car.  So I get out of the car and profusely apologize to her, and she tells me she just didn't want me leaving my card behind.  I tipped her forty on one hundred, and then I had to go back in and get my stainless steel jotter pen, still on the table, as if the night needed some proof I'd a long day, scrambled by the end.  As I went out I quietly told her how hard it is to be dealing with dementia, and when I got mom back to the car she was still terse with me.  I'd texted my brother about how we might call Jack from the restaurant, as we sat in the booth, but as I soon as I pulled out my phone she turned on me for being rude at the table.

Three glasses over dinner, leftovers of Chicken with Lemon and Artichoke, then a long nap, and then around 11:30 I stir again, and then because it's New Years Eve I have some Beaujolais, and wake up shaking on New Year's Day.

She comes down the stairs again, calling my name, but calmer and in better humor than usual.  I served her half a convenience store tuna sandwich an hour ago, and she went back upstairs.  Now she's back again.  The cat seems to have diarrhea.  After he came back in from stoop, not going very far, 18 degrees, layer of snow and then a dusting on top.  He took some water from his bowl.  He wasn't even interested in the dry food he usually crunches on.  No interest in catnip.  

He goes away quietly and finds his spot on the top of the sofa.  I'll clean the hatbox later.

I give her the nightly pill, the upgraded dose of Memantine.  That's enough to make me happy.  And she didn't even fight me.  I pour her a small glass of the Yellow Tail Pure Bright chardonnay, low in sugar, 9.6 %.  She tells me she doesn't know how to get back upstairs, she tells me, but her mood is surprisingly consistent, and even some calm to it.  She makes it upstairs.  The cat seems to be feeling better.

Art.  A combination of common touch, jokes, of dipping down into the communal reservoir.  I

I've spent too much time of mine being alone.

I put up one of my little improvised sketches, of grandpa telling the children, in some form of Abe Lincoln backwoods accent, one of the tales of King Tanowando and The Settlers.  Up on Facebook.  I get amusement from them at night, after mom has stopped coming to down to visit me, wanting to be fed, and the cat too.  

The next day, Monday January Third, the world goes back to work.  It's cold out.

I feel I'm still getting over something, but it's hard not to feel ashamed.  I texted a long Whats App note to Bruno the Chef over there in Portugal, responding to his wishing me a happy new year and how am I doing, and the Covid is driving everyone crazy.

There are the dishes to tackle.  Mom hit me two times in the night, saying she was "starving," first a tuna fish sandwich, then a rising dough crust frozen pizza, as she sits around at the table, looking over at me.  The abyss again.  And what help does spirituality or religion of any form do for you but just drive you mad.  Great.

The paper grocery bag has a topping of Woodchuck Cider Pearsecco cans, light blue.   

The cost of making humor and comedy is apparent in the morning.

A distant Facebook friend--she teaches architectural history in Paris--gives me a compliment on a video that iPhoto put together about Spring 2001.  Mom and I going out to Sterling Nature Center.  She tells me she remembers seeing me freshman year down in the basement of Frost Library.  I blew that one two, along with other ones I remember, Elena, Tina...

Then even worse, becoming a lone asshole up at Plimpton, the old DKE house, with Sir Isaac Newton's fireplace, while by buddies lived together down in B Dorm, and Jeffrey kept the same nocturnal schedule I did.  The lonesome country boy, Farmer Ted, the Feral Ted Beast.

Where do the educated go these days...  No G.I. Bill, no FDR, no free masters degree...  No jobs in teaching, but for the thoroughbreds.  

Mother Earth is poor.  She has been plundered, to make some wealthy business men.  But where there is wealth, there is no Jesus Christ, not much honest spirituality, as Francis, both the original Saint, a visionary, and the current Pope.

But all these good thoughts don't help so much when I wake up.  I only brighten after paying a few bills, as much as it hurts.  I hear mom stirring, so I go up and check on her, and she tells me she has a bit of a cold, but her mood seems fine, and when I've checked in on her earlier she was sleeping heavily.

The sky is grey.  I don't feel motivated to read my yoga books.

This situation will bog you down.  Trying to write will bog you down, and leave you with nothing, and no life either.  You end up doing dishes and letting the cat in and out, doing the recycling, but pondering whether or not to remove the pile of newspapers building up by mom's chair.  

And sometimes, at night, or by day, I ask myself, or I ask God, how is this all worth it, first the suffering of writing, second for the lack of the dignity of employment, the lack of dignity of having no family of my own, but tied in by fate to my aging mother with dementia.

And what began as an odd and too much isolated curiosity towards earthly part saintly things of a youth's interest, that all gets worn down.

I do the dishes, at 3 in the morning, stirring from a long nap.

Now it's five in the morning.  I've recently watched Wim Wenders documentary of Pope Francis, Man of His Word, and I've enjoyed the portrayal of the original, Saint Francis.  

I've having some Beaujolais.  With everything going on, isolation sets in.

 Thoughts on The Bhagavad Gita, as translated by Stephen Miller.  Yoga Course assignment sketch.

There is an immediate recognition here, my life is that of Arjuna.  And the problem for here is for Arjuna to bring the teaching of Krishna home, to awaken to it, to bring it out of the general unconscious dream of life's experiences and situations previously thought of in many different of emotionally exhausting ways.  This is the problem, the ignorance, which causes great suffering, taxing the mind, leaving one in despair over the past, the future and largely incapable of understanding the present, all of which will always be subject to interpretation:  is an action good, or is it bad, or is it a mix of both in an agonizing way.  This leaves a person in the agony of adulthood, stuck in a realm of blindness, ignorance to the Truths of Lord Krishna.

We each lead the life of Arjuna, here, as the battle waits, about to tip, frozen on an edge, into all the horrors of war.   No wonder Arjuna is stuck, what to do?

Why so?  Because of the human nature Lord Krisha will reveal out of all of us.  We already, unbeknownst to ourselves, within the stages of development of karma yoga itself.  We know within ourselves, by our nature, which must be revealed by divinity to us, that we can only act by the only vision, the only sight we have, to do an act for the best of reasons, for the intentions we find within us.  Krishna is telling Arjuna, the atomic nutshell of humanity, representative of all, that we do indeed act, in the final analysis, on our intentions, and that these intentions are and can only be detached from the desire to possess any outcome.

