Kafka's Dream

I'll have to admit that the 4:55 of the soul is much better than the 3:55 of the soul.  And so. . . perhaps I can somehow shape a morass of incidents into something coherent.  

Yea. . . I doubt it, too.  

Before bed the night before, I had a text telling me that one of our friends "got rushed to the hospital last night and had to undergo emergency life saving surgery. He had an aortic dissection that had to be repaired right away."  

He was in surgery for over twelve hours.  

After that bit of news, I watched an interview with Christopher Hitchens shortly before his death.  

Perhaps these are the bedtime stories one should eschew.  

I had spent the day--another day--at the doctor's office with my mother.  She was having her eyes checked to see if she could have cataract surgery.  We sat in science fiction rooms for two and a half hours.  I managed to take that photo of the nightmare machine above with my phone.  Perhaps that, too, was part of my dyspeptic psychic mix.  

My mother can't see anything.  I watched her take the eye chart exam, and she was missing most of the letters.  And yet, at the end of it, the doctor told her she had 20/40 vision.  WTF?!  

"You certainly don't look 93," she said.  That is what everyone tells my mother.  "You have cataracts," she continued, "but they are like the cataracts of a 70 year old, not of someone 93.  Surgery?  It is up to you.  I can do it, but if you feel you can function without it. . . ."

Outside, I told my mother, "You need to shut the fuck up about how bad you feel.  Every time I take you to the doctor, they tell you how good you are.  Stop your whining."

This was jocular, of course.  I was only trying to cheer her up.  

Up at 3:55 a.m., I heard a rat in the attic.  Just before the sun came up, in the grey predawn light when there is no color nor clear outline, I saw two lumpy figures walking toward the kitchen door.  What was it?  No. . . I couldn't believe it.  It was the biggest fucking armadillo I have ever seen, and I've seen some the size of border collies, and another half its size.  They were heading to the open space that is exposing the rotten floor joist that needs to be repaired, heading for safe harbor beneath my floorboards under the house.  Panicked, I opened the door, stomped my foot on the decking, and shouted, "No, no. . . no!"

The little one ran at me.  Honest.  It was horrific.  I ran back inside and closed the kitchen door.  I was panicked.  No, I was frightened.  I reached for my bb pistol. . . oh, you will hate me. . . and popped off a few rounds.  That did it.  They turned and waddled into the neighbor's yard.  

Rats in the attic, a leaking roof, armadillos and rotten floor joists.  Tell me what troubles my mind?

I went up the ladder into the attic at dawn to look at the rat trap I had set.  It had been sprung, but there was no rat.  Twice now.  These newer, easier to use traps just won't do the job.  They obviously don't break the fuckers' necks.  I am either going to need to use the big assed traditional ones that scare the shit out of me when I load them or go buy an electric one.  They work like a charm, but they are expensive.  

At eight, I decided to go back to bed.  That is when the construction crews on the two houses across the street began.  I turned up the fans on my air filters and passed out.  

I dreamed a dream I told last night to the gymroids, so let's hold off on that for the moment.  

When I got up at ten, I drank some kefir and put on my gym clothes.  But before I left the house, I once again called the framer who has yet to come look at the floor joist.  I can't get him to respond.  This, too, is a nightmare.  I'd like to get this done before the roof, but the rains are coming.  

"Oh, please honey. . . what should I do?" 

Silence. 

I didn't get home from the gym until one-thirty.  Here's a semi-confession--I had half a sub in the fridge from lunch with my mother the day before.  What the hell--a combo sub and a glass of wine.  

I went back to bed.  

The gymroids were meeting for happy hour at five.  It was nearly four when I got out of bed.  My day had been shot.  I hurriedly showered and dressed in one of my fine new Chinese linen shirts and a pair of baby blue Chinese linen shorts.  I looked like something you'd want to lick, or so I hoped.  I looked nearly impish, a little chubby but tropical.  

I took my mother to pick up her prescriptions at the pharmacy.  That is always an adventure, and this was no exception.  Tramadol and Flexaril.  The Flexiril was labelled cyclobenzaprine.  She couldn't hear and was shouting that she was supposed to get Flexiril.  She said she didn't want the Tramadol and launched into a mean narrative about why.  

"No. . . mom. . . you do want the Tramadol."

"No I don't."

"Yes you do.  Trust me."

I was looking at the poor girl behind the counter shaking my head yes.  My mother was trying to pay with her credit card, but the machine kept asking questions that, of course, my mother couldn't read with her 20/40 vision and corrective lenses (!), and so she began shouting at the counter girl in frustration.  By the time we got back to the car, my mother was worn out.  

"You shouldn't yell at people," I said.  

"I don't want the Tramadol," she said.  "It's a narcotic."

"Yea, but I do."

"Oh."  

Tennessee called. 

"Are you going to happy hour?"

"Yea.  I'll be a little late, but I'm leaving in a minute.  Are you going?"

"I guess.  I'll go if you're going, but I am bouncing at 6:30."  

He was meeting Black Sheep for dinner at the Italian restaurant.  

"You should come, too.  He asked about you."

"Old Cock Breath did?"

"Ha!  I'll see you in a bit."

It was the good bar on the Boulevard, the only one I really like.  And it was the usual crowd.  The Judge had decided to join us.  You know him.  You've seen him on t.v.  Or did.  He's retired now.  

I ordered a Negroni.  Oh, brother, it was good.  The bartender used a smoked orange peel for garnish that was just right.  Big ice cube, clear as glass.  But man, it wasn't like the pour I make at home.  Again.  And once more.  

The Judge looked at me and said, "You need to cheer up.  I need to hear a good story."

Yea, I guess I have been pretty glum, so I thought I'd give it a try.  I told them about my 3:55 of the soul.  

"Yea, what was that about?" asked T.  He looked around.  "I got a text from him at four o'clock in the morning."

"Were you up?"'

"No.  I saw it later."

I gave them the morbid account, then I decided to tell them of my dream.  Here we go. 

"So I went back to bed at eight, and for the next hour and a half, I had a dream.  I was pregnant," I said.  

Hoots and agreements--"Of course you were."

"No, wait. . . it gets better.  So I am carrying around this fetus or something, I don't know, it is all weird, but I have it in this plexiglass case and I need to get it to the hospital."

"What the fuck. . ."

"Yea, but when it hatches, or whatever, it isn't a baby, it's an insect.  It's like a green praying mantis, and so I don't know if I was pregnant or if I had just been bitten and infected."

The shock jock pointed to the scar on my calf where the cyst had been.  Everyone was shaking their heads.  Thank goodness, the cocktail waitress arrived just then.

The Judge had been drinking cocktails, but he switched to beer.  "I've got to drive home," he said.  

"Do you pull the judge's card when you get pulled over?" one of the gymroids asked.

"No, never.  That's how you get into trouble.  I just pay the ticket and forget about it."

"I can't believe they give you a ticket," I said.  "Look at me, a fucking hippie.  You'd think I'd get them all the time, but nope.  In town, of course, when they look at my license and see where I'm from, they tell me to slow down or whatever.  But even out of town, I've been pulled over doing a hundred on a country road and the policeman only gave me a warning.  That was in California, though, so. . . ."

The Judge told me he was a conservative.

"How'd you get that way?" I laughed.  

He shook his head.  "I don't know," he chuckled.  "When you see the kind of people in your courtroom. . . ."  He just shook his head.  

T said he had to go and threw down a wad of cash.  The Judge said he was out, too, so we called for the check.  The Judge pulled out his card, but the car guy said no and pulled his out as well.  They decided to split the bill.  The Shock Jock and I would get the tip.  But T had left a hundred bucks, so the Shock Jock and I got off easy.  I decided to mosey down the street with them for one drink before I bolted to the Italian place.  

It was our friend's new wine bar and there were people who knew people.  There was food, and I lingered.  Then our fourth said he had to go and paid the tab.  The night had been easy on my wallet.  I'd had a good number of perfect Negronis, lobster flatbreads, and two towers of raw tuna something.  I was feeling o.k.  

Before we left, the car guy said something to the pretty punk hostess with the nose ring, bare midriff, and low-slung jeans that showed her flat belly and skinny hips, a comment about all the douchebag rich guys she has to deal with.  

"He's a douchebag," I said pointing to my buddy.  "But you know that."  

