Write about what?

It took a few minutes more to get out of bed this morning, not that there was anything bad or difficult waiting for me, not that it was colder than the previous days, because it certainly isn’t that; it was the absence of anything at all that caused me to lay longer. The temperature will give a nod to 30 today, there is rumor of it passing the freezing mark in a day or two as it moves up to melt the snow and the accumulated ice. The grays are all from that uninteresting section of the color chart, the browns are the same, dove, chestnut, Palmer’s aren’t words that would be used to describe colors this morning, fucking boring, would be more like it.

I could feel the need to write, threads of notions floated by, none worthy of getting out of bed and waking this machine though; and then a few fibers came together, wove something of boredom and getting out of bed and just about everything else anyone can imagine.

I made a decision earlier this week to not continue participating in a bereavement program for kids and parent(s), it just didn’t work for me, left me feeling not right about the whole thing; so I’ll continue with the hospice stuff, perhaps ask for an additional patient, or not. It had been a difficult decision to make, left me feeling like shit for a couple of days, but it was the right one for me.

There was a woman, call her Betty, Ophelia, Shirley, it doesn’t matter what her name was: She had been diagnosed as having failure to thrive, which I had heard about in newborns, and was about to learn about in elders, my weekly lessons. Betty would lay there, she’d groan about what a great marriage and husband she’d had, 70 years of marriage, great experiences of trips & cruises, business success, and now it was all over. A DNR order was taped to the refrigerator, a glowering document, in full view so that the EMS people would see it; Ophelia didn’t have cancer, her heart condition was under control, but she was losing weight and 2 doctors had signed the official document for hospice, she was expected to die within 6 months, that’s the rule for getting hospice care.

I’d listen to her play the record over and over, husband, marriage, trips taken; after each iteration I’d try to ask so what’s new? It seemed to me like a stupid question, but I had no idea what else to say, was wondering what the hell I was doing there?

There would be times when she would go through that process of accepting her life, her situation, come to terms and find peace in acceptance; now this was worth experiencing, that natural process that is wonderful to participate in, that made sense to me.

That was the way of things with Shirley for a while, nothing much going on, or was there something? She wasn’t just laying in bed and whining so much, there was some interest in the weather, occasional bitching about the housekeeper her son had engaged, that kind of thing. I had begun a new medication that had the side-effect of making me drowsy in periods through the day, one of these came on me when I was at her house, I said that I was going to go in the other room and lay on the couch for a few minutes if that was alright with her; she agreed, and then, as I was walking out of her bedroom, added you’d better watch out, you might not be on that couch alone. I turned around and looked at Betty, this 89 year old woman had a bit of a smile on her face, she was flirting with me; this was not someone who was circling the drain, ready to check out, this was someone living. In the weeks afterwards she would be up, her hair would be combed, a touch of lipstick, she’d ask if I liked her new blouse, sitting at her kitchen table. The day that I asked if she’d like to go through the mail was one when you could see her face glow; before that her son would take care of the mail when he came over. Ophelia had a bit of a chuckle about the lifetime warranty being offered by someone for something, make fun of some of the other ads and offers, look at the bills to make sure that none were in arrears.

She had been in mourning, and now was not; her mourning had been so deep that it threatened her life, but she had worked through it.

She is off the hospice service now. I had quit visiting her even before that, we had nothing whatsoever in common, her bookshelf bored me, we searched and found almost nothing at all to talk about; I moved on, she moved on, and that’s the way it is.

I don’t get up to see bright colors, to do battle with the deep cold, be excited by headlines, those real reasons; brown sparrows are at the feeder this morning, eating the same grain as they did yesterday and will tomorrow, bustling and chattering, eating and shitting, just as they will tomorrow.

Thriving is what we do, everything else is an accessory.

Walking the empty street

In my dream this morning I was walking down a city street, much like Lincoln Avenue in Chicago, there were stores and there were vacancies, the stores had replaced previous ones, had nailed their facades over the previous facades; there are gaps between the sheets of glossy black panels and the old, worn bricks to which the panels were fastened, strips of glossy metal laid meaninglessly over black sheets and around expanses of glass. I go into store after store, , the stores have random assortments of goods; there is a stuffed armchair with chromed strips around and down to the floor, the butter colored leather is overstuffed with feathers or foam, it is partially covered in the plastic the manufacturer used for shipping, there is nothing worth buying–I can think of no place I would put such a chair, no way I would sit in such a chair, no reason to show interest or to buy.

Another store, another group of things for sale, gadgets, doodads, accessories; a saleswoman approaches, she is hair color ‘blond #3′, lips ‘injection mk.4′, other paints and glued on bits, she says ‘you can fuck me if you wish’, I thank her and walk on.