And so to us, it is revealed which side of the battlefield we live upon and in.  Rather than the logical, who, by the way, turn out to be evil and greedy and self-centered, completely without access to the awakening Arjuna has the capacity to receive as Gospel and greatest of teachings, as divine forces have placed him just so, through the greatest of Universal Laws, which he must accept, Arjuna is in touch with the purest forms of intention.   We see it in him.  He cares, even about his enemies.   Even in victory in this battle, surely beloved brothers will meet death in war.  And for what?  For the vanity of rulership?  Not worth it, thinks Arjuna.  His look at even the outcomes are complex.  And this is not the problem, at all, for the other side, who think in baser terms, greed, no problem with a simple and uncomplicated desire to hold power, for the sake of power.  

As if burdened so deeply into a frozen state of inaction by the complexity of things troubling to the mind, which we ourselves are now as much as ever brought to face, as our planet runs out of room for everyone's greed and ambitions, and even basic life, quite starkly, Arjuna, thoughtful and reflective enough, is ready to receive the greatest of lessons from the highest of sources.  Krishna reveals himself, as Himself, with an open maw such as to blow away all shreds of illusion as if in a great fire, burning away all one might have thought he knew.  (The Book of Job catches some of this, in different terms.)

And in this great fire of recognition Arjuna now can understand. The motive of an action is pure as one might make it, and why not strive to be good and pure rather than evil and corrupt, and that the material results or those ones of sensual desire are of little consequence, and must be so, things to actually ignore, if one is to achieve the appropriate end, the one in tune with the very matter, the fiber, the energy of all that is created, created just so.

 All of this can only be to look at ourselves, deeply within.  Here, the great lesson of the Gita, reveals a portrait of our own lives, an accepting one.

For myself, a quick sketch, that I think bears some parallels to the ones we've read about from Todd Norian's own life events, that could take into consideration our true and most purest of desires as described in Tantra Illuminated, that we ourselves are to be regarded as facets, angles, individualized pieces and parts of the Universe looking back in at itself with its own consciousness, placed just so, to see ups and downs, frail difficulties at life's crossroads, the so called bad habits and sins which deposit some form of sand on a beach so that things have a base to grow upon.

Was it a bad thing that I raised a glass, sometimes over-exhuberatnly, with weary workers needing a break to catch up with themselves before facing the chores of home...  Was it a bad thing to practice compassion and hospitality, in a blind dumb ignorant way, just so that I was moving, that the depression of my own life would be abated as I kept moving as a busy bartender...  Was it a bad thing to be placed just so, and become more of a poor person, even with all his college education and verbal talents, than a solidly placed financially responsible one...  Was it a bad thing that I honor my mother, with all her anxieties, rather than forge away from her and find and make my own family... 

As Arjuna, we cannot know.  We are bitten and infected by the spirit of a Saint Francis, humble and non materialistic in a world grasping for material, for the illusions of security which themselves seem pretty real most days.  How far behind are we, we ask ourselves, fearful of abject displacement and poverty, even as we, with a good heart, feed the dog and the cat, with a pat to both.

So do we accept and hold onto the Cosmology of the Lord Krishna who holds us, first as an earthly gentleman charioteer aiding his own master, then revealing himself to show, in essence, that all things, all actions, all the things one might do in the future have already been completely resolved any way, so why worry about the larger things.

Maybe in a deep rest, in sleep itself, can one conjure up the alignment of deep poetic understandings to craft them into a truth to follow.  What is action, what is inaction?  It is the intent that matters.  An action can be done for many different reasons, as Krishna outlines, and so the heart virtues we bring to a task are the significant things at play.

 But again, hospitality, an ancient mitzvoth to welcome strangers, neighborliness, respect, listening skills, unselfishness, forms of poverty, humor, acceptance, a love of flora and fauna and the cleansing airs from spaces wild and natural, are things to hold within our intentions.

As a writer, I add, there can be no fear of death in its practice, no wish for anything of security if words are to ring true, and there can never be any emphasis on the wealthy riches such as one might think his talent deserves.  

Rather, the Don Quixotes and Cervantes, the Hamlets and Shakespeare, the Kerouacs of the world, as much as they ended up suffering, all the poets of the world, the Irish rebels, the Hafiz Persian poet singing, lay firm a general intention, to go out on the road, as both observers and participants with the intention of encountering the great wisdom of the Lord...

Who would have known, the importance of intention...

It's as if our view of how we achieve success and even the nature of defining success has completely changed.

The hero must enter the practice of karma yoga, which is action in the world.  And in karma yoga guided action, Arjuna can only overcome his great paralyzing fears, through the lesson Krishna teaches him.  That the outcome has already been decided, simply waiting to be played out, in accordance with one's inner nature, is one of the comforts offered to Arjuna.  He must not be attached to the outcome, he must not worry at all about it, but simply engage in the battle.  And in engagement, Arjuna will learn, he will explore, he will find enlightening experiences, as when Krishna opens a godly maw to show the deeper true nature of the Universe.  

Thus detached from attachment to an outcome, the actions may be now offered up to Krishna, for the divine rather than any earthly development, for in doing so the actions of Dharma Yoga are elevated, purified to Bhakti Yoga.

 So it is in, and through, the Beatitudes that we find “the map,” the way to Jesus, the way to embrace fully that which is completely a story, completely a myth, also a history, also a penetrating psych-scientific study and teaching of how to attain intellectually and physically a spiritual life, the way, in other words.  (Credit to The Chosen Series for putting these phrase, a Map to find Me, into the Beatitudes episode culminating Season Two.)

The cat has gone outside again.  It’s four AM, and I watch him tread his paws over the lightly frozen ground, disappearing into the darkness of a cloud covered night.

We all make our pilgrimage as children, trying to be men, women.  Our own path of spiritual support, which comes to be the single most important and meaningful thing to us.  To the greater meaning, we can only be ignorant.

This is the pained thing, the path, its great length through time.  We cannot come to its conclusion, its greater meaning, before we are ready.

It is an incredible and unbelievably difficult and trying path to be on.  To listen to the order of heaven, god, truth, reality, ...  It might also smack of madness, for its risks, for its otherworldliness.

Joseph, a good father who must, as all good mortals, pass way.

And Jesus is the one who reveals the reality of existing in the universe.  Not to exclude any other path, the ancient wisdom of Eastern thought...

The myth shows us the way, a map, to whatever it is we chose to strive for.

As a writer, maybe it's harder to fake who you are.  If you end up doing yoga and reading Genesis and that's all you can do, that's how it goes.  