Indeed, I thought, what else is there?  Rich douchebags or cocky rednecks in pickup trucks and trailer parks or fey Cafe Strange boys holding confused but adamant ideologies, just the three contestants on The Dating Game show.  Everything is a shit show.  The thought of it made me smile.  Yup. . . it's all a shit show.  

I checked my phone.  T. had texted.  

"Are you coming?"

It was late now, but I thought I might catch them on their last drink.  Handshakes and a big hug from the Shock Jock.  

"Love you, bud." 

"You, too."

I don't listen to his show, but the fellows tell me I'm often a topic on his podcasts.  Fictionalized, of course, just like this blog.  We're all characters in some narrative we don't even know about.  

I limped down the Boulevard toward my car.  The bars were hopping on a muggy, tropical Wednesday night.  I should get out of the house more, I thought.  

The Italian place was almost empty.  I texted T.  

"We just left," he wrote.  He included an attachment.  

They had headed over to one of the Billionaire Boys Club's house.  He sent were pics of them sitting around the mansion.  Big place on the lake.  All this money was making me feel small.  But the pictures.  The rooms were uninteresting, sort of pro shop chic, I guess, devoid of texture of the sort I desire, maybe a copy of Golf Digest sitting on the coffee table.  All that money, boats and planes and mountain homes and beach houses and exotic cars. . . and a copy of Golf Digest.  

Trump's Golden makeover of the White House.  

I poured a scotch and sank into my deep leather couch in my little tv room overlooking nothing, the poorest guy in town.  It was my ex-wife's pick, this house.  She now lives on that same lake in a similar mansion.  I've seen it in the magazines.  I've seen the interior.  Racket Club chic.  

Whatever.  I just needed money to get a new roof, fix the floor joists, get a new car. . . .  No, don't think about that now.  I turned on the t.v.  I watched a couple fine art things, a lecture on Spinoza.  

I don't think anyone thought of Kafka when I told my dream.  They just think me weird, I'm sure, sort of the court jester.  They don't read, they admit.  I quote H.S. Thompson's "Fear and Loathing."

"I loved that movie."

"Oh. . . that was from the book.  It wasn't in the screenplay."  

Do I do it on purpose?  Probably.  

But I've gone stupid, I assure you.  

Someone texted and said they couldn't leave a voice message, that my mailbox was full.  I've never bothered to delete any messages, so it made sense.  I started deleting the random stuff, messages from businesses and attorneys and people from the factory and reminders of appointments.  There are about a thousand messages from my mother that I won't delete.  There are others, too, from people I hold dear.  From the way back, there were many messages from Ili.  I played one.  I shouldn't have done that.  

There was a time when I was smart and handsome and loved, I like to imagine.  Now I'm haunted by rats and possums and aggressive armadillos and Kafka-esque dreams.  

But what the hell. . . those Negronis were tops!  Long live the Negroni.

"Smoking, drinking, eating, dressing fashionably. They might have burned out faster but they did burn brightly."  

Terror

I've just suffered through a 3:55 of the soul.  I'll not take you there right now.  It was something terrible and lingering.  One of those moments when your entire life passes before your life unflatteringly.  Rather. . . . 

Let me leave you something pleasant.  You're welcome.  

Disassociate

I've disassociated from my mother's hyperbolic ramblings about her physical and mental conditions.  They are constant now, the only tale she relishes telling.  I cannot let them affect me emotionally any longer.  I am sympathetic, attentive, and loving, but I can no longer handle the continual adrenaline spikes or whatever psychochemical thing that has been happening inside.  It is literally killing me.  It feels like a betrayal somehow, and I DO feel guilty for it, but I cannot help her in any way if I am in as bad a shape as she.  

She is downtrodden.  There is no joy.  I try, but everything is painful for her.  I took her to the doctor yesterday.  She was nearly hysterical in her rambling responses to the doctor's queries.  She told disjointed narratives of how awful it was.  She waves her arms, wild-eyed, as she recounts the horrors she endured.  The doctor wanted to know if the procedure worked, if the pain from the fractured disc was alleviated.  You would never know the answer from my mother's recounting of all the miseries she has.  

"Yes," I said in a low voice.  "It was a success.  She has many other arthritic pains, but that procedure worked."

The doc wanted to give her something for pain.  Of course a 93 year old will have pain, and there is no sense in living with it.  "Tramadol," the doc said.  

"You have to sign for that," was my mother's retort.  She has two bottles of Tramadol at home, but she refuses to take them because "you have to sign for them."  

"Well. . . yes, but they are very mild.  Nobody is ever going to get addicted to Tramadol."

I asked her if they were easier on the internal organs than over the counter pain relievers.  Yes, she said emphatically.  Tylenol was the easiest on the body, but the others are terrible.  This has been my screed forever.  Opioids do not damage the internal organs.  But, having said that, there are dangers with Tramadol including addiction which the doc dismissed out of hand.  

My surprising takeaway is that Tylenol is not the evil, organ destroying drug I've held it to be.  But even ice baths, I've read, can be harmful.  

The question is, ultimately, what do you do for a 93 year old with osteoarthritis and osteoporosis?  

Give them heroin!

We go to the ophthalmologist today.  "We."  It jams up my day, of course.  I have to prepare my house for the maid service, get to the gym and back to shower in time for the eleven thirty appointment followed by her afternoon physical therapy.  

"Are you up for a happy hour this week?" one of the gymroids asked.  

"Oh, son. . . I need one, but it depends on. . . you know. . . my mother." 

All I can say is that some disassociation is beneficial to all of us.  I'm not just going through the motions with my mother, but I am observing more and feeling less.  Deride me if you must, but I can't continue otherwise.  

And still my own problems haunt me.  Have I told you about my problems?  Ha!  I'm sure you have dissociated yourself from those by now.  

So let me irritate you with my joy.  I took a Xanax to sleep last night, and once again had what seems to have been a good night's sleep.  I dreamed all night of adventure and love.  Yes. . . there was romance, both emotional and physical.  It was not a sexual dream but extremely lovely.  In the end, however, things began to go south as they always have, and so I woke.  I guess I didn't want to see that through.  Very vivid, though.  I remember every detail. 

Yup.  That is the extent of my joy.  Pathetic.  But I am dissociating from my own life, too.  I'm simply observing that as well.  I can control nothing, it seems.  Control is an illusion with which I have come to grips.  For most of my life, I believed in the Existential creed that the only thing you could control was how you felt and reacted to your condition.  

I no longer believe that to be true.  I am certain now that one cannot control even volition.  Once the chemicals in the body turn on you. . . you haven't any choices at all . 

Holy Christ, this was all a freely associated blathering.  I had no idea of writing such a thing today.  I don't know what I thought I might write, but this wasn't it.  Selavy.  Once the gremlin gets hold. . . . 

I've been watching Christopher Hitchens again.  People have released a lot more media of his lectures and debates and interviews, and I am realizing he was a very arrogant man.  Knowing his dire end, it is painful to watch him smoke and later constantly clear his throat of phlegm.  Once he got cancer, he never allowed himself pity, or so he said, but surely there was regret.  The man was certainly brilliant and a fantastic debater, but watching him makes me feel I've squandered my life and talents. 

Maybe I'll quit watching Hitchens and stick with reruns of Andy Griffith.  Just about all of life's lessons can be learned there.  

Fuck it.  I'm romantic by nature.  I have no defense against it, no control.  Things like this make me happy.  No wonder I have no true love.  Can you imagine living with something like this?  Hell. . . you'd just have to disassociate yourself, no? 

The New Reality

And so we have entered "The New Reality."  How much is this going to cost?  No matter.  News outlets and defense contractors are "making a killing."  Invest now if you have any money.  Drones, bombs, submarines, warships, aircraft and A.I.  Daddy Warbucks surely has.  

For the rest of you under the age of 25, there is the hope of being drafted for military service.  So I hear.  More than half of you are part of the "bro culture," so here's your opportunity.  But, you know, maybe they will only draft the other ones.  

For those of you who are crossing your fingers for a peaceful solution. . . yea, good luck with that.  

The rest of us just become numb to it as long as it is somewhere else.  It is like the dull ache of a tooth that is going bad.  It doesn't hurt all the time, but you know it is there and will eventually need repair.  Not today, though.  Maybe next week.  

So I cooked up two things yesterday, the photo above which has been sitting in my hard drive for over a decade and little red beans and pork over rice for my mother.  I took it to her house where I was able to watch the news.  

