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.
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.
posted by Black Egg at 11:21 PM
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