Mom comes down, after I write two sentences.  She sits down at the table, I get her her two morning pills. Did you sleep okay...  She examines an empty box of museum painting holiday cards.  She is concerned about the cat being out, reaches her hand, her right hand, to the top of her head to pick at around at it.  She makes little observations.  The refrigerator is very full, she says.  I'm making soup for her, the usual can of Progresso, tear up some chicken, from fried chicken breasts today, add stock, spices.  I need to get to the River's End Bookstore.  She wants to go for a ride too.  Mom, it's cold out.  The way she clears her throat irritates me, perpetually.  Do you want to take a shower, Mom?  It's too damn cold.  But you just said that it's too warm already when I asked you if I should turn the heat up.  She opens a can for the cat, he eats it.  You're scaring him, she tells me.  Soon he wants to go back out.  I feed him another spoonful from the open can, he mushes the bits up against the side of the dish, licking up the liquid gravy and some of the bits, abandoning the rest.  He's calling to be let out now, on top of mom going on.  She looks through her purse.  She brought it down last night, when she came down for a slice of pizza.  

I get through the dishes, sip on a chilled paper cup of Stewart Shop coffee from the fridge, take care of some emails, write out a card for Ben the maintenance guy, and low on money as we are $40 is generous, but I feel guilty about that, and then as winter night comes with cloud cover I go up to change out of my sweats and put my trusty pants on, with belt, wallet, mask, either to go for a walk in the light, or to get down to the grocery store, so I check in on mom who was lobbying for a ride earlier.  No, she's comfortable in bed.  I sit in her chair, text my friend Betsy to catch up, on yoga, on the Christmas holiday, and she's flying back to DC from Utah, and in the background mom's talking to herself, stirring, and down the stairs as I am in mid sentence composition.  And she's hungry.  Oh, but not that hungry.  Oh, I don't want to disturb you.  My voice rises, mom, what do you want?!  Okay, pizza, so I put my energy on hold and heat up the oven for 425, Paul Newman cauliflower crust pizza...  Okay, calm down, you can do this.  She's on the couch still.  The cat has observed me head into the kitchen, so he hops down from being next to her on the sofa and out he goes.  Where did the cat go?  Then she's singing Silent Night in her out of tune tone deaf way, so I vanish back into the kitchen's relative refuge.

She'll go around all day looking at random pieces of paper, packing slips, old mail from the Toyota Takata Airbag recall, oh uh, we're in trouble, Ted, Ted, are we in trouble... So I leave the kitchen, over to where she's sitting in her great chair...  I look at the two pieces of mail, one a promise of rates for an extended car warranty, and the recall note.  Mom, we already took care of this?  I'm not so sure.  Mom, remember driving down to the Toyota dealership in North Syracuse off of 481?  No, she doesn't remember...

No wonder I've become addicted to looking into my iPhone for the communal minds of distant cyber friends for some relative sanity, Instagram.  (If not worse.)

Is this my home?  This is a nice place.  But I left some things back at the other house.  Okay, mom.

It gets exasperating.   This spiritual journey to pained adulthood.

Okay, pizza's ready, mom.

She rises from her chair.  I'm coming.  I don't have an airplane, ha ha ha.  

She comes in.  Where are the people?  Mom, it's just us.

I ask if her if she wants some "roast beef," from the standing rib roast from Christmas dinner leftovers.  No, I'm fine.  How about a small piece.  Okay, she says, as if she doesn't remember saying no.  I've brought the horseradish sauce over, as an alternative to the hot gravy way I've served it with the last three nights.  She smacks her lips as she eats the cut of pizza picking it up with hand, her mouth looking like a monkey's as she chews with her broken teeth.  She spreads some horseradish sauce on the bit of crust she's picked on.

Well, I offer, I never thought we'd get through all that roast beef, I say.  (There's more in the freezer, plus the bones.).   

It ends with I won't come here again, after she says, no, my house is over that way.  This is the last time.

She observes her mother's mirror, there to my left on the wall before the old dining room table here in the kitchen, cluttered.  I should write a story about my mom's mirror, she says.  Well, why don't you.  You have to get in the...

I suggest, as I mention my going out to get groceries, that she rinse her mouth out, and she quickly gets angry with me.  I will not be bossed around.  She slams down her glass when I ask her to take her pill.  I call it pill for a her bones, though it's a mild tranquilizer.  I move her little wine glass closer to her, asking if she'd like more.  She immediately bangs the glass down where it was before.

Do you want a B-12?  I've had enough with your pills and being bossed around.  Well, I'm going to take one.  Good for you, she snoots.

So, what's up for the rest of the day...  Did you cut your hair last night?  It looks good.  So what are going to do...  Mom, I told you I'm going to the grocery store.  Oh, fun.  She compliments me on my shirt.  L.L. Beans, I tell her.  Mr. Beans has outfitted a lot of good men...  and women too.  What a nice bracelet that is.  Is it gold?  No, mom.  Copper.

She rises to clean off her plate, the pouring some water on it, then checking on the back door and here comes the cat.  Oh you’ve been out all this time…  poor kitty.

Okay mom.  I leave her picking at her scalp.  It’s damn cold out there.  Yup.

I find the card and envelope with 2 twenty dollar bills, and as I walk out and start the car to warm the engine.  My spine straightens.

And on my grocery list, wine, and maybe cider too...

I go the grocery store, after the wine store, where I leave embarrassed from having asked the stalwart woman if she's been boosted yet, and to hide my embarrassment I listen to her agreeably as she tells me she is a healthy person, and that everyone she knows who's had the shots has gotten sick, and she hasn't gotten sick yet.  At the grocery store I repeat my parking lot joke, looks like a good night to ge drinking down by the river.  And here to I embarrass myself, and no one really gets my "living in a van down by the river," because you shouldn't really joke about such things.

Then later, after four glasses with a nice young woman bartender at Bistro 197, I go out across to the east side, where there's a bar that serves food late.  I was just going to leave, but the woman bartending there was nice enough to come over and check on me, so I have a shitty California fruit bomb cab in a plastic cup full of ice, but the whole crowd is for Trump.  The night gets increasingly weird when an older guy asks if I want to smoke any weed with them, no thanks.  I avoid the weed, but strike up conversation with a large man who looks vaguely like Albert Finney, but Polish American.

As I drive away the kid in the hoody is up in a maple tree where the older guy, slender, who was also wasted, I should never have said hey to him as he got his jack and coke and passed by, he's talking to the kid up in the tree, whereas going to the car I was pretty sure he was talking to himself, in a drunken rant.

