I totally love this towel.

For No One

Because I'm beginning to think there's no one.

Floating/Drowning/Floating

It’s not a matter of being saved. Because in a basic way, I can swim. I know about the Cork Float, the Dead Man’s Float, Doggy Paddle, I can tread water. Mostly you’ll find me spinning around, though, a sea otter, front to back, usually back, no oyster or clam held to my chest, but on my back nonetheless, the buoying power of salt water amazing, holding me, womb-like.

So I can float. But I will admit to being afraid of waves, of rough water, the undertow that I remember almost drowning me at age 4, or so it felt. Who was watching me? Why was I pulled under again and again and again? Who, three decades later, watches me now? Who watched me in between? The line between safety and danger, freedom and bondage, seems so thin.

It’s true that the tide ebbs and flows, that the meeting place of sea and sand is unstable, changeable, dangerous. Sand. These tiny particles of rock. A rock. A thing you rely on, a thing you expect to see in the same place after a mighty storm. These teeny, tiny rocks, that give way and slide under foot, laughing cousins of the great boulders, shrill serendipity as you fall. Shrugging their miniscule shoulders, singing on the wind in a whistling chorus, “We told you so!”

Missing

His hands
look familiar
and sitting here,
I remember them, sitting here
close to mine
sometimes so close
hand in hand
we sat
and I could see that his would color like mine
if we spent days in the sun
our hands would race
to places
if we spent nights under the moon
and finding each other,
we would find each other
with hands that matched
by the sun's virtue
the virtue of full light
exposing all
by the grace of our hands and our eyes,
could we know
as we touched and as we looked.
His hands are hands that could know me,
and his eyes have already seen me,
oh, he's seen me
by sun and by moon he's seen me,
by darkness of day and brightness of night
he has witnessed me
by wine and whiskey and coffee vapor
has opened the channel
guided by spirit
our eyes and ears on each other
our voices in between
meet
as sometimes our hands met.
His hands
hold a cigarette,
my attention,
and it's simple,
I miss them.

Maybe I'm Drunk

I've had close to a bottle of wine. No, not a magnum, nor a box, just a regular ol' bottle o'wine. I'm on the last glass. It's only 9:30 on Friday. Is that wrong?

My thoughts are running rampant, they're all over the place. This is part of the reason I suspect I might be drunk. The fact that I am not misspelling has nothing to do w/ the spell check, I don't use that device, but again, the fact that I'm not misspelling has nothing to do w/ being sober, as I am also a good drunk driver, so don't base your judgement on my grammar and I won't either. I think maybe I am drunk.

Ok, just now I spilled wine all down my sweater and also on the couch. It's white, so no big whoop, but this could be a further indication that I am drunk. The larger question is "Am I a drunk?" No-one in my immediate family (consisting of two parents and eight siblings) is a drunk. However, my father's siblings, of Eastern European descent are... well, they drink. My mother's father... he was Scotch-Irish. He died when I was about two feet tall (I remember the wake.) All I know is I found some of his whiskey in my Grandma's basement and claimed it. I still have some. Old shit. Was he a drunk? I know little about him. I remember a story of him being so sunburnt that he had to crawl on the floor. My mother had anorexia at age 21. That was 56 years ago. These things seem relevant.

I think the structure, cadence, and flow of this entry may answer the question about me being a drunk, maybe, but maybe I'm just saying that bc I have no idea what I'm saying, and I just assume it sounds fucked up when perhaps it doesn't really. I never in a million years fancied myself as such, a drunk. But lately, the quantifiable evidence seems to suggest that perhaps I might be. I'm not asserting with certainty that I am - who in their right mind would want to do such a thing - it's just... I guess I'd rather not be. A drunk. Christ, I know so many. And they do bad things. And I don't want to do bad things.

Please don't tell me I'm a friend of Bill W.

Alone

The hum of the fridge, and dust in my lungs, thoughts of another beer, knuckles swollen, cold night, gas heater on the fritz, the cat on the couch, the kitchen table piled high with crap, and a heat pack on my back, angry thoughts of an old love, but then again, that wasn't love, I've no idea what that was, but I know there is anger, and that bothers me, my life past present future presents itself to me like a home movie, warbly clips going in and out of focus, the sound of static electricity and pieces of conversation, directions, directives, laughter collapsing on the lawn, observations unrequited, paths of thought unrequited, patience and honor unrequited, this is why so many quit is it not, not quite, but something close, like a blanket held up to your chin, the body beneath restless and hot, ribs nervous about their charge, their responsibility, to protect all that, beats and murmurs, lungs like the sail of a boat, the rudder free and searching, the sheets twist in the gale force, the night a pool of ink, eyes filled with indigo, staining the clouds, searching, I search, I make marks, signposts, but receding, I recede, the way is lost, is it lost, the path I wanted to tread, the path I wanted to meet you on?

Irene

She woke at 2 a.m. She arose, and with the aid of her walker made her way to the bathroom. Only, before she got there her leg went out, her left leg. Collapsing, as she has done before. Her daughter, as she has done before, made the call for an ambulance, doctor’s orders. Whenever she fell, this woman of 96 years, she was to go to the hospital, as you never know what may have happened with her bones.

