Two Thousand and Twenty Three

 These humble, less than manicured hands, typing words on the keyboard.  Do they not know what their owner thinks?  Do they think about each other?  When typing they hang so close; thumbs within millimeters of each other, often touching.

Oh cumbersome blog how did I manage....

 How did I go two years without striking out at you?  Has it been that long?  From long lines at the check out counter at the Memphis Public Library, as roaming the stacks, looking for books, and typing to no one...a true "blog."  But alas, <br>

It is June now in our year 2022.  Hot, extremely hot.  Volatile, even.  My body aches as all bodies must at a certain time in their life.  I choose sporadic wellness moments.  "Soft Bell," you breath in and out, right?  you look for the calming sense you gain when at high altitudes.  I remember carving snow with my Mom's sister and her husband.  Snow coming down hard, few people seemed on the slopes.  Trees lining the, I want to say "fairway," but this isn't golf...or it wasn't then.  <br>

I remember laughter, really.  Carving through the fresh powder and my uncle to my left and my aunt a bit behind me.  It was skiing as in a movie about skiing.  <br>

Now I look at my phone often, not that I didn't have one then, but now I look at it often.  When I am home my dogs greet me at the door, I stop into the front room to say "hello," to my kids and I look about for my wife.

ok ok...COVID-19 take 2

Here the father of two sits, entrenched in the great COVID-19 pandemic of 2020. Washing his hands thoroughly but still eating stuff off the floor and obeying the 5 second rules.  Its sunny outside my office window and 200+ thousand people are dead.

Covid

The global pandemic put a few words in the mouths of pretty much everyone with an opinion and I have 7 minutes until a "Zoom," meeting don't we all and we will discuss new stuff and its the new normal, and of course it is, and check YOUR EMAIL, and walk away, but don't forget your mask and get a bite to eat if you can, if they deliver, and if they don't TRY CURBSIDE, and check your pulse and check your temperature and check your O2 and get a meter and wash you hands and don't have fun anymore, and don't take your kids to the zoo or the store or the gas stations and BE SCARED ALL OF THE TIME, and wait for the vaccine and WAIT FOR THE END and wait for it.


Just because its there doesn't mean you have to.

Three Twenty Twenty

In two parts:
1. Arriving late in the evening with slow rain making the roads nice and sloppy. A sneak to the gas station for a 24 oz can of beer, keeping it in the little paper bag sleeve even though I am no longer in a park and I am no longer 18.  Even though I am no longer 23 and practicing in a band, even though I am no longer 32 and mowing my lawn.


2. Coming home the next day and drinking two fingers of whiskey, smoking one drag of a cigarette only to stub it out and throw it away.  Then starting into the empty void and seeing the moon exactly how people saw it 400 years ago.  Or maybe not
2b. And what of it if I did?  Does it matter?  Heck yes I threw a cup of water directly in your face and right as rain I did a dance on your grave!

twenty twenty

A move is a move, regardless of who or what I am running from. There are still boxes left unpacked, there are still sleepless nights of regret, there are still fumes running around my head when i wake too early and i pluck the little stars and birds out of the halo and look at them. "What are you doing there?" I may say, as if I bumped my head from a fall in the night.  Tremendous flu struck at the beat of 8:00 p.m. new years eve this year.  And what fun followed as my wife and I turned about in our sleep sacks, alternating between sweat, fear, panic, chills.... My god those chills
I did manage to break 100 twice last year in golf.  I follow all of the majors now; i have favorite golfers.  I have bought new (ish) irons, I have traded in old wedges for new, I have no-longer-used clubs sitting in a dusty corner (something my brother mentions in the same breath as having children, your first car, and a pocket knife collection). 

What else...?  So the flu wrecked havoc on my physically and mentally. The fun depression of my 20s given way to a real darkness as I suck the ink off the black walls "make it stop," as if to say "enough."  Though there isn't really ever enough.  And my golf game, that old metaphor, it is as useless as ever (did I mention?).  Just plain useless; though I did manage to take my son along in a cart one day. I like to think he enjoyed driving about, though watching his father curse as one ball after another sailed into deep rivets of earth he had to be asking himself, much as my wife did the one time she saw be at a driving range topping ball after ball after ball, trying ever harder to impress her with mighty, heroic blasts, "is this really what he's been spending all his time and energy doing?"
Heil, Change!  I guess.  Not that you can stop it. But sometimes it feels like a circle isn't change at all.