It wasn't news.  It was suppositions and predictions and opinions and lots and lots of commercials.  The same commercials again and again and again.  How do people do it?  All I can glean is that their minds have been altered so that they are comforted by the repetition.  I can't see it any other way.  

Maybe it was a physical reaction to the world situation, I don't know, but until I went to my mother's out of necessity, I didn't leave the house all day.  I meant to.  Do you ever have such days, days when you don't do what you think you wish to do?  Days when you just sit without music or any other distraction?  Just sit and stare?  It is a malady of some sort.  My guess is that yesterday was just a psychosomatic reaction to what I can't control.  

And there I was on the precipice of happiness.

Last night, I took a sleep aid.  I went to bed at ten and slept for ten hours.  I didn't want to get up this morning.  I still feel sleepy.  But I must get underway.  I must take my mother to a doctor's appointment today and again tomorrow.  The framer still hasn't called me back about repairing the floor joist.  And I've decided I need a new twenty thousand dollar roof.  That would be a bargain price.  

Yea, I could go back to bed.  

The N.Y. Times has some polling about the 100 best films of the 21st century.  Such things.  But you can tell much about a person by the films they choose (link).  Some of the choices on this list are surprising and others seem predictable.  I just decided I could love Pamela Anderson.  I hope she didn't just hire someone to make the list for her.  But I have forgotten so many movies I've seen, I need to make a list from those lists.  "Mulholland Drive" shows up often.  I've never really "gotten" that film nor why people like it so.  On the other hand, "Force Majuer" shows up more than I would have thought.  That was one that has long stuck with me.  

There are a lot of "foreign" films on the list.  I think in some cases people are just trying to show off.  

Kidding.  

But not really.  

That is all I can muster.  Keep your ear to the ground and your eye on the sky.  I don't know if that is possible, but I think that is what they say.  

Peace ✌️☮️

Fucking hippies. Fucking peaceniks.

The Shit Has Hit the Fan

Friends, I had so much fun stuff I'd planned to write this morning, but when I got up at five, I was confronted with the New Reality--War with Iran.  

It's not officially a war, yet.  That takes an act of Congress, but what won't those folks give the Supreme Leader?  

I'm not that worried, really.  Trump has some of the best minds on television advising him.  And of course, with Hegseth at the helm. . . . 

FUCK!

But at least Trump has kept our allies close.  They will certainly be eager to help when we are fighting fifteen different enemies.  

"Sir, I'd like to be deployed to the war in California. . . sir!"

Don't get me wrong.  I DO blame Iran for this.  I am not friends with people who chant "Death to America" and consider me less than human because I am an "infidel."  And as I've said all along, sooner or later, somebody is going to use a nuke.  I think it is inevitable.  We are all living in the Land of Strangelove now.  Quit worrying and learn to love the bomb!

Let's face it--we're Little People.  We live in a democracy that chose the Supreme Idiot to lead us into the future.  One person, one vote.  

What more can I say right now?  I don't even have cable.  I can't watch this play out in real time.  I'm not glued to the set waiting for the next expert analysis.  And none of my considerable number of problems have disappeared.  So. . . .

Saturday was alright.  I've decided to take action, in a manner of speaking, to clean up some messes both around the house and in my life.  I have been, I think, downtrodden too long.  Put out.  Etc.  Action is the enemy of something, they say, and so, even though I can't remember the saying, I have been putting myself to work.  Just a little.  Not too much.  I don't want to burn myself out.  Yesterday, I washed the windows.  Not all of them.  Lord no.  My house is more window than wall.  But I began with the kitchen.  Inside and out.  Windex and paper towels.  In a little over an hour, my windows were. . . kind of streaky.  Yea, I'll probably have to try that again.  Still. . . idle hands are the devil's tool.  

I think I fucked that one up, too.  

Later that day, having had so much fun letting ChatGPT emulate my writing style and that of Q, too, I decided to take on the image maker.  I gave it a simple prompt: create a photo of a boy on a bike on a suburban street in the manner of the photographer Mark Cohen.   Within seconds. . . voila!

WTF, right!!!  You see the little ai symbol in the bottom right hand corner?  I could get rid of that in Photoshop in a second.  

It's a New World, folks, and I am going in balls deep.  

The old road is rapidly agin'
Please get out of the new one
If you can't lend your hand
For the times they are a-changin'

 Later, Tennessee called.  He wanted to come over for some camera lessons.  I think I was a great teacher, but I think I am a lousy tutor.  I was hired once by a company to tutor a jr. high school boy.  All I did was joke around, I think.  I learned quickly that one on one instruction was not my forte.  Give me a stage, and I'll work some magic, but I'm too easily distracted otherwise.  

Still, I think T got some lessons learned.  Digital photography is so very technical and complicated.  In a course, I would have people start with film.  Film photography, for all its complexity, was in many ways much simpler.  Once you learn those basics--iso, aperture, shutter speed, focal length--you are ready to control your medium at a basic level.  There is still a lot more to learn.  How film stocks vary, how over and under exposing effect what you do in processing, etc.  But learning the basics first will make the digital stuff more understandable.  

By six, I told him I needed to go see my mother and cousin.  When he left, I called my mother but got no answer on either her landline or cell phone.  I was hungry, so this was enough excuse for me to go to the good Mexican place down the street.  I wanted a skinny, spicy Margarita.  

And a Carne Asada.  

The interior bar was full, but the late afternoon air had turned sweet and gentle, so I found a seat at the open air bar outside.  

"Hello, mi amor," greeted the little Columbian bartender.  "Are you alone?"

"So it seems."

I sat with my marg and pretended for the moment that I was free, that I hadn't the obligations I must attend to.  I was just floating.  Life could be fine. . . my love.  

I was ready for more today, more home chores, more fun. . . until I opened the papers.  

Say you are not a big guy.  You're a middleweight.  You are a good middleweight, but one day, the big heavyweight picks a fight with you in front of everyone, and he hits you many times and leaves you bloodied and bruised.  You know you can't beat him in the schoolyard, so what do you do?  Fuck with his car?  Kill his pets?  Kidnap his children?  It's called "terrorism."  

Yup.  The shit has hit the fan, kids.  We're all in for it now. 

Happy Hillbilly Sushi

Oh, glory--I went to bed and woke in my own house.  I know.  Things are not perfect.  Indeed, I've problems to deal with, but I've decided I must.  As someone one said, first you create your environment, then your environment creates you.  

"Où habitez-vous?"

I remember reading once that that phrase in French gave rise to a more philosophical question than a physical address.  "Where do you live?" shares a border with "How do you live?"  

In any case. . . my cousin arrived at my mother's house late yesterday afternoon/early evening--it is difficult this time of year to determine which--and having had my Campari on the deck already, I went over and chatted for a bit.  She had brought a girl with her, a 5'10" eleven year old who she calls her granddaughter but who is not.  She is the daughter of a woman her son had a child with.  The woman is now living with another man, but she shares custody of the child they had together.  When one child comes over, however, so does the other.  It is confusing in that hillbilly way we have.  Looking at the girl, it is seriously difficult to remember she is only eleven.  She looks like a pretty eighteen year old.  Her brain, though, is definitely eleven.  I think she must have a very hard time in life reconciling her physical and mental beings.  

After a short while, I asked what they were going to do for dinner, for I was hoping to extract myself from the scene.  My cousin said the girl wanted sushi.  I felt guilty because I did not want to go to dinner with them but I had decided I would go for sushi when I left.  Guilt overrode my selfish intentions, however, and I asked, "Really?  Do you want to go get sushi?"  The "little" girl jumped for joy.  "Can we go?" she asked my cousin folding her hands nervously.  My mother, of course, didn't care to come, so I loaded my cousin and the kid into the Xterra and took them to one of my favorite places.  

We had a twenty minute wait, and as we sat on the couches outside waiting, thousands of affluent and fashionable teenage girls walked by on the sidewalk.  I felt for the eleven year old.  She sat rigidly and stared straight ahead at the ground only occasionally moving her eyes.  I remember that feeling exactly and precisely.  It had always been uncomfortable going someplace nice with my hillbilly family.  I could feel the difference in my bones.  The little girl was silent.  O.K. I thought, I will joke her out of it.  

There was no joking her out of it.  

