Defenseless

Awoke in a cold sweat. No mean trick, when it's this hot. A really bad dream filled with sepulchral imagery, a maze; a tracery of escape (a line of grace, a gentle 'S' curve, illuminated from beneath, like the path to hell, down alleys, threatening shadows) and the sound-track is ricky-ticky harpsichord imitating a Whip-O-Will. I'm sure I'm going crazy. I drew up a will with Clay, last year, so I'm not intestate. There are instructions, somewhere in my papers, that I don't have to be embalmed, in Ohio, and that I should be buried in a Lazy-Boy box from Covert's Furniture Store, in a tree-tip pit Booby would excavate with a back-hoe. No illusion that death is anything more than merely dying. Clare and Christopher Smart are cartoons at an opening reception where all the guests are hollow-eyed and vacant. What are you going to do? I get up and roll a smoke, pour a neat whiskey into the glass on my desk. I see where all this is coming from, insofar as understanding is necessary, not that that makes it any more comfortable. That that seems a poor choice of phrase. 2:22 in the morning, and I don't have a clue. I'd rather be awake, than mired in that dream. Clare knew he was crazy. Maybe I read too much, but I don't know what the option is, would I rather be bored? No. A thousand times no. I'd rather be rocked in the cradle of anything alive. A personal choice. 2:48 I get out several things I need to read later, when I can see. Lonesome whistle blows. Don't feel like doing anything, so I read Gruber all day, "The Forgery of Venus" does require two readings, a lovely thing. Chaz did the deed, the trucage. The description of matching 17th century pigments and techniques is fascinating. The channeling of Velazquez is terrific stuff. A good book to spend a day with. Steady looking things up. Grazing on finger food, nuts and berries, cheese and olives, through the afternoon. At some point I drifted off into the whole mortality sidebar, thinking about family dynamics, how the situation was moving into even more difficult waters. Every family navigates this. If you have a lot of money, you pay someone else to do some, or even a lot of it. As it is, I'll have to go down, a week, here and there, cover for my sister so she can get a break. I'm southern, it's family. I'll be paying off the rental cars for years, on my VISA, but it has to be done. One visit I'll get over to Kim's, to see the brickwork on the Carage. He's a consummate craftsman, one of the very best I know. Don't know why it's like that, but most of my friends are the best at what they do. Like we had a club and a secret handshake. We don't. I rarely see these people, when I do see them we pick up the conversation, exactly where it was. It's weird. How your brain can do that. First thing I do is lay face-down, put my hands behind my back. I know the drill. I don't want to blow my cover, a country dufus in a denim shirt. Everyman, more or less, Mister Levi, we have on tape, leaving in a hurry, I think it's connected, but there's nothing I can prove. I think of several red herring. But I choose to say nothing, and see what happens.