In the morning, I'm wakened by our meals on wheels friend's knock, and also Ben the maintenance guy's call at the same time, as he needs to come and measure for the new dishwasher, who comes and goes curtly, and the poor woman has to see me with my hair stuck out to the side looking like a crazy man, and I can't explain to any of these people about the Covid symptoms, for which I was careful about wearing a mask last night.

I take some cough medicine, but the sweetness of it quickly brings on a feeling of a hollow stomach.  I open a fresh seltzer water, regretting the plastic of it, and release a bit of the demon airs from last night being a fool.  I feel stupid again.  But I get in a few Nadi Kriya and attempts to roll my core stomach muscles back and forth, exhaling through opposite nostrils on the back steps of cold concrete, coughing, releasing mucus so I can breath again in the dry heated cluttered apartment air.

And down in the basement I continue with the kriya practice and the breathing pranayama variations and breath counts and holds, after the mantra as I sit crossed legged and I begin to feel decent again, and after the silent mantra Ham Sa I'm feeling on my way into Shavasana corpse pose, and I feel that Jesus is just one to call attention to how we can be, as the proverbial "Son of God/Man," to be as if at the center of the universe, the center point where the Big Bang came, but also stretched across the whole thing like a vast blue light energy field with cores of other light.  The chakra opening chant had set up a very pleasant vibration, almost like those Tibetan monks I saw once at Amherst, who can make one note, but let other notes drone from deeper within their vocal chambers sympathetically. 

And so it can seem to me, how my years were not completely wasted, as I did explore mediation throughout the years back in the old apartment in the house on the quiet street, as Jorge harassed me but was sweet and kind enough as well, as much as I wish those years back and consider them wasted ones now as I say.  

I was getting in touch, dialing in with the deep...  It's a nice long relaxing breathing lightness thing, letting the muscles sink away from the bones, as if something that needed to gradually sink down to the soft sea floor and find comfortable and safe bedding had drifted down just so, and the old bones could too.  And I had in my deeper heart center mind meditation reconciled Jesus and Buddha and the wisdom of the yoga traditions.  Proper action, as the Bhagavad Gita tells us.

The cat comes in, proudly, as chickadees swim just so through the honeysuckle bushes coming away from the brief visit to the neighbor Bonnie's lard bird feeder.

And when will mom come down...

It's not an easy assignment to write out the spiritual experiences of mediation, morning Sadhana inspiration...

It is a burden, to be responsible, dutiful to the journal, to its honesty, to its reflection of your human thoughts.

Early December sketch

 So, gradually, bit by bit, I became a bum.

"Thanks," is the first thing I hear, after the cat nudges the door open to mom's old study where I try to sleep and balances along a cluttered shelf.  That's from mom, across the small hallway, on her bed.  Thanks.  As in Thanks a lot, offered with the usual.  I guess I'm not making her very happy.  She was on the warpath when I was asleep, waking to hear her. "hello, is anybody here, where is everybody, Ted?  Ted?"  She quiets down for a while.  In the night I get her the pill, but I'm exhausted still.  She doesn't push me about how she's starving.  Can you take me home tomorrow?  Mom, you are home.

I get the old chilled tea out, gunpowder green, sit down, find a place of peace, not easy, within, think of how to approach my being behind in my yoga teacher training certification class.  Behind on the homework, the lesson plans, the agility with teaching the poses.   In truth, I haven't been doing much yoga.  If I get to the morning sadhana spiritual practice in this gloom and uncertainty, that's pretty good.  If I get to study from the book, that is good too.  If I get to read, The Bhagavad Gita, more power to me.

I get a bit done.  I sprayed the wall with watered down bleach last night.  The fan and the dehumidifier...  But what do we have to do, to keep mom pleased.  I'm glad she's still in bed, but..  I've done the dishes.  I've rehearsed a thematic opening and then a centering for yoga class, and then taught myself through a few warm up poses and then asana.  But I still feel a fog over me.  I had two ciders with dinner, somehow enough to make me want to go up and rest, and a nap here turns into sleep.

I had a dream of Chef Bruno the other night.  I had a dream of having a college age girlfriend, as if I was back in college.  Outings to old reservoirs in the woods.  And I'm not certain that mom arrives even in these dreams to spoil the party.

"What is it that is not serving you anymore," one of the adult spiritually questions the Yoga Man Todd asks of us when we fall down into corpse pose.  "What if you let that go, let someone down...  How badly do you want change...  What are you willing to do for it..."

Do I take her to the bookstore?  Do we run out to Ontario Orchards for a Christmas tree?  Is she going to demand to be taken out to eat...  If so, where?  And if so, will I have a glass of wine, which then leads to another and general strife.  Maybe I should just escape now, and study somewhere.  But that would leave her all alone...  She can't feed herself intelligently anymore.  Thanks.

There's the drive down to Washington, DC, for Christmas...  Try not to let that hang over your head, or that you'll be going back to your old apartment...  Will you ever move back there?  What can you salvage...

Almost 11 and mom hasn't stirred yet.  The cat's been in and out several times since 7:30.

I walk around on eggshells, nervous, almost shaking a bit.  I look at my old Jesus face in the bathroom mirror as the fan whirs, inseparable from the light, after brushing my teeth and putting ten percent hydrogen peroxide on some skin barnacles.  Is the cat due for a rabies shot.  Maybe it would be nice to take a walk by the river, but perhaps for now I should just get out into the sunlight, over to the old beaver saga power grid transfer station, where they re-dug the water way to beaver proof it.  I make some dandelion tea.

Maybe I should just let her have her way today.  Lunch at The Press Box, fine, I don't give a shit.  I just won't drink.  Homework later.

I'm an old bartender.  I don't have any advice to give out.

I'll look at my phone, but there will not be anything interesting, beyond a friend's post on Facebook, or Instagram.

About 11:45 I go up and check on mom, and she's there sitting at the side of her bed.  I ask her if she's hungry.  Sure.  I go down and open a can of Progresso Chicken Noodle soup, adding a small carton of decent chicken stock, the store out of bone broth, a shake of ginger, cayenne, turmeric, a pinch of ground flaxseed, a dash of seaweed salt, cutting into the bone in chicken breast I baked last night in onions.  

Well, Mom, would you like to go get a Christmas Tree out at Ontario Orchards... It's a nice sunny day, not too cold, not too windy.  She snipes at me.  Asks me irrelevant questions.  Are you still in school?  Yes, mom, this is your home.  The mirror, the map of Ireland.  Nana White.  Well, I've lived here before.