The ambulance came to the front door, not the back, as had been requested. They came silently, no sirens were required at that hour. When they arrived she was conscious, her bones undoubtedly sound, but orders are orders, and so she went. By the time her daughter arrived at the hospital, she was gasping, no longer conscious, bones were not the concern, it was something else. Blood was flooding into her brain; a stroke. At 6:10 a.m. she passed from this world, and even at 96, this was not expected.

Though she used a walker, and her hearing was shot, she had a strength that was visible, palpable, and her mind was all there, and frustrated that her hearing, vision, and physical ability was not able to keep up with it. She was curious, wanting to know the comings and goings around her home, a place she had lived for 70 years. “Is she home?” I heard her asking one of the aids that came regularly to assist her as they sat on the porch, referring to me. I am thankful that I heard this, and that as I lay in bed I had the sense to get up immediately, dress, make coffee, and open the door to our shared porch. She was there, sitting in the sun, seeming pleased to see me even though in truth she knew very little about me.

We conversed about the weather, coffee (she only drank it every other day), and the trials of settling into a new place. A few days later she and I talked again, this time through the screen door, I let her do most of the talking, as she was having difficulty hearing me. It was in this conversation that she told me about her husband, and his wonderful garden, and that new house up on the hill, how it was ugly, how in the wintertime it was ugly here, no leaves, nothing to hide the new houses that weren’t there when she first moved here. She reminded me of how it takes time to settle in, that you can only do a little at a time, you do what you can.

Today as I sat talking and listening between tears with her daughter, out in the full sun on the same porch, I was told that this same strong woman, her mother, had said of me “We got a good girl next door. Bobby got us a good girl.” Bob is her grandson, a friend of mine. Coming from this woman, who has lived this long, and as I learned in conversation with her daughter, has had some very hard times in her life, this means a lot to me. It’s something I really want to live up to. I learned many other things in that conversation, both about Irene and her daughter, their relationship. I learned more about Irene’s husband, of French descent, effusive and warm, marrying a woman of German descent, abandoned early in life and a bit of a stoic. How his warmth touched her and balanced her and secured her. How on their wedding anniversary, October 28th, they will be together, again, finally.

The sadness I have over not knowing her better. The plans I had, that I shared with her daughter only a week ago, of making arranged visits so she wouldn’t be lonely, she told me of her loneliness that day through the screen door, the boredom, the time to fill, now that her hands and eyes and ears weren’t so good. I never had the chance to arrange the visits. I will no longer hear the local radio station blasting out the window, or the wise patina of her voice, regardless of what she was saying.

All of this written through a flood of tears and wine. Irene, who decided to stay on this earth for almost a hundred years. Yesterday Bob was here with his wife, cleaning up the front yard, his Grandma wanted all that bramble cleared up. This evening he stopped by, and as we sat on the couch he quipped, “Yeah, she knew she was going and wanted that yard cleaned up before she left” I followed, saying “We gotta clean up that front yard, ‘cause they’re gonna come to the front door to get me!” We both laughed a lot after that.

I had to write about her. Gratefully I can say that I knew her a little. There will be no wake, only a funeral. Her request, "I don’t want anybody gawking at me.” Her life, complicated, quiet, complete. May peace follow you, Irene, may the new houses disappear, may the garden ever grow, may the lilacs bloom eternally.

Rain and Vicodin

This weekend I busted my ass, and my back is on the razor's edge - but I sit now in the one (almost) refinished/refurbished room in the house, and between that and the Vicodin, I am so frickin' relaxed. By the way, friends and readers of my old blog know I don't use that drug recreationally, I don't know why I feel compelled to offer that disclaimer, but I do. It's just a leftover scrip for what was once a very bad shoulder, but it comes in handy once in awhile, like after pulling off what I managed to pull off these last two days. I literally was crying this morning because I had no idea how I was going to get the couch into the kitchen, and the very large and heavy rug I needed to install into the living room by myself. I did manage it, by myself. I just hate asking my brothers for help yet again, they have done so much for me in recent weeks. In truth I sometimes need to test my limits.

The rain begins, a hard steady rhythm on the metal awning. Today I saw an aerial photograph of this borough I live in, it was hanging on the wall in a local restaurant, there was my dwelling, there was it's great lawn, only this picture showed square brown patches where now there is only grass, that's the old vegetable garden Grandma mentioned. The only patron actually sitting at this restaurant while I waited for my grinder was a man about fifty years old, alone at his table, a bowl of soup and a cup of coffee before him. As he ate he studied the menu. I was so overcome by a sense of aloneness - his aloneness? My aloneness? - that I had to look away. The soup and the coffee. Alone on a Sunday evening. Food is a simple need. Why should I presume to know anything at all about this man, why should I place this imagined, invisible burden of... need - upon him. Not just need. The accumulated result of a lifetime of decisions. Projection is a tricky, dangerous, and mysterious business.

I know some men who eat alone. I eat alone. There's nothing wrong with eating alone. Why should soup and coffee under fluorescent lights bother me?