The aisle I am walking comes to an end, there is another parallel to it, and to cross from where I am to the parallel one requires that I use a moving walkway four feet long, I step on because that is the only way, the next aisle continues past stacks of stuff; why was one aisle now the other one, what is the difference, why is there a moving walkway four feet long?

I walk through one store and then another, down the street past places with signs ‘for rent’, ‘for sale’, ‘will modify to suit tenant’. Why? For what reason are any of these stores open? Why would I want to fuck a woman who has no features of her own, who is shaven and waxed and plucked and sprayed? Wouldn’t it be nice to hold someone’s hand, return a quiet smile, walk together? Wouldn’t that be nice? And isn’t that the fantasy that is most difficult to reject?

This is the dream I had early this morning, I lay in bed for nearly an hour looking at my dream, memorizing the parts that are important; then I got up to start walking my day, I squeezed the juice from two large navel oranges, left the filter off of the juice machine so that all the pulp would come through with the juice. Today I want to chew and swallow, taste and smell, extract all that a couple of good oranges have within them. Five scoops of beans go into the grinder, warm the coffee pot and the mug with boiling water from the kettle; coffee and very hot water stirred together, the grains swelling , the brew is deepest brown and opaque; it tastes as good as it smells as good as I imagined before throwing the covers off and getting up.

The dream? That this is a meaningless journey; things, places and people that I look to for comfort, for permanence are neither.

What is permanent is the walk, be satisfied putting one foot in front of the other, doing it again, breathing one breath after another, going from one shop to another, cease looking to make an accessory become a permanent piece of who I am.

Mary Tyler Moore did a commentary for a show about television comedy; the person on camera was injected, tightened, spray painted, tufted with unnatural fibers, lashes glued and tinted. A grotesque sight. Why do this? Why appear like this? Is that all there is to that person? Is she nothing but facade? And through the interview I remembered how she and others in her apartment building objected to falcons nesting, spoiling the facade of their building. Is it all just fucking facade for her? Is there a her under all that facade?

My dream was not about despair, emptiness and meaninglessness, it is about the walk; it is about how difficult it is to turn away from what is offered out there, that what is offered isn’t important or interesting. There is the walk. And it is done alone, no matter how much I wish it were otherwise, it is done alone. I don’t understand just why, but there is real joy in doing the walk.

Being in the present

That first smell of coffee as I opened the grinder lid, as the hot water roiled the grounds, as I lift the cup to my mouth for that first sip.

Preceding that I had an orange, I could have made fresh juice in the machine, but not for this morning, today I quartered the sphere so that I could bite with the full width of my mouth. Feel the threads that hold the cells together, feel the juice as the cells burst open, smell the fresh orange on my beard; the first flavor of this morning.

All of that was for a purpose, was planned. At about 3 a. m. I awoke to the presence of memories culled from nearly 70 Christmas mornings, the very good ones demanded that I relive them, open those old presents once again, the disappointing ones wanted recognition as well, to show the power of not quite meeting expectations; and on and on the memories came with swells of intensity, waves of yesterdays.

I realized that this Scrooge episode must end, there ain’t no profit to mood or anything else by bringing in the past this morning; Christmas morning is the quietest morning of the year in a huge city, there is almost nothing going on, even the MacDonald’s is closed today, no one is up and about. And so it is an opportunity for memories to fill the absence of real activities, would fill this Christmas morning with scenes that cannot and should not be repeated.

And so I purposely cut the orange in a way that would fill my mouth.

I purposely stood over the coffee press as the hot water swirled and released the strong odor of Peet’s Garuda Blend, one of their strongest.

What is is right-now. Inhale all the flavor that right-now has to offer, recognize that the birds have come into the yard and are chirping in the sunlight. This is what this Christmas is.

It was a difficult couple of hours, the pull of great gifts, of family together, of laughter, the attraction of those memories is strong, and has been known to lead me down the path of the morose and the bitter.  I do feel the pain of not knowing the grandchildren who open presents I have sent them, feel the pain of a parent who has an unhappy child; I feel that pain because it is real and it is part of this morning.  But it is merely pain, not the mortal wound.

I looked forward to writing this as I lay awake just an hour ago. I look forward to going to work today (they called last night to see if I could do an ‘as directed’ order).

What I am in the process of learning from these 69 Christmases is to devour each one in its time, and then taste what comes next; not the natural way of a long-standing depressive personality, it takes effort and repetition to break the old ways, and I recognize my success.

I just interrupted my prattling here for a couple of minutes in order to fill the feeder, if I am going to find joy in a flock of sparrows I better not forget to do what is necessary to have them and their exuberance.

Again, I want to say that it is now that has the real nutrition for the soul, it always has been that way.  It is why I do hospice volunteering, sit and talk with someone who is not long here, but who has today.

The weather today is to be mostly sunny, with a high near 40.  I am to take some people of means to a number of places this afternoon.  Then it will be home for my recent tradition, cook a frozen pizza and drink an extra glass of wine.