We were seated at a sidewalk table that was fairly secluded, and the little girl loosened up a bit.  She knew what she wanted to eat which was good.  My cousin looked at the prices and I could feel the little jolt.  I didn't say anything, but I planned on picking up the tab.  My cousin didn't want sushi, so I suggested the bibimbap.  The service was slow, but the waitress was fun and the food delicious--everyone was happy.  The little girl wolfed hers down so quickly that I asked if she wanted more.  She looked at my cousin without answering.  

"Don't look at her.  I'm buying.  Do you want more?"

Indeed she did.  I drank two carafes of sake just to take the hillbilly edge off.  I felt good, better, even.  I wore one of my new linen shirts.  I haven't been wearing collared shirts for years now.  I have no need.  But I felt positively handsome.  These are not real linen, but Chinese "linen," cheap but not, I think, meretricious.  I've ordered more.

The little girl was desirous of something called Dubai chocolate.  Apparently it is a thing.  I might have known this when I was working at the factory, but now, in isolation, there are fads and trends I have no knowledge of.  The waitress told us that there was a little Arab market not far away that would probably have it at at reasonable price.  But when dinner was done, I didn't feel like searching it out, so I told my cousin she could take the little girl in the morning.  I drove them back to my mother's and came home.  

As has become my disgusting habit, I fell asleep on the couch.  When I woke up, I decided to take two sleeping pills.  And last night, I had the most glorious sleep and sweet and lovely dreams.  In my dreams, I was being more deliberate in life, doing things with intention and purpose, living more slowly and enjoying the details.  In my dreams, I had a camera.  I was was living in an "où habitez-vous" way.  

So it seemed.  

My problems have not gone away, but this morning, I am trying not to let them overwhelm me.  

"One good day, dear God. . . just one good day!"

I had an idea yesterday.  I asked ChatGPT to write an essay in my style.  I have years of writing here, of course.  In ten seconds, it had.  Here is what it said about my style:

Here’s a roughly 500‑word piece about paddling down the St. John’s River in Florida, written in the loose, reflective, anecdotal voice of C.S.—uneven, conversational, self-aware, quietly observant.

I thought that was quite a good description.  I might have thrown in "whimsical," but. . . .   I sent the essay to Q who laughed and said there were problems but overall in places it sounded quite like me.  I had given Chat a stupid and simple prompt, but I believe if I were more thoughtful, Chat would give a better, more accurate response.  It is a silly danger, though.  I mean, on days when I am having difficulty writing. . . . 

This note was added to the end of the essay:

That’s about 500 words—or close enough. It’s quiet, slightly messy, reflective, anecdotal.

This morning, I asked Chat to do one in Q's style.  It was remarkably different.  I don't want to share his with you, but maybe he will.  Who knows?  

One more from Q.  

Youtu.be. . . or not tu.be?

Company

I will be returning home tonight as my cousin is coming to spend the weekend with my mother.  My mother is doing fine, or at least as well as she was before her hospital stay, so I don't think I will have to return--for now.  Still. . . the guilt.  

"The therapist told me I was strong.  Meh.  He had me walk across the room, measured it.  He said he'd come back next week." 

She shrugs.  

"I told him it was o.k.  I could use the company."

That's what my mother wants most now.  It made me think.  Company.  It seems an old, almost disused term now.  My mother is going to have company for the weekend.  

I rarely have "company."  The tenant comes down from time to time.  I guess that is what it is.  Just a drink and a chat.  Tennessee stops by occasionally.  Otherwise, though, I live as an isolato.  

I remember as a kid, people would just stop by the house without calling or prior knowledge.  People were always stopping by.  I remember being irritated by it sometimes when we were about to go somewhere, but my father would have them in for a chat.  Sometimes we never made it to where we had intended to go.  If we were going to do something like go to the drive-in, it was a large bit of agony.  

But that is the old world, it seems.  Now "company" is mainly a text message.  We all protect our privacy with more vigilance, I guess.  If we want to see people, we meet them out.  

Mom, however, no longer goes out.  There is no "out."  She welcomes anyone who comes to see her.  She doesn't want privacy any longer.  She would like company 24/7.  

So, as I say. . . the guilt.  

* * * 

And now for the happy update.  There was a bottle of wine in the kitchen last night.  I'd had a couple glasses with dinner, so it must have been at least half full.  I looked for it before I went to bed last night and it was gone.  

My mother has just got up and walked into the living room where I am sitting.

"How'd you sleep," I asked her.  

"I slept ok for a couple of hours.  How did you sleep?"

"I took a couple Tylenol and went to bed.  I woke up soon after.  My nose was running, so I took one of your allergy pills.  I still didn't sleep.  My nose was running all night long.  Heck. . . I sound like I might have caught something.  Hey. . . there was a bottle of wine in the kitchen last night.  Where did it go?"

"I don't know.  What did it look like?"

"A bottle of wine."

"I don't know.  It might have gone into the garbage."

"Why would you throw away a half bottle of wine?"

"I don't know.  I'm not with it."

Now for the kicker.

"I'm ready to go."

"Go where?"

"Wherever I go. . . up or down.  I don't have any regrets about going."

And thus the death talk began.  What does one say?  I'm no good with platitudes.  I can't say, "Oh, don't be silly, you have a lot to live for.  Everybody is happy to come see you blah blah blah."

Instead.  

"Nice talk.  Here' some for you.  I don't have any reason to live.  I've been broken all to pieces.  I live alone.  I think about killing myself all the time.  It wouldn't matter.  My house is falling down, my car is a piece of shit, and I'm running out of money.  I've stockpiled enough narcotics to make it easy.  What do you think?  I've had an incredible life.  I think I'll just get on the couch, put on some music, drink some scotch and take the pills. It will be a pleasant way to go."

She just looks at me.  

"Yea.  Nice talk."

When people tell me what a good son I am, this is the kind of thing that makes me shake my head and say, "I don't know."  My tolerance for much of what life throws at us is very, very low.  Existential questions like living and dying. . . I've just read too much.  

* * *

I was almost happy for a minute yesterday.  It was a fat burning day at the gym.  No lifting, just moving.  I did the incline treadmill and even ran a couple short distances.  Then I cranked it out for miles on the bike.  I was sweating like a drunken pig when I got on the stair stepper.  And when I was done, I chatted with some gym friends for awhile with just a bit of an aerobic buzz going through me.  Endorphins.

When I went to my house, I put on my leather gloves and began doing some much needed work in the yard that has been neglected the past couple of months.  There are woody vines that grow up in the holly bushes that front my house.  They are impossible to get rid of as they spread roots deep in the soil in all directions.  All I can do is cut them.  They grow into the bushes wrapping their vines around and around the branches until they reach the top. Then they grow thick and cover the shrubs until they die.  The evolutionary sense of this is beyond me.  To combat them, I can only get down at ground level and cut them off so that they have to make their slow journey back up the branches of the shrubs once again.  It is dirty, sweaty work.  At one point, I grabbed a bunch of thick, woody vines together and began to pull.  Nope.  So I gave it the old muscle.  I was in close quarters and when I yanked, I stepped back onto something that tripped me and I began to fall.  It was slow motion and I was thinking if I were not so broken up and in better shape, I might be able to right myself, but I couldn't and I landed on a bunch of unused pots.  I threw my left hand back and it went through a big, clay pot bottom which broke in two.  It felt as if I may have broken a finger, too, but the thick leather gloves fit tight and it was just a strain, no break.  I looked at the clay pot bottom with sadness.  They cost plenty of money now.  

But other than feeling my age, I was fine and went back to work.  

After about an hour, I had weeded all the shrubs in the front of the house.  Just in time.  They had not yet begun to waste away.

Next, I did the easy thing.  I watered all the palm and ligustrum trees in the yard.  It just hasn't rained enough to sustain them.  They looked pretty happy.  

And with that, I went in to shower.  I threw in a load of laundry and decided to get a Chick-fil-A sandwich.  I brought it home and ate while texting with Q who had Juneteenth off to celebrate his people.  

Yes, for a bit. . . I felt almost happy.  

* * * 

As I was writing that, my mother called for me.  She had opened the safe.  She wanted to show me where her will and banking things were.  Fun.  

In a bit, I will get ready to take her to the bank where she has a CD to deal with.  Then I will bring her back, strip the bedsheets to wash and dry.  Then I will go to the gym, go home, and come back to wait for my cousin to arrive.  Probably I will need to have dinner with them.  

I take my mother to her primary doctor on Monday, and on Tuesday to the eye doctor.  I will come to sit with her each late afternoon as always.  There will be many trips back and forth to her house, but it won't be enough.  She wants what everybody desires--company.  

