Commentary Privilege

You earn the right to comment by watching closely, or reading closely, or looking closely (watching is not the same as looking). Former wives and husbands have commentary privileges. Of course, it's usually best to not comment. I've been writing so much, the last few years, have gained a working facility with language, and a certain speed of response. I talk a lot, out loud, when I'm writing, monologs and dialogs, ask questions and answer them, so someone gives me a line of talk, I'm on it like ugly on a stick. One of those Celtic bards leading the charge, singing the lines of war. Wherever this stuff comes from. I did tweak my back yesterday but caught it just it time. Needed to split some wood, wore the back brace and used my legs, kept the back straight, and it was fine, maybe slightly better. The considered stroke. I needed to be outside, just above freezing, a breeze, partly cloudy, racing shadows. I always have a stump, in the woodshed, that I can sit on and roll a smoke. A second wave of woodpeckers. B comes over for a drink and we talk about the birds. Our best guess is this a unique thing, or a seldom thing, not normal, because we had neither ever seen it before, and we'd watched. So it wasn't a lek as much as it was a field of opportunity. There was something there to eat, and, with a full belly, you might as well fuck, you know, lay some fertile eggs. There was a lot of strutting and pecking on the back of the neck, looked almost abusive, but the female rarely flew away. Hard to not make that a metaphor. Pink elephants, red herring: the world in which you live is a construct. There is no guiding principle. Let's not even use my friends as examples, they'd be an odd sampling, let's choose some people at large. The person that checks you out at Kroger, the clerk at the liquor store, the librarian that scanned your books, they're people too, have lives, get up and do what needs to be done. I have a thought, divergent, dismiss it, maybe make a note, try to stay on line. It isn't easy, everything diverts. The apparent me, that most of you see, might be a construct, I can't speak to that, I actually am a janitor, my largest concerns are the grout joints, I fear for the worst. Fucking chocolate icing, it's everywhere. That kind of thing, where you'd know what I was saying, and I'd ask how did you know that? The natural world is brutally honest, we accept that, as a matter of course, that you might need an update is more problematic, I can't offer one, I was just trying to finish a thought. What you might think I was trying to say. You build up a certain level of trust, you can say anything, so you just have to stay on track, but that's difficult, when there isn't one. The writing me is a mystery; I know him hardly at all, the writing me. He knows people I hardly remember, I'm shocked by what he says. I can't believe I was ever that person, and I apologize, that I could do that for you. Lie about whether or not I'd seen you. Listen, everything is protoplasmic. Look around. The world as you know it, what you think is actually happening. It changes in a moment. Damned machine wouldn't let me send last night. I'm becoming sporadic. Entropy, losing my heat. After a really bummed day I consider where else I might live. I can't think of anyplace. There are places I can crash for a while, but doing it all over again seems a little far-fetched. Truth is, I love my job, love where I live, content in the relative balances. Something went very wrong today, like that day Herbert started throwing hammers toward the loading doors at the Cape Playhouse, it was too far away for him to actually hit them, and he threw like a girl. What was it B said, from his days coaching girl's softball, you have to teach them to lead with the elbow. It's all mechanics. Me commenting on things, I can't not. For instance I just took a phone call, usually I'd hang up, from my credit card company, and because of the financial melt-down, they've lowered my interest rate, to keep me as a customer. I talked with Karen, she had a good speaking voice and she had been over her material, and in the couple of paragraphs she read me (it was a found poem, I wish I could've taped it) there was the word 'applicable' and I laughed, she stopped reading and asked what was funny and I told her I liked that word, that it had been a word-of-the-week, in my, you know, vocabulary game. I told her (this was being taped, for performance review, so I performed) that the current word was synecdoche and used the Brett Farve example rather than Pamela Anderson. She was calling from Maryland. The weather was fine. I'm more and more led to believe that I don't understand anything. I'm a good watcher, a good reader, I can weave disparate threads, but I never see the train-wreck before it happens. I consider going to ground, renting a room and eating TV dinners, maybe under a different identity. I'm a good janitor, I could probably get a job, but there are always problems. Sure, I could be someone else, hacking away in an apartment somewhere, Kansas City, but my neighbor (I've never had one of those) would probably have a cat that chooses to shit in front of my door. Of course I step in it. Of course the apartment is carpeted. I'd rather not. I'm fine with a painted plywood sub-floor and the occasional mopping, the occasional robbery. Eventually, there's nothing left to steal. If you need my blanket that badly, steal it, I can always cover up with leaves. This train-wreck bothers me particularly, because I know the players. I sense a fundamental change. I don't know what to make of it. I have esoteric training that points in certain directions, there's no reason to stay here, considering what's happened. I might as well be in Arkansas. Mississippi. One of those states, where nothing matters. I thought I meant more than that, but who could ever tell? Necessity is a mother.