And in the great tradition of near 40 somethings everywhere, and to the surprise of no one who has suffered the celebrated mid-life crisis, I have taken up golf.  I wanted to put quotes around that but I think from a correct english stand point it is not necessary. The quotes would remind the reader, me, about twice a year, that I have only taken up golf if that term means I stand on a hot course and curse and yell as I swing my clubs around like I am trying to swat flies off the ground.  My game is non existence. I tell myself that this is some kind of mirror of life; life is hard, golf is hard. But really isn't life hard enough?  Do I not get pleasure out of older hobbies?  Biking, running, weight lifting in the winter months?  I think I do.  There is often a sense of pleasure once a work out is over.  On long runs there is that mind interrupted feeling when you pause to realize you haven't been thinking the last half mile or so.  That is the mission accomplished feeling I always search for, often through booze. 
But golf seems to just bring annoyance, pain, aggravation. A truly weird game.  And yet, once every 10 times I get this perfectly laid, crisp, wonderful shot that reverberates throughout my body and into my head and makes me smile just slightly.  This isn't the thing I look back on like the old running blogs of my early Baton Rouge years.  No, this is just a grind.  A stupid, costly, meaningless grind. Somehow I have tricked myself that it is necessary. I have created little mini goals, none of which I have made.  Though maybe I have?  Maybe the goals were just to learn the game?  Haven't I made it that far.  That should be enough for year one, right?
 

Two posts last year. Let's see if we can beat that.  Though I think the term "blog," is pretty much shelved at this point.  I can still look at these old entries every 5 years or so and catch a glimpse into my past.  I will save the stories of my son and wife; travels to visit family, and the desolate feeling of walking streams littered with beer cans for my personal diary entries.  Kept in small black notebooks, ranging in size and thickness; having both work related notes, thoughts on the day, and shitty, shitty little poems.
I grow more inward lately. Fake spats with nobody in particular. I don't actually have anyone to bounce ideas off right now.  I don't ever actually bounce ideas though. Even when I am with someone i usually listen then talk (not listening).

My runs lately take be besides the Harpeth River. Once while it was flooded I saw a blue heron doing its delicate one leg balance, anxiously watching the infinite out of its tiny bird eye. I was reminded again of my runs in Baton Rouge. How I knew someday I would look back at those first few years as the best times of my life.  Not that anything was happening but that I felt an awakening.  I can't describe it with words; though I am a twice a year blogger, my ability to form sentences has never been strong.

sketches

The following were found in a notebook left on the corner steps by a library branch I rarely visit:

Never made
anything.
you never made
a single thing.

I can really only imagine how, 10 years ago I loped around university lake, slowly, taking in young girls in small shorts, egrets roaming around; always one nervous eye towards me, another on the lake. Sun seemed to gleam from everywhere. I spent hours there reading, watching birds. I got to see pelicans wintering over there once. was it a dream or did I witness hundreds of birds flying in great circles above the lake, only to slowly return down, one by one, the grim look of accomplishment that can only come form a bird whose beak is half its body length. Why do I remember the runs?
I also remember the bench where I finished Suttree and the stoop where I finished the Crossing. I can sum up a chunk of my life with those two books though they only covered a couple of weeks.

Just a ray of light before winter comes.

I wrote a few lines today, trying to make a poem but it didn't work out. Here is all that remains from it:
the leaves blowing around on the patio made their own quiet, rhythmic music.

Four minutes to 10, a late time really. Later than normal. New strings on a guitar that has been locked away from more than a year. An older amp that still has a warm hum to it. Impossible to start.
To save money I started drinking water instead of beer. Maybe this will somehow create some kind of different mind set?
List of people who have died in the last year:
David Bowie
The phase after his death was met with a lot of re listening and a lot of discovering albums I had forgotten or not yet listened to.
Book read in the last year:

I used to shove my disc man into the back of my pants and walk over the the Memphis Public library for breaks while working at a music store near there. Aimless. I would walk over, smoke a few cigarettes, and ride the escalator to the second floor. I would get a guest pass and log on and read sports pages, type of some on a blog or live journal, and the log off. I would then peruse the stacks of books on that floor, looking for authors to jump out at me, or maybe looking for a book with the right spine design.
I may walk the stairs up to the 3rd or 4th floor, looking at history books; usually with a military slant. Most of what i read left my mind the moment the words were read; I have awful retention of information. But I still found joy somehow in pouring through those books. That library was opened in 2001 I believe...insane.
 I haven't run or exercised in two weeks. I have been battling the flu. A fucking nightmare. I think its my first. Um, what else...I have read probably 200 pages or so of Shelby Foote's civil war. I don't want to stop reading it but I feel like I need to read something else for a moment; take a break. I have a few things on their way from various branches. I can never tell which books will stick. I got Travels with Charley, by Steinbeck. I started it at lunch today and it seems pretty good. I have a new book coming in, The sport of Kings, about horse racing (among other themes ill probably fail to pick up on).  What else?  I guess that is it. This is more of a journal entry.  So, hi. J.D. in 10 years when you read this.