Someone to hold hands with all the way to our destinations.

* * *

Here's what Q was listening to yesterday.  He sent it along.  Sounds a bit like Sunburn in Cypress, I think.  I like it. 

Who's On Top?

I'm a very patriotic American, more than most.  I love America (does it love me?).  Maybe my relationship with the country, though, has been like my relationship with the women I've loved.  Hmm.  And what's the common thread there?  

What I have cherished most are the American Freedoms.  Freedom of the press, freedom of expression. . . .  I've had the right to be a crazy fucking Boheme, march, protest, play music to raise money for radical causes. . . all protected by the U.S. military forces who I have never even barely envied.  But their mission was a noble one--to protect American liberties and keep the citizenry safe from oppressors.  

So what the fuck happened? 

Donald Trump happened, that's what the fuck happened, him and the entire corrupt bunch of republicans kissing his ring.  Now the U.S. Armed Forces are being used to deny Americans those very freedoms.   It is a mission flip.  And now my lack of envy is morphing into something else.  

GRAPEVINE, Tex. — “We are witnessing a cultural revolution.”


Alex Clark stood center stage in a hotel ballroom on Friday evening, all business in her tweed minidress, pearls and beehive bun. The influencer and podcast host was addressing the hundreds of attendees who had gathered for the Young Women’s Leadership Summit, an annual conference hosted by MAGA youth group Turning Point USA. Perched on a pair of periwinkle platform heels, Clark laid out the tenets of that cultural revolution, one alliterative prescription at a time.

“Less Prozac, more protein!” she said. “Less burnout, more babies! Less feminism, more femininity!”

Clark, whose “Culture Apothecary” podcast for Turning Point vaulted her to the forefront of the “Make America Healthy Again” movement, was articulating her vision for a new conservative womanhood— one that fused its traditional pillars of faith and family with wellness culture.

“This is Whole Foods meets The West Wing,” she said. “It’s collagen, calluses, and conviction. It’s castor oil, Christ, and a well-stocked pantry.” The right has “the girls who lift weights, eat clean, have their hormones balanced, have their lives together,” Clark said. The left, meanwhile, has “TikTok activists with five shades of autism, panic attacks and a ring light.” All this amounted, by her calculation, to the notion that conservatives are now “the cool kids” and “mainstream.”

MAGA girls are cute, there ain't no doubt about it.  Some of them.  The ones in the gym married to the rich republican guys.  They drive nice cars and have nice clothes, they get botox and facials and massages and have their therapists. . . .

Hold on a minute, though!  These are the rock stars of MAGA, not the ones. . . you know. . . like my relatives.  Lower MAGA, the majority, are the ones with jobs and mortgages and baby daddies, used cars and lots of credit card debt.  They watch Dr. Pimple Popper and Honey Boo-Boo (I don't really know who that is).  

But. . . they associate themselves with the upper MAGA women through commercial television and social media.  

I've been suckered, I think.  All the women I've loved, all those liberal democrat women. . . they all opted out for. . . marriage, children, expensive cars and clothing, big houses, husbands with lots of money. . . .  

I've been a dope!

I thought I liked the bohemian girls, but they are crazy as shithouse rats, by and large, just like the MAGA media portrays them.  

Remember when Fox News started hiring all the pretty women and CNN had all the. . . other.  Then CNN hired Erin Burnett and put her in short skirts under a glass topped table and got a ratings jump even though she is one of the dumbest people ever to have a news show?  And now?  Look at the women on CNN.  And I wonder. . . 

Seems to me there isn't much difference in the left and right at the top.  I love Caitlin Collins reporting, love how she dogs Trump, but I read an article recently, a sort of bio piece, that put her smack dab in the D.C. private club set.  Can you guess how much Caitlin Collins is worth?  

I should read up on Clarissa Ward, CNNs Middle East reporter.  She is one of my heroes.  She goes where others fear to tread and all the other cliches.  She is great.  

Holy shit!  I just looked her up--same fucking story.  Went to Yale, married to a wealthy Austrian, three kids, lots of money. . . . 

And yet. . . she is nothing like a MAGA woman, is she?  I don't know if I can close the circle on this one today.  

Is it close or square the circle? 

Look, I just needed to get away from my pathetic narrative.  I'm at my mother's.  Of course, this is when I get lots of party invitations.  She is doing better pain-wise, but she moves slower than an arthritic turtle and really prefers to sit in a chair and let the world take care of her.  I can't predict the future.  I just feel I'm standing in a pool of quicksand.  

Last night, I fell asleep in front of the television sometime after dinner.  When I opened my eyes, my mother was going to bed.  How long had I been sitting up asleep?  An hour and half, perhaps.  Exhausted.  Somehow, though, I got hooked on YouTube videos of Sly and the Family Stone.  I didn't know that the bass player and one of the keyboardists was Sly's brother and sister.  It was really a family affair.  

I stayed up too late then and slept poorly last night.  But today, you know. . . another day in paradise.  

Out

It couldn't last, not even a day.  When I called my mother after writing yesterday's post, I asked how she was doing.  

"Oh dear lord, I had a terrible night.  I hurt. . . oh god. . . it is bad."

So I got dressed and went to the hospital.  She was sitting up.  

"How are you doing?"

"I'm alright."

"I thought you were doing terribly?"

"They gave me some pain medication."

That was obvious.  She was loopy as hell.  The nurse told me that the doctor would be in at eleven, so I waited.  That was bullshit, though.  I asked another nurse who told me he was in the hospital, but not on this floor.  I told my mother I was going to the gym and that I would be back in a little while as, according to all reports, she was going to be released.  

"Do what you have to do," she said.  "Take your time."

I walked down the hall to the elevator, and when the doors opened, two of her neighbors stepped out.  Good.  I informed them about what was going on.  I was glad they were going to sit with my mother.  

So, feeling guilty, I left.  I had some exercise, and when I got back into my car, I checked my phone.  I had lots of calls.  My mother's neighbor had left one that sounded pretty shitty.  

"They are discharging your mother.  You need to come get here."

I called my mother.  No, she said, she had not seen the doctor.  

"I'm going home to shower, then I'll be right up."

When I got to the hospital, the neighbor women were still there.  

"They said she could go home," one of them reported.  

She still had a port in her arm.  "I don't think they are going to let her take that with her," I said, pointing.  

"Oh."

"So you haven't seen a doctor yet?"

"No.  They brought me lunch.  Boy. . . that wasn't anything."

Just then, a girl walked in.

"Are you finished," she asked my mother and took away the tray.

"Do you have anymore crackers," one of the neighbors asked.  

The girl walked to the cart and brought back a deep container full of crackers and little peanut butter cups.  Oh, man. . . it was Valhalla.  The two neighbors were going at the crackers and peanut butter with vigor.  

A case manager came in to explain what could, would, and should happen once my mother was released . Did we understand?  

"Sure.  But she can't leave with the port in her arm."

"Oh!"

In a bit, a woman came to remove the port.  I requested a wheelchair.  Just then, two other neighbor women walked into the room.  It was getting very crowded.  

"Why didn't you tell us your mother was in the hospital?" one of them complained.  

"Uh. . . I was managing.  My mother had her phone.  She called people."

That did not get me off the hook, though.  Some of them were kind of pissed.  In truth, I didn't have most of their numbers, and I had no desire to call each of them and tell the story and answer questions anyway.  

The wheelchair was brought, and the head nurse came in and asked my mother how her stay had been.  And in a minute, my mother was in the wheelchair piled up with some of the bags of clothing and paraphernalia from her stay.  I led the parade down the hallway toward the elevator.  

When I got my mother into the car, I waved goodbye to the group.  I could see the woman who has us over to dinner all the time punctuating her tirade with a jabbing pointer finger.  I read her lips.  

"I called him and he never called me back. . . ."

Fuck her, I said out loud.  She looked positively maniacal.  

We picked up my mother's prescriptions--pain pills, muscle relaxers, and a laxative.  Then we were home. It was mid-afternoon.  I was pooped.  I opened a beer and fell asleep sitting up on the couch.  When I woke up, my mother was sitting at the kitchen table in a narcotic stupor, or so I hoped.  

"Are you alright?"

"Yes."

"I need to go to the grocery store and get something to make for dinner.  How's chicken, beans, potatoes, and Brussels sprouts."  