She's less kindly to me as I get her out the door, after finding her the right coat, her gloves, her hat, her cane.  She pauses as she stands out on the sidewalk in front of her steps.  Mom, the car's right there, I say, pointing to it.  I'm not the village idiot, she shouts back at me.  Ten times smarter than you, she adds, quietly as I open the car up.  

Really mom.  Do you want to get a Christmas Tree or not...  She pretends to get out of the car.  I look at her.  Up to you...

We get on the road.  Over the hill down past the muck farming fields, up the next hill and over, down to turn left onto Seven South.  Right on Twenty West.  Down along the marsh of dead flooded trees, a habitat for duck and geese, beaver...  And soon, after mom asking me to slow down again, going about 40, we pull up to the intersection of 104.  Ontario Orchards just by, past the old school house and the small brick church, a large parking lot and nursery, the barn building where you'll find produce, Christmas ticky tacky, frozen meats, lots of apples, pet food, plant material, garden stuff, potted plants, vegetables, chocolate, aged cheddar cheese, baked pies and breads.  Potatoes, squashes, onions, scented soaps, cat nip.

Out in the lot we have a leisurely walk over to the trees, after I wait for her to talk to herself and finally unhook her seatbelt, bundled up there in her coat, finally opening the door and stepping out.  There are only a few Balsam Firs left, way too big for the car's back seat, too big & heavy for me to handle.  The rows of trees, there are some Douglas firs in the size I'm looking for.  And I have done my chants earlier, so I'm feeling fairly calm about negotiating her through the market part with its many aisles.  I get her in through the door, holding onto the receipt tag from the tree as the man is cutting a fresh end to take water. She hovers once inside the door, so I have to guide her forward.  

Go pick out some apples, mom.  I'm looking for almonds, dates, catnip (the cat looking depressed, picking up on mine, hurt by our yelling at each other).   The tree.  A simple wreath for the front door.  Get her back, feed her something, maybe go do some homework.  Or maybe just write.  Get away from dementia town.  Laptop.  Get some sunlight sitting at the McDonald's like table.  

I don't feel up for any homework, but at least I'm moving independently.  Mom wanted to come along.  I told her NO.

Sketches, pre Christmas 2021

You try to live a life working on the meaning of life.  You wait on people, fair enough.

But you end up taking care of your old crazy Mary Lincoln volatile mom.  Broke.  Running out of money to pay for basic things, like rent.  And a job after all this?

So you end up soaking the dishes, getting the silverware done that you'd washed yesterday but didn't rinse, just left in the sink the morning after you cooked dinner and served mom and then got so tired you had to disappear, pretending to do homework, reading at least, but doing nothing, so disheartened.  And the next day is a big doctor's appointment.  But we can't really be getting on the road until just after two, and it's noon now and you've fed mom, so you take her for a little drive into town, a cup of coffee ice cream, a New York Times she won't really read, a look over the lake, the sun is out.  Skip the bookstore, to buy a book for kids or to shepherd her around the store, waiting for her, no real time for that, just a grocery store run, quick, and then the wine store, being out of white for her and red for me.

I get her down to the doctor's office, down in Fulton, a nice drive along down the west side of the river reflecting the winter sky, then over the bridge, and not too many hysterics from mom.

We need to up her dosage on whatever we can up, the memenda, and maybe, well, something to mildly tranquilize her.  She talks one story to the doctor, and I slip in the truth, my perspective anyway, where I can.  I think he gets it.  Dr. Ouano.  

But goddamn, I'm feeling grim the next day.  The hour of yoga anatomy with Ellen Saltonstall was fascinating, about fascia.  And in the night, with wine, I think of how all the writers in the world were motivated by this strange enveloping muscle holding organ that goes in bands through all of us.  The fascia has moods, is effected by them.  Any writer worth his salt knows motion, physical activity, the knowledge of holding a tool, an axe, let us say, or a wine bottle and the opener, the lifting of cases, the motion of running.  The writers knew, know, the secret of keeping the fascia happy, and of how bands from the forehead go over the head and down hour back and through your legs, and all the way down to the bottom of your feet.  And inactivity is no good for these fibers.  Motion is necessary.  Kerouac the fullback.  Hemingway the hunter.

So I get the tub with hot water and soap, get the batch of the silverware dipped and rinsed, all of it feeling the silverware rack of the dishwashing machine that does not work here, waiting to be replaced, and then I proceed with the rest.  Then tossing a few things from the fridge, packing the tall trashcan liner bag full.

Mom slept on the couch again.  In her coat.  I had to take her out to The Press Box, as a treat she insisted upon, though by that point I had time constraints.  Coming up the stairs from the basement she is bent over, head on her hands and forearms.   But I let it slip, mom, you need a shower, you haven't taken one in more than two weeks.  There's shit on your pants.  She denies it.  From two weeks ago when you had to poop against the dumpster outside Bame's.  

I go up the stairs and look back, to use the upstairs bathroom as she uses the downstairs.  She's looking for her cane.  She sees me looking at her.  You're a fucking creep, she tells me.  And I am.

I go back down to sleep more, or just hide.  Got a headache.  Can't deal.  Summon the courage later to face the day and the dishes, and the rest.  The bookstore?

I feed her, I get her out for a drive, around 3 in the afternoon, we go get a newspaper and her cup of coffee ice cream, then down for a view of the lake.  The old lighthouse reflecting the sun.  Quick swing through town, First Street, then to The Big M, quick run, okay, we'll take a quick trip to the book store, but we can't stay long.

I put two chicken breasts in the oven with some quickly cut onions and I make the meeting, Cheryl, for a tutoring session.

But it is no fun to have the time to write, rather a curse.  A time of being unable to make any decisions.  Of being stuck.  The argument when we got home, when I tell her, look, be thankful, I took you out to the bookstore, I told you I had a meeting.  Oh, you're so important.  You have a penis, I just have a hole...

What?!?  (Disgust.).   Look, mom.  You were a professor, you had meetings too.  Anyone still working has meetings to go to.

So I stew around with what to do with mom for the day.  I've done the dishes.  Let the cat out on a prowl in the back yard before it rains.  It's not warm out.

After my meeting, which takes my head away from mom, who's carrying on upstairs, with large long OOOHHHHs and other cries, so that I have my aunt call her just in time, and my tutor asks me, "is your mom okay," as I get completely distracted with the directions I'm supposed to be giving for The Four Essentials, Open, Engage, Align, Expand.  I need to work on my language for the poses anyway.

I get through the hour.  I don't how dedicated to yoga I can be.  I'm making it hard for myself, psyching myself in a lot of ways.

But after we're through dinner, I've had it with mom.  