They both carried buck eyes around with them at all times. He kept his in his bag; the little pocket that could be used for pencils and pens. She kept hers in her purse. They would forget they was there. Never looked at, never poured over with rough fingertips. Its surface was never rubbed for good luck. It just sat there in the folds of his bag and next to the tampons and mirrors in hers. But they both had one. They had a kid, too. He was crazy and he grew and grew and grew. At times they never knew when they could get a breath in on their on. At other times they wondered how they lived without the child. Clothes at first would be too big, and then there were small.
Once, not too long ago it felt, but really decades, they had biked around university lakes together. Stopping near an old oak tree to watch the pelicans drift in their lazy circles; it was winter. All these birds just came to their lakes. He noticed them first on his runs and then he started to invite her. Parks all over the world have signs that say "don't feed the birds bread," but like everyone else they always did. "I touched one!" she shouted out as a goose was lurking near her for bread. A boy was learning to walk. His parents watched lovingly from a distance as he took his first steps onto the stage...

It  so happened that rose was her favorite color. She wore it in the fabrics wrapped around her neck. Had a sweater than swam in its murky red. And she drank it heavily at all times of the year in the light colored wines. Her cup of choice was an earthen jar she had found at a garage sale some years back. Its dark green and browns hugging closely to the legs of the wine; sloshing around its dark cylinder. In the heat of the summer, head tilted slightly she called out

A wept like a baby this morning after hearing of the passing of David Bowie. I woke up, turned on my phone to browse what is now considered news: mostly vintage photos of half naked girls, a couple of friend's posts about what they are eating, and all these pictures of David Bowie. What was this? "Why were they posting pictures of Bowie," i thought while struggling to wake up.
I went into the front room and played "Five Years," pulled my hat over my eyes, and cried large chunks of tears. Didn't know it would affect me like that. You can feel the hole in our culture which is so artless now.
You will be missed for ever.

Watching the aphids snow down from the window through the window in his temporary office, Martin thought about drugs. New drugs, cyber drugs. It had started innocently enough; sober for 10 years, when his office mate suggested a drug free addiction in the form of online troll basing. It was simple, you typed in a different address emailed to you each week, and feasted your eyes on patterns and swirls that made your mind drip and drool into your cerebral cortex. It was heady, techy, weird ass shit. Martin remembers reading some story as a kid about this music you could listen to from this black market cassette that was supposed to do the same thing. So he signed up, paid his dues, and typed in the address. He didn't know how...but it worked.
So he checked it at work once in the bathroom, scrolling through his phone, getting caught up/high, then walked back to his desk and watched the aphids, covered in their own snowy sugar feces, fly around outside. It looked pretty until you had to clean off your car/grill/bicycle/deck. he could care less. He was high and nothing else mattered.

Smoked drifted up form the ashtray that lay on his belly. Sweat kept his leg glued to hers as he stared into the ceiling fan above him; spent. She halfway rolled over and kept trying to find a cool spot in the dank sheets. Marcel picked up his cigarette and took a slow, thoughtful drag. "I don't care that you are leaving," he joked scratching her calf with his toe nail. Music played in the other room where the evening started: half eaten food, plates; the kicked over chair. She reached over and thumbed the old Saint necklace that was his granddad's. "Assisi," she asked?

He wiped away the moisture from his beer and motioned to her to sit down on the tailgate of his truck. The humidity played tricks with her shirt; sticking to one arm, hanging freely from the other. They sat for a while listening to the loud cicadas calling back and forth from the hydrangeas and the little dogwood tree he had planted. The radio was playing a local baseball game.  She couldn't tell if he was following it or just had it on for something to listen to.
Do you even like baseball, she said grabbing his beer and taking a pull. 
 

"So we generally start by asking you tell a couple of lies about yourself."
"Um, ok. I am 5'9", I break dance.."
"Ok, stop. We need to calibrate."
Deborah pulled a long cigarette out of her pack and started patting down her pockets, looking for a lighter.  The room had a greenish tint to it but Deborah doubted she would call it "green."  She found her lighter and lit her cigarette.  Warm light flooded though the dusty windows and she took a small drag and then held out her hand with the cigarette in it, studying her fingernails.  She had used a burgundy sorta of wine color; malbac?   She tapped the cigarette twice with her pointer finger even though there was barely an ash.  She could hear a train somewhere in the distance, she thought about a movie she saw about squatter punks.  What happened to their dogs, she often thought?  And face tattoos?  Fuck that.
She pulled out her phone and started thumbing through photos of herself.  Mostly in black for the last several months all of the pictures looked the same:  sharp, black bangs, black shirt, black pants...black.  She read the black made you look thinner and that was all she needed.  She took a polite drag and blew the smoke out of the side of her mouth, setting her chin on her hand.  She was looking up with a "sigh" look on her face like she saw in a movie, or read about.  No one was even watching her.