"That's o.k."

When I got back, she was sitting in her usual chair in the garage.  I guessed this was a good sign.  Apparently she was in no bad pain.  I took the groceries in and began to cook.  And as I was cooking, the neighbors from across the street walked in with a pot of chicken and dumplings.  This was the same woman who was pissed at the hospital.  

"I TOLD your mother that we were making her chicken and dumplings!" she said.  

"She didn't tell me," I said.  And I was glad.  I don't like their chicken and dumplings.  It is really a kind of creamy soup.  The chicken is shredded and the dumplings are more like noodles all swimming in a flour and milk kind of cream.  It would not have been a good first meal home.  

When they had gone, I plated the dinner.  It was a lot of food. 

"Eat what you want.  You know I always cook more than we need.  Nobody is going to leave the table hungry."

My mother ate it all.  

"This has good flavor," she said.  

Indeed.  

We were both exhausted and went to bed early.  Now morning has come, my mother has gotten up, and we will see what the day brings.  There is this to do an I'm waiting for a call from the framer who is coming to look at my rotted floor joist.  I need to arrange home care/therapy for my mother today.  I feel a bit stretched.  

But I need to change my mind.  My life is not as hard as many others.  I shouldn't think of it as hard at all.  I eat, I drink, I sleep, and in between there are things to do.  That's what people do.  

"Quit think your life is tragic.  You are being stupid.  It is pathetic."

The little voice in my head, of course.  

The day is cloudy.  I need to tend to my mother and get things done.  I know you are tired of this narrative.  So am I.  It is droll and without color, but it is an accurate portrayal of how I am feeling just now.  

Not tragic.  Pathetic.  Look it up.  

Relief

A bit more optimism today.  Is it brittle?  Sure.  We all know what lies ahead, but we must choose to ignore it.  

Where to begin.  Oh, hell. . . let's start with the non sequitur.  I'm not certain that is precisely the correct term to use here, but I'll let it stand and we'll see.  I've always thought that the photo above that I took in Havana was of a wedding party coming from the church, but now I am not so sure.  Maybe it was a rehearsal.  But who can tell in Cuba where there is a very real lack of goods.  I'm speaking of the "bride's" shoes.  Hell, I don't know.  But everyone sure looks happy. 

So I've chosen to post this photo over the one I took yesterday as my mother was going into surgery.  It was just such a downer looking thing.  My mother looks to be a corpse, and that is not how the procedure turned out. But I am getting ahead of myself.  

Yesterday morning, I knew my mother was scheduled for a surgery about which we had not been fully informed as my mother had yet to see any doctor who had explained it.  When I asked about this, I was told we would get a full consult at one o'clock.  My mother would hear the benefits and risks of the surgery and would be able to make up her mind in real time.  Sounded strange enough to me but for the fact that hospitals are now truly factories meant to crank out the most productivity and rake in the maximum amount of cash.  

My plan was. . . I am not sure what my plan was.  I did not feel 100% in the morning after another night of not maximal sleep.  I was very slow to get anything done.  And my nerves were shot.  I felt I had too many things hanging over my head.  I had seen the builder who recommended the framer I had called about my rotten floor joists.  I told him I had not heard back.  He said to call him again, so that was the plan, but I was having a hard time pulling that trigger yesterday morning.  Just nerves.  Maybe this wasn't the right guy.  Maybe he didn't want to do it.  

Mid morning, I screwed up my courage and called.  He answered.  It was a brief conversation.  He was out of town until Wednesday.  He was interested in taking the job.  He'd call.  

Somehow I let that fall on the victory side of the scale.  I mean, I felt some sense of relief.  It was nothing, sure, but it was something.  

After that, I put on my gym clothes and went to the hospital to see my mother.  The idea was that I would sit with her a bit, go work out, go home and shower, and be back to the hospital for the one o'clock consult.  But it was pretty late when I got to the hospital.  My mother was with the nurse who confirmed that at one o'clock they would wheel my mother downstairs to the IR department where she would meet the doc.  

When the nurse left, my mother began telling me about a nightmare night.  I won't go into it here other than to say my mother is no longer constipated.  That was good news. . . for me.  My mother had not been given anything to eat or drink since the night before in preparation for surgery.  It was all just waiting now.  I looked at the time.  If I left right away, I could sneak in a bit of a workout, shower, and be back in time.  So I said.  

It was going to be close.  I knew I had to be out of the gym before noon.  When I walked in, there were the peeps.  I told them I was on a limited schedule because. . . . The retired nurse knew all about the procedure my mother was having and said it was pretty common.  That made me feel better.  

I was out by noon but it felt as if I was late.  I got home, hurriedly showered, threw on some clothes and was out the door by twelve-thirty.  I was back at the hospital by quarter 'til one.  And of course. . . 

We had plenty of time to chat as we waited.  My mother said she had decided that she would go ahead and have the surgery.  It was not a surgery, really, but an injection of a glue/cement material to cover the fractured vertebrae.  O.K. 

"Last night one of the nurses came in to ask about you," she said.  

"What?  Really.  Which one?"

"She was young and petite.  Brown hair.  Nice figure."

I couldn't remember any nurses that fit the description.  

"She wanted to know if you were my son.  She asked how old you were."

"Oh. . . shit. . . whatever."  

That would surely shoot the pooch.  

"She was really interested in you," my mother grinned.  "She thought you were in your forties."

"You didn't tell her my age, did you?"

Now I know you all get sick of these tales, but there is a kicker to this one that will satisfy Q and his ilk.  

"There was another nurse who thought you were my brother," she said.  

"What the fuck!?!?  So I have one who thought I was in my forties and another who thinks I might be in my nineties."

"No. . . she thought I looked younger."

I didn't tell her that they all knew how old she was from her charts.  So yea. . . fuck off.  

I was desperately searching my memory trying to remember a nurse or a tech or even a serving girl who fit the description my mother had given me, but I couldn't.  I couldn't let it go, either, so I walked into the hallway to have a look at the nurses station.  Nope.  No luck.  

They came for my mother around one thirty.  She was wheeled into a small room in the IR ward where she was hooked up to the required machinery--heart rate, oxygen levels, blood pressure, etc.  

It didn't work.  

They took the sticky sensors off my mother and reapplied new ones.  Still no luck.  Now in my head I was going what the fuck.  

They got some new cables.  That seemed to do the trick.  They were satisfied.  I was dubious.  

"We still haven't been informed about this procedure," I said to the male nurse and the female technician.  The nurse was kind of goofy.  He talked too much, told too much, and I could tell the tech didn't trust him.  

"You go ahead and input all the information," she said.  "I'll take care of this.  The anesthesiologist will be in to see you shortly, then the doctor who performs the procedure.  He will explain everything then."

When the tech left, the goofy nurse never shut up.  He explained everything from the blankets to the cafeteria.  When he walked out for a moment, my mother said, "That guy is kind of weird."  That made me laugh.  

The anesthesiologist came in.  He was an affable man, and he explained the procedure from his end.  First this drug, then the other.  It wasn't general anesthesia but it would feel like it.  They were going to use propofol.  

A bit later, the IR doc came in.  He, too, seemed swell.  He informed us of what he would do, the upside and downside of the procedure.  He said he had been doing this procedure for twenty years.  He didn't look old enough, but he seemed confident and competent.  When he was done, I asked my mother if she wanted to do it and she gave a literal thumbs up.  

They told me I could wait in her room upstairs, that this would take about an hour and a half, so I went to the cafeteria to get some coffee.  I hadn't eaten anything yet that day, but the cafeteria food was disgusting, so I bought a Kind bar and coffee and went back to my mother's room.  

Not having cable, I never get to see the news programs, so I sat in her recliner and turned the t.v. on to MSNBC, Fox, and CNN.  

I quickly realized I had made the right decision when I cut the cable.  I was irritated by the news for the next two hours.  My mother was still not back and I was getting worried.  I took a short walk around the hallways.  The nurse saw me and said my mother was out of surgery and would be up in a bit.  

When they wheeled her into the room, she looked shot.  

"How do you feel."

"Awful," she said.  

"Well, it's over now."

"No it is not."

"What?!?"

"No.  They couldn't do it.  They tried to put me on my belly and I was screaming out in pain.  They couldn't do the procedure."

The nurse came in.  

"She says they couldn't do the operation," I said.

She just grinned.  "Yes they did."

My mother said, "No they did not!"