The truth is, I know why.

Sometimes My Cats Are Jerks

A consequence of having three floors to inhabit is that it really promotes cat sabotage. Of each other, I mean, the cats. Hence, I am frequently startled in the middle of the night by muffled rumbling, bumping, scrambling and occasionally crashing sounds. My sleep has been poor as of late, so I really wish they they would stop doing this. It does, however, afford me the opportunity to refer to them, directly, as jerks. Sometimes assholes. The reason I like doing this is that it automatically defuses the anger I might've had going on at them, because there's just something funny about calling your cat a jerk. Is it really possible for a cat to be a jerk? You say it to them, and it just falls flat, nothing at all in their demeanor changes. I mean, by the time you're saying it, the damage has usually been done, as was the case last night when my own anxiety over the noises I was hearing forced me out of an almost slumber and back to too much awareness of the rate of my heart, etcetera. I also noticed that being naked when hearing loud noises is unhelpful. In any case, I found my robe and slippers and descended all the way to the basement, not having seen either cat on the ground floor. Got down there, still no cats. There was a small hinged window that was moving in the breeze, I had left it unhinged the other day. I secured it. Back upstairs, still no cats. Up to my bedroom and then back to the ground floor, there they are, the jerks, sitting in the middle of the kitchen. The cutest fuzziest wuzziest furriest black and white and orange-est little jerks in the world.

Loss & Restoration

I’ve been feeling it for days now. A darkness like the great black wings of a cape, gaping like a mouth behind me, a presence that stalks me on felt-padded feet, silent and hollow. Objects seem harder, the air tinny, pinging echoes of things I know, yes, those kinds of things, the things I know but don’t want to know, deny but their echo rings hard, the sound of wooden bells. I just walk up the stairs, their clatter trailing behind.

Today I scraped through five layers of wallpaper. I’m not quite done. The bottom layer was the most beautiful, the kind of design no longer made, the kind of color and detail no longer seen. A perfect green, generous, lazy fronds of leaves, small golden flowers, a vivid garden in a small New England home, what warmth, and pleasure upon seeing it in the dim cold evening. It must’ve been, I thought. Carefully I saved what scraps I could, for its beauty and for my own superstitious nature. There is something spooky and evocative about a wall brought down to its bare original surface, as if in peeling the layers I was mining the ghosts and memories of this house. The ancestors need to know I mean no disrespect. I explained to them silently that I was increasing the longevity of the home by improving it, I was honoring it in my way. The paper is fairly badly damaged. But I will find a way to use it.

Ghosts. I try to shake the feeling of things falling away from me, of doors closing, of empty, windy streets, of nothing but the smell of my cooking and my shampoo and no-one elses. Trips for one bottle of red wine, to be poured into the solemn stoneware goblet I have taken to drinking from. It startles me to realize I’ve owned the goblet for 17 years. I bought it from a witch in Cape Cod. Drinking from it takes me back a few hundred years.

I have no idea why I intend to do such a job on the walls downstairs, but I do. They are crooked, and bulging, and cracking. They deserve respect. They have stood, and held, and protected so many. I will touch every inch of them, over and over.

Why it Matters That I Do

Live in a mill house, that is. Ok, well technically speaking, it doesn't matter. Kind of in the way that nothing really, ultimately, matters. The house is small. It is, of course, situated alongside other mill houses, all of which appear mostly identical, save for the whimsy of the individual owners who may have added things like awnings, sunporches, a variety of fences, and of course the usual hideous decorative flags, the largely half-assed attempts at a garden-ish area, or, if you're like my immediate neighbor, perhaps an RV in the driveway that maybe someone lives in. Or cooks drugs in. Either way, they use it regularly.

Grandma lives in the other half of the house - not my Grandma - but I've taken to calling her Grandma, not to her face, mind you. She's a true old timer. Next time I get to stand at her door and talk to her through the screen I need to find out - "Did she work at the mill?" Gosh, I know the answer. The woman is 90+ years old. Did she work at the mill. If I'm proved wrong, hey, whatever. But she has told me about her husband, how he used to have a garden over there, how it was only cows back when, not these ranch houses and all, behind us. Our house is on the southern border of this tiny mill town, ours is the last row to the south.

I heard from the Grandma's son, my friend, that the RV neighbors retardedly cut down a lilac tree that had been planted by her husband. Yes, I will use the word retard to describe any RETARD that cuts down a lilac tree under any circumstances, never mind one that doesn't belong to them or was planted by the elderly neighbor's late husband. I should clarify. They are actually RETARDED ASSHOLES. I mean, really, seriously, why? To make room for their mobile drug laboratory?

That's one of the things about living in a mill house. The houses are small, cheap to buy, cheap to rent, and so guess what, you're gonna have trashy knuckleheads in the vicinity. Sorry about the tirade. I do have a thing about lilacs. What those clowns did is a sin, pure and simple.

But the house... so it is small, humble but sturdy like the original tenants. Brave immigrants, looking for a piece of peace, of freedom. Did they find it? Will I?