I am sitting here waiting on you to return from a gender exclusive affair on the other end of the street, and every car passing turns down the one street and continues down the other and at times I convince myself, that tonight you’ve decided not to come back. You told me yesterday you were leaving, not me but here, this place that we found so perfect. You needed an adventure, one in which you hoped to find yourself, and today we went and looked at particularly adventuresome spots. Tonight I am waiting, after pizza, water, orange juice, cigarettes, and the glass door tilted in, and the glass windows tilted out, and the screen door shut, and the bugs humming – all cars make the turn and continue straight, sitting and smoking, I hear clanking of keys and think it is you, but it is just ghost, as the whole place soon will be, little by little, until nothing of matter of either of us will be...
It’s 6:30 AM on the morning after our little world together first showed a crack and began to crumble. A cigarette and a glass of water. Robert leaves later today. I’ll get back in bed and try to hold it all together with an embrace, for a little...
I have sad news to convey. I awoke this morning to a text message from Robert, friend of many of you, and sometimes writer for bullpencatcher.com, telling me that his mother died at 10:10 GMT today. As many of you know she had been recovering from a several-month stay in the hospital after having an allergic reaction to medication for gout that caused her to lose close to 70% of the skin on her body. She was recovering well from the reports I had been receiving from Robert. When I talked with Robert on Friday of last week, he told me that she was going into the hospital for treatment of the skin on her eyes, not a simple and easy procedure, but not one thought to be incredibly dangerous either. Last night I recieved a call from him during which he told me that his father had called earlier in the evening to tell him his mother had turned for the worse and the doctors predicted she would only make it, at most, another week. The loss of her skin had made her very susceptible to bacteria. A staphylococcus (Staph) infection had entered her body and made its way to her heart where it was destroying one of her heart valves. Her heart was, for all intents and purposes, pumping blood back on itself. Robert told me that he and his father had decided not to request more life support once she started to slide. His father told him of the plans he would make for the funeral. Robert was planning to leave Oxford today to go up...
It was about then that the sky turned black, even blacker through the tinted office windows. Black like ink clung to the skyscrapers downtown. The occasional pop of light added to the noirish aspect of the afternoon. All systems come to a halt. I want my mother. Wish to be at home. Not that home, but home. Michael and I riding out through the trails to the lake. can’t even have a cigarette. It’s too dark. Couldn’t find the match to the tip. I fear that the atmosphere may turn me black too. That just walking in it. To get to my car to get to the airport where the flight will not be on time, jets all covered in black, ink. Will we drink black drinks. It so scary its boring. Then a lady in a pink sweatshirt struts by. How does she stay pink. Seems like petroleum products could be the answer. The phones are off the hook. People are calling from the north to tell of devastation. Calling from places like Cleveland and Blue Ridge. They tell us the whole place is black. Like an oil tank leak. Not fish this time. Not furry seafarers. This time it has come for us. Are we what we eat? Have we too become polluted? Is that the reason the sky is black? The jets can’t take off? Let’s call of all Earth Day activity… due to the weather. Let’s send the last dog from the pen to the executioner’s chamber. I’ll give him up too. Was playing: Heroin...
My parents have just left, heading back to North Carolina by way of any roadside arts/crafts stores. The faucet in the kitchen doesn’t splatter all over the toaster anymore. You can shower with reasonable assurance that the water pressure will be strong enough to cut the lather off of your body. I can indicate left turns without the fear of inattentive crashing into me from behind, and my car doesn’t groan anymore during the left turn. There are cosmos planted in a small window box out front. The grill is silver and clean. The futon is stripped and back in place. There are TV dining trays in the living room with classic country LP covers decoupaged on them. If you don’t look too closely, it’s almost as if they weren’t here at all, though. The house is cleaner than it was the week before they arrived. Musical instruments have moved from one side of the room to the other. Tonight will be quiet. G and I will most likely go get dinner. We will come home to a TV playing and we will also most likely watch a full 30 segment without any interruptive conversation. It will be nice. I will remember something I wanted to ask dad to take a look at. Mom and Dad will call to say they are back, that they dropped by my brother’s to say hello to the grandkids. At home Mom will dress in a house coat and watch home repair television. Dad will go online to get more info about the Zoo where he is taking Stone tomorrow. Mom will go...