The nurse still grinned and said, "You were out.  You don't remember it."

"They put me out?"

"Well, mom. . . they weren't going to do it while you were awake."

"What restrictions does my mother have now?"

The nurse went to the computer to read the report.  "She doesn't have any.  She can move about as she likes.  She can be discharged tomorrow."

When the nurse left, I asked my mother if she would like some water.  She sat up and didn't scream out in pain.  She drank the water and stood up.  She walked to the bathroom.  She was standing straighter than I had seen her in a long time.  So I said.  

I stayed and talked with her for awhile, then asked her if she wanted to call her friends.  Her phone was full of missed calls.  I told her I hadn't eaten anything all day and that I was going home to cook.  I'd be back, I said.  

I walked out into the late afternoon/early evening sun.  It was hot.  The air was clear.  It felt good.  I had stops to make.  First, the drugstore to get some silicone cream for my scar.  I liked my surgeon, but fuck his complaint.  I was going to do what I'd read over and over and over was best.  The cream, surprisingly, was under lock and key. WTF?  I bought the silicone strips as well.  Next door was the liquor store.  And. . . my scotch was on sale.  A BIG sale.  Whoa!  I bought more than one bottle, and walking back to the car, I felt as if I should buy some lotto tickets.  I just felt good.  

I went to the grocers, then I went home to cook.  It was six.  I made a Campari and sat on the deck.  I would have to stay at my mother's house for awhile, I knew, to see how she was doing.  I still had way too much to take care of here at the house, but I had taken a step forward.  I'd just have to bite the bullet and spend the money to make my house whole again.  That's what people do and that, as they say, is what the money is for.  

After dinner, I went back to see my mother.  She was doing fine, but she was getting sleepy.  It was 7:30 when I got her into bed.  

"If you wake up later, just ask them for something to help you sleep.  Tell them Xanax.  They will give it to you."

"Alright."  

And that is the tale.  As I say, I am relieved as long as I don't think too far ahead.  One foot in front of the other.  

Last night, I slept well.  I fell asleep at ten and woke at five.  That was fine.  In a bit, I will call my mother.  I will be busy with her the next few days.  My cousin is coming over on Thursday to stay the weekend, so there is that.  I will make some breakfast now, then take a walk.  The sun is shining brightly now.  I'll take what I can get.  

Why Is the Gift Shop Always Closed?

 I have no pictures.  I have no story but the wailing tale of woe.  I'm tired of that story myself, but it is the only one I have.  Things seem to get worse instead of better.  I'm referring to my own tale, but at the hospital, I watched the network news, and it seems the universal narrative is going south as well.  The happy place is getting hard to find.  Only the rich seem oblivious.  One tells me he bought a bunch of stock in a company making AI weapons.  Penny stocks that, if they hit, can make you fortunes.  Another has taken his family to Iceland and Greenland on vacation.  Another derides my liberal views from his mansion on the hill.  My mountain friend worries, kinda, but he lives in the mountains and seems on permanent vacation.  I read a--a what?  A paid something or other on how to retire on a million dollars.  That's what it takes to live "comfortably" in retirement--if you are careful.  

Lesson learned.  Next time, I'll make more money.  

Money won't make you happy, they say, and happy won't make you money.  Was that Groucho Marx?  Two for one, one for all, and all form me.  

Many of my conservative friends sound like Trump when they talk about science.  Trump yesterday crowed about his great military parade.  

"They said there was a 100% chance of rain--imagine that, 100%--and it didn't rain.  It didn't rain all day.  They can't predict the weather hours in advance, right?  But they think they can predict it a year or fifty or a hundred years in advance?"

I shouldn't put quotation marks around that.  It is not an accurate quote, I'm sure.  It is just what I remember.   But that is a similar logic to what I hear from my conservative friends.  Illogical nonsense.  

And still they are not ashamed that they have voted for the malevolent idiot three times.  

Meanwhile, "the left" (if that is what we can call it any longer) trade in memes and slogans.  I watched footage of the pathetic chanting in the streets.  I get it, but it didn't look like power.  It looked more like a plea.  

Both sides seem stereotypical to me, but maybe that is all there is.  We are all stereotypes to a degree.  

That is what I got from sitting in a hospital room most of the day, that and a bad back.  I am angry about a lot of stuff, but I don't want to go on about it here just yet.  I'd like to tell you something salty or sweet, but all I have is bitter right now.  

No pictures, no story, and no music.  All I have is the incessant beeping of hospital machinery, the distant crying of a person in misery somewhere down a hallway, and dull hours of waiting.  

Oh, here's a thing.  The hospital is owned by the Seventh Day Adventist, and/so the gift shop sells no magazines or books other than biblical things.  But it doesn't matter, really, for they are rarely open.  Why is the gift shop always closed?

Exhaustion All Around

I'm searching for the connective thread today, the thing that will tie my disparate concerns together.  Age, I think, the act of human aging.  I am not, nor have I ever been, an agist.  Some may not agree, but for reasons I needn't mention here.  No, I do not think I'm an agist, but I am "age aware."  

People now talk a lot about "age appropriate" things.  Q likes to tell me I should be watching age appropriate porn, for instance.  He is joking, I think, but one never knows.  And there's the rub.  

Or "a" rub.

Don't take that the wrong way.  

I saw an article in the Times today about someone famous, maybe, who says she gave up wearing bikinis after forty.  "This is the bathing suit I prefer now," said the caption below a picture of her or someone supposed to be her sitting on a blanket in a stylish one piece.  Good for her, I say.  It is foolish to try to pretend about such things.  

Though, perhaps, I am foolish.  Not in the sense of wearing a bikini which I sometimes did in the appropriate places when I was much younger, when the gay men would stand on the dock and call to me, Tarzan. . . oh Tarzan."  

Yea, they did that.  Those were different times.  I am more likely to wear a shirt to the beach now.  And yet, I go to the gym everyday like I am going to recapture my youth.  It is foolishness on my part, sure, but it serves me well in some ways.  Had I not been strong, for instance, when I was run over on my Vespa, I am certain I would have died there in the street.  

O.K.  As I've often said. . . maybe it would have been better.  But I am not here to be morbid. 

Yet. 

But for someone with about a dozen of their 206 bones remaining unbroken. . . yea, the workouts are important.  I still look better than most men my age whose biggest injury has been tennis elbow.  

But I stray.  My mind is not what it should be today.  I'll get to that.  

So. . . the No Kings Protests.  I didn't get to go to any of them.  My mother is still in the hospital and is in worse, not better, health.  She is largely narcotized most of the time.  A weekend hospital stay is total bullshit.  The nurses seem to have no oversight.  Doctors do not roam the hallways.  I just deleted a detailed account of my mother's suffering, but I have deleted it knowing it would only turn some stomachs.  What I will tell you, though, is a 93 year old woman does not get the attention she needs, and it is only my intervention that gets anything done at all.  I do still own a bit of diplomatic charm.  I know not to get angry with the staff as it will have the complete opposite effect I am desiring.  But my mother suffers from a lack of care in a hospital run by MBAs looking to maximize profit.  

I am spending my days and evenings there and am exhausted.  I had hoped to do a bit of traveling once I was cleared by my surgeon.  That isn't going to happen.  

I have seen many deaths now, and I am watching many end of life things play out before my eyes, my mother and others, and I can tell you this, if you don't already know or have not yet guessed--it is never pleasant.  And, of course, people want to put the dying in a box somewhere in order not to see it.  

The end of life is very poorly planned.  One wishes to be Roy Batty in "Blade Runner."  He didn't get more life or avoid the final suffering, but he did get his hands on his god.  

"I want more life, fucker," he says before he crushes Eldon Tyrell's head with his bare hands.  

Selavy. 

Maybe, however, he should have simply asked for an easy, pain-free death.  That would somehow come in a close second if not really a first place finish.  

Today is going to be a make or break day for my mother, I think.  

Somehow, I kept up with the protests going on around the country.  I was sent photos and videos from protests going on around my own hometown.  There were many.  I guess people didn't want to travel too far from home.  From the images I received, most of the protestors were older--old, really, what my mountain friend called "the CNN crowd."  The images I saw on t.v. last night and in the papers this morning rather bolstered that view.  I guess I got used to protests in the '60s.  So, too, I'd guess, had many of the current protestors.  