The sparrows have just recognized that the feeder has been filled.

Cold, high wind today

Between the time I went to bed and now the temperature has dropped thirty-five degrees, where everything was wet is now dry, hard dry ice. The chaise lounge from the next yard lays outside my window, large changes in temperature always brings strong winds. Dry branches clutter the sides streets, for some reason they don’t seem so obvious on main streets, perhaps they have been crushed by traffic. Some snow is falling, the eddies make sand-snakes writhing down the streets ahead of my car.

And all this last day I have been nagged by comments both public and private about being acceptable, what the hell is going on with that? Not bothered because someone disagrees, I think that I would welcome disagreement, not bothered by the absence of agreement, or not so much as I’ll admit. Bothered that there was intellectual disagreement to something that I see as beyond just the intellectual, beyond just the emotional: Accepting that one is acceptable is fundamental to everything good.

Warm Wet Winter Weekend

I’ll try this again, after having erased all that I wrote for the last twenty minutes I’ll see if I can put down a few words that express where I am this morning.

I was dissatisfied  with the way I left the ‘acceptable’ piece that I wrote yesterday, it wasn’t adequate to explain the different layers that there are in a person,  that at bottom there is something that is just right, is acceptable, something is not affected by what goes on in life.  The story of Jesus going up the hill with his cross as an example of this. Buddhist study of mindfulness as another example.   Luther’s proclamation that I can know the divine as well as anyone, and so can you, as a further example.

There must be dozens more, but the message is always the same.

I am not sure that I am satisfied with leaving that idea right there, but it is all that I can come up with this morning.

Here is something else, lighter and fun:

¢ ‡ µ  € Ø ¡ ¿ ¿ ¿
I just learned how to put down here those characters that are not on the keyboard:

http://tlt.its.psu.edu/suggestions/international/accents/codealt.html

There is the website that lists how to do it; there is one thing to remember when you try this, you have to use the keypad on the side of the keyboard, the numbers up top don’t work.  I have all mine on a mousepad from the LRB, but this is the first time I took a look at it.

To get back to that other thing for just a line or two:

This might be the time of year when it ain’t always easy to separate the joy of solitude from that of pure loneliness, there are all sorts of suggestions and diversions offered, but occasionally it is going to be damned difficult, sometimes it will be impossible not to feel loneliness; perhaps that is why I have tried to explain a basic truth of existence, perhaps the basic truth.  I will use it to help myself during those lonely moments, to get back to that place where solitude is wonderful.

It’s time to go and sort out that bird feeder again, perhaps think of buying one that isn’t so prune to clogging.

Digging out in Chicago

Will there be any news reader who does not use the phrase “Chicago is digging out” today?

Perhaps it would be a good day to consider “digging in”, to burrow under layers, occasionally peeking out the window to admire the branches heavy with snow, the bright sun on the still whiteness, before another nap?

There is one sparrow flitting, looking for a way to get at the covered feeder, nothing available until I go out and clear it free of snow and the moisture that clogs the openings. My dispatcher called last night to tell me that I had the option of booking off tonight, that there was so little doing that there wouldn’t be enough orders for everyone to have at least one, I told him that I would be in; this morning I am not sure of my decision.

It’d be easy to make the decision to stay home, warm & dry, not to slog through the heavy stuff in order to gross $30, no one could blame a senior driver for not making the effort without the need. On the other hand it means that I will not have anything to do with anyone else all day, that I will be my own company, do I not get enough of that ordinarily?

The most recent weather forecast says that the winds will be gusting to 25, consider that number rather than the temperature.

There is a region between loneliness and solitude, the areas on either side of the dividing line are clear, I am in that ambiguous zone of wishing for friendly company while knowing that there isn’t anyone I care to be with for any period. I zig zag between the two situations.

Tomorrow is the holiday dinner for the bereaving patients of our hospice group, this is still very new area for me, I don’t know what it’ll be like, other than intense. A person could always use this recent storm as an excuse, if an excuse be needed.

Thinking of that Robert Frost poem about the fork in the road as if the decision was always clear, that the decision need only be made once, that it was taken without regret or doubt. I look back down the path, I don’t see a clear and straight line with a single fork far back; I see a line heading strongly in one direction, and then a course correction of ninety degrees followed by a tentative path, another course correction, another speed, another distance, no change mimicking the previous, no long and straight drives; and yet there is certain movement towards one pole, a destination without a terminus, if I just raise my eyes occasionally.

I will probably not go to work this afternoon, but I will not evade being witness to these widows and kids who are going through their first or second holiday alone, they know the difference between solitude and loneliness, they know where fate has placed them for now.

So I may not dig out of the drifts this afternoon to drive a Town Car to O’Hare, but I’ll do tomorrow what is truly important, be witness to that next stretch of road.