There's no way around it, I need to go to graduate school.  Brother calls.  Maybe it's too much for her to be driving all that way, then not being in her home with her cat, disorientated as she is.  Will the pills, the new dosage, help?  Will there be a tranquilizer for her?  Take care of her teeth, or get her hearing aids.  I tried to press the point about her anxiety, as did her colleagues.  The doctor is listening to her, yes, but I get my points in...  We went to The Press Box that night...

I'm trying to look past, or around, my misery.  I deserve it.  What did I do with that nice kid, but become the Prodigal Son, had, been had, by everyone and every thing...

And I'll never have a chance at a girlfriend or any fun or happiness like that ever again, not at my age and state.  That's what you get for being a writer...  a bum...  I get the internet, the web, friends on Facebook far away, in all senses of the term, unreal.  Horror.   Dark thoughts.

But my job has been good for the fascia, at least.  Constant motion.

Other than that, I've never achieved a thing.  I"m ashamed of myself.  How could anyone else likes me...  And I know my situation...

Mom is quiet til mid morning.  I sneak a peek in at her, she's reading, okay, cool.  I can go work on my yoga practice and my homework.  There's the whole decision too about driving her down to DC to see her grandchildren.  I could go by my old apartment...

After making soup for her, a nice onion soup color from the onions baked with the chicken breast, I get her to change out of the jeans she's been wearing for three weeks now, telling her I'm doing a colored wash.  I'm also working on the Cologuard stool sample process, and of course you don't want to get that wrong.  Set up the little tray under the toilet seat, then the white sold plastic bucket with the screw on tight lid, and also a strange Q-tip type thing you swab through the shit you just took, to cover the groves at the end with poop matter.  I've been careful to take a probiotic and also some fiber, but the shit doesn't come out as neatly as I'd hoped.  Well, anyway...  I shave, I take a shower, after sealing the whole thing up.  

It's cold, rainy, I head out, taking out the trash, and with my poop box all sealed up under my arm in the cold blustery wintry mix rain.  I'm not happy about anything anymore.  There is no more happiness.  I'm not even confident about doing well in yoga class.  To earn the heart affection of a woman, you have to be capable of doing something, like, being a school teacher.  Competent at it.   A man about it. 

No wonder, no girlfriend...

But as soon as I get my laptop out, after coming back, concerned she might be hungry, from my yoga homework--I saw a pretty young woman working the barista job at a little coffee booth in Canal Commons, having forgotten my laptop earlier after dropping off my Cologuard Poop in a Box, just as soon as I sit down to write, after putting a tray of stuffed peppers, gluten-free spaghetti and potato gratin for mom, just as soon as I sit down to write, mom comes down from upstairs, talking to herself, sighing, talking to herself more.  Just as sure as the ghost she's been in my life, pouting and sighing, always with the big volatile explosive reaction, all my life, since boyhood, putting on all the lights back on Ernst Road after I came home late from necking with Hilde in high school, on my way to being a local rock star with the Chevy Malibu station wagon with faux wood paneling.  Everyone else was drawing away from her, just to spare themselves the craziness, patient as my father truly was, an honorable man, my brother just finding a way out and away and off I go, bye.   I wanted my father's life.  Not hers.  She'll still lampoon anyone for "never doing anything fun."  And her defense against that, of course, is ugly.  Do you placate her?  Or, maybe you just begin to hide, let the cat deal with her.  Your father, he didn't know how to have fun... 

So speaketh Claire.

Every day is an ordeal here.  I hope the dosage change helps.  I hope they can come through...

Disgust is my feeling every day.  And of course mad at myself for having fallen into this trap.

I wake up foggy, and I have to get mom down to the hospital for a bone density scan.  She's out cold up on her bed.  I touch her toes, and a twitch, but she's still deep asleep.  Finally I wake her, and the first thing she says, she asks me if I've come to try to kill her, Jesus Christ mom.   Mom I'm sorry to do this to you, but the next appointment isn't until February.   I bring her up a chilled Pepsi.  Downstairs, I get her a slice of pizza, eyeing the clock.  The appointment is at ten.  They ask you get there fifteen minutes early.  Okay, we'll just try for our best.   Old lady wrangling.  On top of Christmas open mess of of all the possibilities of what might be needed ad infinitum.  Presents?  What kind of presents or price range?  Ship, mail, or are we going down there in person, just so other people can see where we are at with mom...  But that's eight hours on the road... 

But on certain days I become aware of my true horrible college failures, and if I'd put just more effort in and not been such an obstinate contrarian and if one of my professors might have caught it, and asked me what I needed, instead of letting me dangle...  Drinking to rid myself of all the bad feelings...  as if to put them away, hide from them.

And I need to put out another book, morally, just to show I was wrong, that you shouldn't go drink your way through college or whatever I did, and offer some sort of pained correction over the lessons learned about the illusions I've lived under...

You made a choice, my aunt says, to stay at that bar with all those interesting people, no need to be ashamed of that, you still have a life to live..

But I need to express to someone where I'm at, how I'm struggling.  Like a confession.  A correction.  A rock bottom I've hit, finally unable to hide it from myself or anyone else.  But then there's mom on top of me, squeezing me all the time unless I simply escape.

But you'd thought what you wanted, what you'd hoped for, the chance to write, to not have to drag your sorry ass in to the bar to work like a dog until you were completely beat and do it four straight nights, after cruel earlier Tex Mex Restaurant shifts, night, day, night, day.  Sunday night, typical of your love hate relationship with the whole thing.   The day you wanted to stay home, the sabbath, and in the same the night you hold court.

To have to sit home, or wherever you are, on the roads of life, and have nothing much to do BUT write quickly becomes a nightmare more than an opportunity, a deep look at your ugly old lazy self who, unlike all other adults, hasn't gotten a single thing together.  And the boring life you previously wrote about has just gotten, seemingly anyway, even more hollow, devoid of all the normal things of male human life, the job that is a career, having your own family, passing on that most precious thing of all, your genetic codes and the traditions of your parents.

I do have the yoga to lean on.  A therapy for all those years not being good to myself, just hanging in there.

A few days have passed since I last wrote.  I got the booster, it didn't even hurt, down at the Kinney's drug store near the McDonald's and the Quik Mart gas pumps, the intersection at 104 just this side of the university and the electric plant's huge stacks, and I didn't think much of it and went for a cup of coffee.  At night, not enough water either, and rather getting into the wine, just feeling desperate and behind and incapable on my yoga teacher training course.  And the next day feeling increasingly achy and tired through the day...