Trump has opened a Pandora's Box, of course, and the genie or whatever will not be put back in the bottle.  I've mixed my metaphors, I know.  But my point remains.  Sending troops to L.A. did not stop the protests.  Of course.  Still, I think, like the protests of old, if the soldiers begin firing into the crowds as they did at Kent and Jackson State, people will head indoors and reinvent disco.  

I've been saying, both here and elsewhere, that this summer the streets will be bloody.  It seemed obvious and inevitable once Trump took office.  It seems even more so now.  And here's the thing--I don't think he cares.  

But the coalition of protesters we saw yesterday is not a cohesive block.  If there were young protesters out yesterday, they did not have the same goals as their elders.  And do not doubt that there were paid protesters in the crowd meant to disrupt and sow violence.  Their agenda is at odds with most of the marchers.  And herein lies the same old problem we've had before.  The left is not a cohesive group.  MAGA morons are.  And as we saw in Minnesota, MAGA nuts are not afraid to shoot.  While the left sit in meeting rooms and convention halls hashing out workarounds between various (tedious) ideologies, the right goes to military parades and wave flags and cheers.  When lefty protesters meet MAGA resistance, they want to take their ball and go home.  They will march through the safer parts of town and watch as paid participants burn cars and trash businesses.  

I'm suggesting that right now, the left cannot be counted on for unity.  Arabs and Jews, libertines and WOKE, the devout and the unbelievers--they may all be marching on No Kings Day, but not for the same reasons.  

The diversity of the left is working against them.  The many cultures are not coinciding so very well as the multiculturalists had imagined.  There is not much diversity on the right other than the obvious one that just doesn't seem to get exploited--the haves and the have nots.  Once the left can turn the workers against the billionaires, the right will crumble or at least be in as much disarray as the left.  

That is my bleak take on the state of things, anyway.  I'm sure many of you have found chasms in my narrative galore.  

But I have to get back to my mother.  Things are pretty bleak here, and again, I'm going it alone.  I can hear that voice--"That's what you always touted"--but it isn't true.  Sure, I've believed in a smaller world, but you know it was always a universe of two.  I have no envy, I promise you, but I would enjoy a little succor right now.  I would like to be able to lie in the lap of my own true love.  

Guilt

I'll not be going to the protests today.  My mother is still in the hospital.  Everything works slowly.  They moved her to a new room.  It is not better than the old one.  It is by the nurses desk and is noisy, but my mother cannot hear, so. . . .  When I went to see her in the morning, she was miserable, sitting in a chair trying to eat, but she couldn't.  She'd been throwing up.  After a few minutes, she lay down in the bed and went to sleep.  I stayed and watched her, then said I would come back later.  And I did.  And once again, she was asleep.  I sat for over an hour, but she didn't move.  She had been narcotized.  Her conditions are conundrums, really.  She takes pain meds to alleviate her suffering, but pain meds constipate her.  She is very constipated.  But the opioids also make her nauseous, so they give her anti-nausea medicine.  She has a new doc in charge of her now, and he has called in a specialist, but first they must do an MRI.  And here's the weird part--they do scheduled MRIs and walk-ins during the day and hospital patients at night.  When I went back a third time around five, my mother was up and sitting in a chair.  Not long after, dinner came--fried chicken tenders, mashed potatoes with gravy, broccoli, grapes, and some chicken soup the sweet diet lady had thrown in for my mother in case she couldn't eat the other.  My mother nibbled at the chicken, ate a couple spoonfuls of mashed potatoes, and managed about 3/4s of the broccoli.  She ate one grape.  

"That should clog her up nicely," I thought.  

I couldn't believe they didn't have her on a drip to hydrate her.  I couldn't believe they had not given her an enema.  

The nurse came in.  She was nice.  She had called me earlier in the day to give me an update on my mother.  She said that my mother would not be going for her MRI until sometime that night.  She apologized.  

"What else is she going to do?" I asked, and the nurse laughed.  

My mother scrolled on her phone as I sat there.  Conversation was difficult, of course, because she can't hear what I say.  I have to say it all again at a much great volume.  

"I need a phone charger," she said.  

"Do you want me to see if they have one here?"

I went to the nurses desk and asked.  I could tell it was an unusual request, but the lady was nice and looked for one.  I went back and got my mother's phone and gave it to the lady at the desk.  

My mother couldn't figure out how to work the t.v., so I turned it on and gave her a mini lesson.   She sat looking at the television.  This was my third trip of the day.  It was getting dark, so I said I was going to go and get some dinner.  

"Don't go," she whined in voice that was faux but truly sincere. 

"O.K." I said and sat down.  

"No, no. . . go. . . you've got a life to live."

There was a lot of guilt giving in that.  

"What life?  I'm going home to eat.  It is Friday night.  I'll be doing what I always do."

I kissed her and asked her to call me after her MRI.  

I wasn't feeling well.  My nose had been running and I was tired and achey.  Perhaps I had picked up some illness in the hospital.  Just the place for it.  Most of the staff were wearing masks, so I thought maybe something was going around.  My MAGA Fauci hating friends always bring up masks.  "They don't work," they say.  

"Then why do all the doctors and nurses wear them?"

"They trap bacteria which are larger, but they don't stop viruses which are very much smaller."

"Which communicable diseases are caused by bacteria?" I ask.  Some variety of strep.  Not much else.  My MAGA friends are full of "viral" horseshit.  

But it is very possible that my illness was psychosomatic.  I tend to get whatever symptoms my mother suffers from.  If her feet swell, so do mine.  If she feels flu-ish, so do I.  My belly felt bloated just now.  Who knows.  

I went home and ate a can of garbanzo bean and lentil soup.  Fiber, I thought.  I followed up with a whiskey, then an apple.  I tried to find some news on my t.v. With the Israeli/Iran thing, I feel the need to get cable hooked back up.  I found ways to get the news of the day, but it was not contemporary.  Then I watched something I can't remember.  I was tired.  Worn out.  Before ten, I was getting ready for bed.  

It is June.  I've either been taking care of my mother or myself since January.  Half of 2025.  As I sit in the hospital rooms, I think of Ili coming to stay with me when I got run over.  We had not been together for months at the time, and what I didn't know then was she had a new boyfriend.  I think she was staying with him many if not most nights.  But she came and stayed day and night in my hospital rooms, sleeping on a cot, making sure I was o.k.  I think of the horrible tediousness of that now, of the boredom and exhaustion, and I feel very sad.  I think things went to shit when we went to Paris the following year.  I didn't realize it until we got home, but there was the expectation from many that I was going to propose to her there.  Maybe I should have.  The romance, you know, of it all.  But as usual, she was not a happy traveler much of the time, and she fought with me over the weirdest things.  It happened on every trip we took together, and there were many.  It was crazy, but thinking back, it wasn't that much different than our lives at home.  I've had very few arguments in my life with the people I have loved.  I hate to argue emotionally.  I love to debate without feeling, of course.  It has been the bread and butter of my life.  But nobody ever wins an emotional argument.  I believe now that those were Ili's bread and butter, a form of emotional manipulation.  It was hereditary I now believe, maybe not genetically so but part of the familial upbringing.  Still. . . I loved her enough to live with it, but I think the not proposing in Paris was something of a death nell.  For better or for worse.  

Sitting in the hospital so many days with my mother, I cannot get over Ili's concern and care and kindness and love.  So yea. . . it is something I will never get over.  

And it is a thing that guilts me every time I leave my mother's room to go home.  

There is a part of me that my mother's deteriorating conditions are dragging to the grave.  I'm just fucking worn out.  

"You have to take care of yourself, too," people say, but I am not so much like that.  I am more an empath than most people I know.  I'm emotional to a fault.  Things touch my heart far too deeply, and I believe that is why I pretend to be a rough and tough asshole.  I am not, though.  I've always liked pretend more than reality.  I pretend to be one of Teddy's Rough Riders.  

We all have our problems.  

So I head back to the hospital this morning.  I will sit there and listen to the tv westerns and the beeping of multiple machines, the chatter in the hallway.  I'll ask my mother things, twice always, maybe three times.  I will talk to her nurses and hopefully her doctor(s).  And when she is released, I will have to go live at her house once again.  All the traveling I had hoped to do once my leg was healed is now moot.  

And the house is still falling apart.  Most days now, I don't think I can keep doing it all alone.  I look at relationships and marriages I have no envy for whatsoever now and think, "Maybe they are happy?"  

In the end, maybe, nobody's time is their own.