Just Saying

That whole act meant nothing. What was signified. Assume everything is pregnant with meaning. Pay attention to detail and quite quickly you're buried in a morass of data. I'd stopped at the bottom of the hill to sort mail, mostly junk, Direct TV flyers and a lovely card talking about death benefits, well designed, caught my eye. When I got up to pee, the middle of the night, overcast, not a single star, I wondered why I'm here, in this specific place, and I don't have an easy answer. Happenstance. You end up someplace. I was at the bottom of the driveway, reviewing my mail, not a care in the world. I was almost home, I had drinking water and supplies, I wasn't worried about anything, and I felt it necessary to scream. Where I live you can do that. So I yodeled at the top of my lungs and was immediately answered by a coyote just a couple of ridges over. I'm often sure I'm not making sense: just because you're facile doesn't mean you're making sense. Went back, deleted a word and added a colon, not bad for an old guy. The real world is always theater, you notice that? and some times you just have to scream. It doesn't necessarily mean something. You get the drift. Sticky spit. Simply rolling a smoke. Fuck a bunch of criticism. I took an advanced degree in Janitorial Studies because it put me in touch with the various weaknesses. You'll want to remember everything. But you can't. Not the way things are constellated. Mostly what I do is go back and take out words, maybe change a mark of punctuation. And occasionally scream. I reserve to right to scream. Too many fat people, and everybody uses too much water. You stack up words and there is apparent meaning. I get it. 'Not Nothing', for instance, might mean several different things. I can't collect rain water, this time of year, because of the sex-life of trees, stamens and pollen. That pale green almost yellow transparency of new leaves, and the drooping weight and measure of spring. I can still see the ground on the other side of the hollow, but the days are numbered. Almost April, still waiting for the hammer to fall, but the new growth is flexible, soft and pliable. Color is the name of the game, Redbud and Dogwood. the green on the margin, verging toward a rebirth of wonder; a grain of salt, in the great scheme of things, but not nothing. First morels, and I treat them as if they were solid gold, which they are, blot off any clinging leaf-matter, fry them in butter and have them on a piece of toast. You can't imagine how great this is. Having great sex and eating wild mushrooms are similar occasions. I know it's merely tannin that stains the concrete in the imprint of leaves, but it's so beautiful I'm left breathless. Maybe I have a heart condition, maybe nothing means anything, not unlike Beckett's last plays. The disembodied voice. I stop and stare, not unlike someone impaired. Green? Really? I'm not done with winter and it's already spring. I'm disappointed the slings and arrows didn't impact me more directly. I never once wore my crampons this winter. Does that mean anything? Less snow, fewer days that ice carpeted the driveway. Meaning is so nebulous. Not unlike what you thought last Thursday, when we were talking about cave art. How a reproduction could mean something. Anything, whatever. The tintinnabulation of the bells, or just a ringing in your ears. They're holding the Memory Championship as we speak, in NYC, where yesterday is the distant past, and I wonder what they'll remember: numbers in a row? given names? the order of peas in a pod? I can't keep track of the books I have opened to a specific page, much less remember, after a nap, whether it's night or day. I do know it's either Sunday or Monday and I can determine night from day by where the light comes from. Easy enough, after I drew large arrows on the floor, with key words underlined. The frogs are fucking again and I don't go out and watch, which I think is a notch on my belt, not watching being a key ingredient in my new 12 step program, the road to recovery being long and hard. Some people are just fat because they eat a lot and never use the stairs, other people develop a beer-belly, a pregnancy never realized, because they stop at the pub too often and down a few pints. I walk a middle course. I can't gain weight if I try, because there's always the driveway.