I gutted it out, my heart almost breaking at my lousy job of being a student.

And is spirituality any good for you in this world, or does it just get in the way...

I'm not even Dharma Bums St. Jack of the Dogs in the chapter of Nin's house in Rocky Mount, North Carolina...

And so I try to get distracted, after I've cooked breakfast and gone to the grocery store and kept mom entertained some, then lunch, then dinner, and dishes all the way through, and the constant battle to keep the kitchen organized...  I attempt to distract myself so that my mind can work.

Mmmm k.  The way mom says okay.  She uses a sharp knife to spread the almond butter on saltines.  She doesn't want the cat out at night.   There are small open bottles of Pepsi by her bed,  by her chair, on the counter, on the kitchen table.  

She comes down and wants a bite to eat.  I give her a pill for her memory and focus.  I heard her stirring upstairs, just as I sit down to write.   Then she's calling my name in the living room.

Am I your mother?

So I tell her I'll cook a pizza, the frozen cauliflower rice crust kind, with some ham and sliced red onion, but it will take a few minutes, and she's asking me, so, are there any interesting plans for later today?  No!  

So later after it's cooked, I go up and call her down.  I put a slice in the toaster to heat it just a bit, and present it to her, and soon enough she's using scissors to cut it, having failed with the sort of sharp knife.   and then she's staring at me as I'm half watching YouTube for a good classic samurai film, then finding Lester Young jamming some bluesy jazz, and she's looking at me, anything new in the world, usually people talk at the table, is that a song, so I raise my voice, yes, Mom, it's Lester Young from 1944, raising my voice and she gets angry at rises from the table.  Don't forget to brush your teeth, mom.  Don't forget to wipe your ass, she counters.  I feel a bit bad, but frustrated enough to just shrug, oh well.  Off she goes.

But it's enough to destroy the mood.  

 Christmas Eve.  

I went over to the Throop's house the eve of Christmas Eve, and fortunately, almost psychically I brought along my guitar. 

A welcome break.  I lead them into Like a Rolling Stone...  it's a good jam.

I remember how my father would handle it, her expositions, her rants, her tirades, her takeover of our peace and happiness, taking us back to the picture of her childhood seen through her childhood mind, now acted out upon us.  I felt so sorry, so sympathetic, when he'd take to the bedroom in the afternoon, to lay on his back and close his eyes, and just let it rest, let it pass away.

And now I find myself doing the very same thing, feeling an exhaustion, even from just spending two hours with her.

That's how I grew up.  Expecting all of that, as normal.

And so when I met a girl in college, who pursued her New York City scorched earth policy against my sensitive benevolence, putting her fireworks and unpredictability, virtual schizophrenic duplicitousness then blaming me, and then when she'd done that marvelously, then she softens... but by then I have enough self awareness and self respect to know that she's evil, no good for me, so I avoid her, to what I would later see as a chance, one that I missed.  Great.

So the whole thing is bogus.

hard for me to be a man anyway, when the burden of mom living off on her own came down squarely on me just as I was going through my senior year at college...  blah blah blah.

Mom's crying out on Route 5, because her car has broken down.  No body else going to help her.

Unwrapping presents, or, rather, cutting open the heavy paper sealing tape on the Amazon Prime boxes, giving gifts, rather, Mom opens her first one, struggling to open first the box, and then the gift bag within.  Over on the couch, I cringe, trying to write off an email to my little yoga group, and I cannot form sentences in my mind as mom continues with her circular rambling talk.  The first gift, or maybe the second, after the body lotion from her grandkids, Kiehl's, is the new book in hardcover, the latest biography on Sylvia Plath.  I might have grumbled my exasperation, and then after enjoying the book and reading off the picture captions, oh, we need to go to Cape Cod, I haven't ever been to Cape Cod..., suddenly her face drops.  Earlier she'd asked me, "did she kill herself," well, yes, mom, it was a cold winter and she was alone with the kids and with the gas ovens back in those days, you could do that, so it was sort of a fluke as much as anything...  But now she's turning on me.  You gave me this book, you want me to commit suicide, she suddenly shouts at.  Mom, I didn't get you that book.  Chris did.  She's a writer, she was married to Ted Hughes, you know, so you can round out your history of him...

Brother calls with family.  That goes well.  Everyone is Covid shy these days.  Everyone has a story, too.

Another Amazon box, and this time it's the biography of Ted Hughes.  I shrug.  Sorry about the theme.  Writers are miserable people in general.  It's like a possession.

(Later she's mumbling on to herself over his pictures like she's talking to him.  Stay out of trouble.  Handsome...)

She calms down later.  We have some chip dip, onion, with small curd cottage and cream cheese, Nana's recipe.  Potato chips. 

I go out for a walk.  Not far, just to get out of the house and let my back straighten and my shoulders going up for a change. 

As far as I see it, the roast, a huge one, sure to give us plenty of leftovers, needs to sit out to come to an even temperature, and I don't feel a lot of happy energy to get the roast going.  I'm just putting it in over the onions I've sliced into the big Lodge iron pan.  Mom comes into the kitchen, looking concerned.  Is dinner ready.   No, I'm sorry mom, I'm not very organized today...  I'm sorry.

I end up making her some soup to calm her, and she goes back into the living room.

She comes back and stares at me...  No, not yet.  How much longer...  Oh, half an hour anyway, then I have to let it rest.

I get her some, and then she's talking to herself in her chair over her books, and I go up for a nap and conk out, then I come down later and do the dishes.

The day after Christmas I wake at 1 in the afternoon feeling empty and hollow, with a tight cough deep in my chest, a pain I've never felt before, and too exhausted and fall back to sleep after taking a pee and drinking some water.  I was up watching Russell Crowe in Noah, and after my Christmas alone with mom, who wonders, "where are the people?"  What people?  We talked to x and y, and Sharon can't do anything...  I see the grey murk clouds of winter sky... don't get up really til after two, but something is up with my lungs, and who knows now, Omicron...  It was a long day, two bottles of pinot noir down in 12 hours...  that's too much.  Why can't I quit, I'd like to...

And Noah was a righteous man, where the rest were wicked, and God sent a great flood to wash away the evils thereof.

Mom comes down.  At least I had the energy to do the dishes last night.

I heat a slice of pizza for her.  What's the plan today?  What's on your agenda?  Did you sleep well?  3 times.  

Again, I make soup for her.  Again she comes down after I've stirred after my nap as I'm doing yet another round of dishes and carving up the remainder of the standing rib roast and putting some of it away in the freezer, well-wrapped up.

