Turns On The Radio

I leave for New York in the morning. Moving across the sky from one sprawling mass of concrete to another. Sometimes it feels like a science fiction novel, where life takes place in transporter systems and little glass cubicles in the sky. Human contact is entirely missing a context and somewhere along the lines it just stops making sense.

I feel like it’s in my power, or it should be within my power, to make it start making sense again. To fix what’s been broken feels like an urgent task – all that is mission, but can I accomplish it? It seems like such a reasonable goal…

Something can be done about everything.

The Bonniest Baby

In 1927 his father was voted the Bonniest Baby in Yorkshire. This was much to the chagrin of the other contending bonny babies and their doting parents, no doubt. I fancy the parents of that bonniest of babies were quite proud and took the prize as a testament to their good parentage and skills in birthing bonny babies. A plaque awarded by the Yorkshire Observer and signed by the chairman and managing directors is displayed prominently on my bookshelf.

That same bonny baby lies incontinent and crazy in a nursing home facility on the peninsula, thousands of miles from his birthplace. I’ve never seen him smile and he’s ornery as a codger. I see the plaque, powder blue scrolls and pinkish script, and I cringe. Sometimes in the morning, without being wholly aware of it, I find myself whispering under my breath, bonny babies suck.

These past few days I’ve been filled with a rumbling rage. I haven’t even left the house but once all weekend, only to go to a movie yesterday. Partly I’m battling the remnants of a head cold. Partly I’m just tired of the world and her ways. So instead I sit home and ruminate, nurturing the seedlings of anger and resentment into a small creature that needs to be fed. This is that moment when everything thing needs to culminate into a big angry growl and someone needs to respond by saying, “you’re absolutely right. What’s happening here is unacceptable and untenable and heads will roll to vindicate the wrongs committed against you.” And just the mere thought of that kind of valor and vindication is plenty to steady my course and stay the raging seas.

I wait and I wait but it’s not forthcoming. So I just look for things and around the house to get mad about. The dishes, the laundry, the dust. Sooner or later I will have my revenge on these things.

This way of life is killing me and I’m such a willing participant at times.

Silenced

I went to speak to College students last night. Blah, blah, blah. It was a three-hour night class. By the end of the evening I could feel a scritch in the back of my throat. By the time I arrived home the scritch had turned to a burning ember. In the midst of dreaming about a strange house, painted artichoke green, mustard and eggplant, on the floor high heeled pink satin shoes covered with red fishnet appliqué bore an emblem saying stripper and in a closet three pennies lay on the floor, all donning the date 1972, I woke up parched, gagging and sweating, my throat and body afire. By morning I could hardly breathe and had lost my voice. I thought those students would feel privately vindicated this morning, not knowing how or why. The universe did what they weren’t allowed to do to a guest lecturer in their classroom - tell me to shut up.

Push Me In

At the end of the day, I wonder what the hell I’m doing. Information comes in my head and it sits there, moves around and congeals with a collection of other information. Experiences are like a stir in thick batter rearranging everything and making it closer and closer to that final finished thing ready to be baked. And somehow I feel like Grettel, looking into the oven and waiting for the witch to push me in.

If You Are Squeamish...

If you are squeamish, don’t prod the beach rubble. –Sappho

The City That Reads

Precious. Delightful. So nice this lovely public anonymity. This virtually exposing privacy. A place to broadcast to everyone and no one at all those little private nothings. Shhhhh… it’s a big secret.

Cassie leaves for Spain in a few days. Heading east for an adventure. She’ll suffer through the ticket line at the International counter, anxious and excited yet decidedly calm and wander slowly through the terminal to the gate. (She’ll be early, unlike me, who would be late and scurrying.) She’ll have a book for the airplane under her arm and she won’t be checking her luggage for her journey of three fortnights. Traveling light with her feet on the ground. She’ll wrestle with demons on the road of St. James under the milky way. Or perhaps she won’t. Perhaps she’ll just sit with her Gods and idols. More likely.

I, on the other hand, will head to Baltimore in the morning. The City that Reads. Baltimore - how desperate and tiresome. I’m certain the people of that fair city wouldn’t provide me warmest welcome with such a disparaging perch. But it comes down to a taxi, an airplane, a hotel and a little conglomeration of shops nestled against a harbor where tourists flock. Once, amidst dining on the pier after a day of disillusionment I discovered the waiter was a former acquaintance from San Francisco who had stolen my vacuum cleaner. How precious. You moved to Baltimore. The City that Reads.

The redeeming feature of the harbor is the aquarium. Among the finest I’ve had the pleasure to stroll. Towers of fish. But I wouldn’t take pleasure in swimming in circles day after day although I’d be lying if I said I that I didn’t do just that from time to time. I’m looking to spy my way out of those uninspired routines.

He Looks Defeated

The night was long, agitated and restless. “Lover, lover, please stop grinding your teeth.” It starts with kisses and are-you-okays, what’s-wrongs and sweet little wake-ups. But as the night progresses he’s far less kindhearted and by morning he looks at me sideways and angry. My jaw hurts and he feels a little vindicated – somehow retribution for his sleepless night.

This is the price of sugar. After that first bite of the hot fudge sundae, piled high with whipped cream, I feel the vessels tighten at the base of my neck and my toes begin to curl. I’ll be angst ridden all night and wake up tired for the noise I’ve made but slept through clearly more peaceably than him. He growls even when he comes home from work, hours have gone by for him to place this neatly in the past, but he remembers and again those sideways venomous glances.

I explain how it’s not something I can control, that it’s not purposeful. He vows never to go out for ice cream again. “You just refuse to feel guilty for anything.” “Yes, you’re right. I do. I don’t like it and I’m not going to feel it.” He looks defeated.

We go out and speak whimsically about this and that over dinner. By the time the bill arrives all is set right with the world. He no longer craves that I feel the sorrowful guilt of any misfortunate oaf stuck somewhere in limbo or the upper rings of hell. And being as I haven’t or didn’t or don’t, we’re at least on equal ground where neither or us thinks that I should.