I'm getting impatient with her, but she has enough kind words, it's a hard holiday, very tiring.  And after I ask her how the plate of food I've put in front of her, and she says, snootily, "fine..." dismissively, the same thing she did to the apple pie my sister in law cooked from scratch at Christmas dinner at my brother's house a few years ago, and he blew up at her too, just as I want to now, but I let it slide, slide past, just ignore it, Sanskrit chants...  She'll go to bed soon, she's got her pills down, just gotta get her to do her rinses and then brush her teeth, which she always finds a way to resist, and she complies with me and goes off to bed, though she might well stir in the night, as she did last night to the point where I shouted at her.

I found that I needed to remind myself what a woman is.  I looked at things at night I felt a bit ashamed of.  Even then I'm scarred, not finding anyone, to be all that nice, either out there in unfortunate addictive cyber world, or in on line dating.  And I can't blame anyone.   

Mom reminds me, "you hate me."  You hate women, she tells me.  

Oh, what a fine example you are, Mom.  

It takes whole blank hours of the quiet nighttime late hours to relax. Sad, I suppose, but that's how it is.

And finding myself too old to connect as I had been able to for so long with anyone, as if cast out, I thought of Noah, and of God.  I thought as an ineffectual man in a fallen and wicked world, to entertain a fantasy at least, briefly, as I knew not which direction to turn to.

The things the old people in the oldest of tales, they went through things.  Things painful to take.  And so they took to coming up with stories, out of their own experiences, of course, to symbolically express a sense of the deeper things they knew to be going on.  Could all of humanity be wicked, so wicked, evil and violent so that they, we, ruin the whole face of the earth of God's Creation...  Only a great flood could do justice, justice itself.  And one, only one, that's all it takes, along with his family, one family, were enough.

But it's not that bad.  It's just how I am tested, and finally become a man, as they say, an adult.  I see her later, all by herself, the cat at her bed, as she watches television, after I wake from my nap, feeling lousy again.

The pressure had left off a bit, and Christmas was retreating from the calendar.

Okay, she comes down from the bedroom to the kitchen, checking the bathroom, "toilet seat down," as if she does anything to clean here, she takes a bottle of Pepsi from the refrigerator.  And then, thank god, she leaves.  I hear her pulling a couple Kleenex tissues out of the box as she goes, and then her feet, as always, in her Keen hiking shoes, back she goes.

October '21 sketch

 Core wounded identity, the enabler. 

Placation.

Mom is an interference pattern.  I regain calm through meditation.

I wake up with a bit of a headache.  From the Bota Box Cabernet Sauvignon from two nights ago, probably.

I get my morning sadhana in at least.  Then fall back into a nap, after a terrible sleepless night of anxiety, realizing all my sins.  The time just totally wasted. 

The day before mom pleads with me.  She's a nervous wreck.  The only thing she'll settle for, she says, is to go to The Press Box.  She says she's just realized that her mother is dead, and says that this place is not her home.  We were just there, last night, mom, I tell her.

But every day, no, I don't know what to do with her.  I hide by sleeping late, until her shout rises, "Hello?!" or some other expression.  "I'm hungry!"

I drag my self up or down the stairs depending where I slept to the kitchen, worrying about what to do feed her.  

Will I ever work again?  What happened to my literary life?  My mind is clouded.  Anxious.  I had cider last night, maybe four cans.  A headache lasting from two days ago.  From the Lexapro?  The cheap box wine?  Mold in the cellar?  I treat the flea problem down in the basement, not with the fogger bomb I purchased from the hardware store, but the peppermint clove oil spray I sprayed over the concrete floor after moving my bedding up to the second floor.  I left the fan on in the heating air conditioning system and I'm upstairs watching the television with mom after giving her evening pill and the strong fumes come through the vents, prompting her reaction, "you're trying to kill me..."  I crack open a window, go down and click the wall unit to fan from On to Auto.   Later I soothe myself listening to Todd Norian, Shanti Mantra, music from YouTube.  And I can understand why I like the night, a break from her constant consciousness.  

I wake tired and anxious, and the green tea, while giving me some pep, makes me more anxious.  Mom suggests we order a big pizza as I check in on her first thing, rising from my air mattress when she lets out a shout.  There's a cauliflower crust pizza, Price Chopper brand, in the freezer, so I go down, turn the heat on--pouring rain earlier coming down heavy with a Northwest wind--and then get the oven preheated to 450, have some tea.  

Later, when mom asks, after she's had what she will eat from the slice I give her, giving me her pepperoni, what might we be doing later, I tell her, well, it's Sunday, we'll go get the newspaper and take a look at the lake, the waves will be up, and she says, "whoop-tee-shit," and inwardly I wince, taking the blow with a slight inward bow, my shoulders sinking just a little bit more.  With the wind up there's a small boat advisory from the weather service, waves 6 to 9 feet up toward the mouth of the St. Lawrence.

With the rain I go down to the basement and lift the water collection pan out of the back of the dehumidifier and jostle it up the stairs to pour out in the toilet.  I take a shower.  

The duty of another is full of peril, I remember, one of my father's sayings.  The duty of another is full of peril.  Let that sink in, here in this situation.  My failed literary career.  At least I should have gone into the academic side, somehow, too hard to make anything come out of your writing.

It's hard to do anything, fearing interruption or attack, hearing her creep down the stairs, hello, is anybody here?

Yoga, or at least a sadhana session, would be good today, but it's hard to concentrate enough once both mom and I are up.

Mom makes me nervous.  That's nothing new.  Feels like I'm standing around with my dick out in the open.  I take a propranolol, half a tablet. 

That feeling, nothing is ever good enough.  Unless everyone gets into the wine, for a temporary reprieve. 

I was meant to be a teacher, literature, that sort of thing, analyzing poetry.  But I went into the restaurant work, so I could write.

To ease my nerves, I get the big pot out, with butter and olive oil over the burner, to sear a link of sausage, then the meatballs, then the onion and pepper, then a splash of wine, then all back into the pot and then make a tomato sauce.

Mom comes down, I pour her some wine, as she asks for it. 

Later, the pot simmering now, I go in to the living room to check on her.  So how are you, she asks me, from her chair.  "I'm a bit anxious, I say...  my career."  "A state career?"  No, mom, just a career in general... I don't want to go back to bartending.  

"You better not have done that to my son," she says, when I suggest I'm unhappy, over yesterday's newspaper.  Peak foliage the back page of the front section says.