‘Goldilocks’Okay, so I am sitting at work today, stuck writing code, and all of the world seems to be worried about the fact that local news anchor Brenda Wood has “gone blonde.” I mean really? Is this news? We are to publish a story about her change in hair color. I am to wait with baited breath to get that story up on the web site as soon as it breaks. We are running several before and after photos for comparison of the “going blonde” process, and we are running a poll to ask the general public what they think of Brenda “going blonde.” I mean, come on! The pope just died, as did Saul Bellow, and we are at war in Iraq, and Jimmy carter got snubbed by the president, and… I am supposed to be on the edge of my seat waiting for a story, actually a critique, of a local anchor’s new hair color. “It’s shimmery but not as shimmery as it could be, adds a better complement to her complexion than the old squirrels nest she used to wear on her head… but all in all, it could be better. Next time, Bren, try one of the salons outside of the mall, and remember to tip your colorist!” Why don’t we just save a tree… and stop wasting my time. Was playing: Finally We Are No One...
A birdhouse in the city rainAt times, there’s no sadder place than a city in the rain. I awoke this morning to a clap of thunder right as my alarm clock was going off at 6:45 AM. G was walking naked through the room, looking for clothes. It seemed as if it were much earlier. The light in the room was all off. I did my morning ritual of Diet Coke and a cigarette , then a shower – all the time worrying that the lightning would come in through the pipes and electrocute me. I wondered what that would feel like. Would my heart stop? If it didn’t start back, who would call the paramedics? I survived only to field a call from an insurance adjuster who needed to take a picture of my car for a claim I recently made. The usual 10 minute drive to work took 30 as Dekalb Avenue was a river due to the stopped up drains and the overdevelopment of land alongside the road. The office windows in my building are tinted, subtracting two hours from morning light and adding two hours to afternoon. It felt as if it were dusk all day. And then finally, I left. Getting out of the parking lot behind the building, I became aware of all of the people that are everywhere in a city. Even in the car, trying to get home, there’s no opportunity to be completely un-self-conscious. Does it look like I am picking my nose? I was , but then I saw you and I don’t know if you saw me, but...
A happier place and time?Okay, I haven’t been posting much here lately. When I started this blog I had just been through the first of two layoffs that I have experienced since starting it. My at-the-time girlfriend had just moved to Vermont and I was at home alone. Oh, also there was copious amounts of Seagrams 7 being consumed on a nightly basis, and out of this burgeoning alcoholism, the muse began to speak to me regularly (go figure!). I spent nearly a year trying to decide whether I would move to Vermont where I knew one person, or stay in Atlanta, unemployed, where I knew many more people. Inside my head was a rough place to be, and the battleground that was there, combined with the aforementioned alcoholism, led to reglar blog postings of a cerebral/fantastical/metaphorical nature. I was working a lot of things out, and you guys had to be the victims of that process. Much has changed in my life. I decided to stay in Atlanta. Found a job at the newspaper in town. Found a new girlfriend. Moved… twice! Went through a tough process of trying to cut down on the sauce, six months of therapy and more. I still struggle with periodic depression goblins and have yet to find that elusive paradise of being. In fact, I have become increasingly concerned that such paradise may not exist at all. Overall, however, I have found some way of making a little sense out of it all. I have found a place, where not always happy, I don’t seem to emotionally bounce back and forth all...
I spoke on the phone to my father today. The difference between the way he answers the phone now and how he did three weeks ago is marked: where there was fear, where there was pain, where was the acceptence of the worst, there now is joy. There’s a smile in the voice that only a couple of weeks ago sounded leaden and careworn. You see, my mother walked today. This morning she shuffled along the burns unit corridor with the aid of a Zimmer frame, and then she did it again this afternoon. Dad is buying a new bed for her return; he’s dercorating the bedroom; he’s shampooing carpets; he’s shopping for new clothes; he’s looking forward to what, at our family’s lowest point, seemed to be the impossible: Mum’s homecoming. I raise my glass to the NHS. Thank you Mr Bevan! Thank you. I know you have all been thinking of me. You cannot know how much that means to me. You should know that I have been thinking of you. And that always...
I am just about to make the phone call. And even though I’ve dialed the number every day this week, the thought of it ties my stomach in knots. By writing this I know, in a way, I am putting off the moment when I must pick up the handset, tap in the area code, then the number, and wait until a nurse answers at the other end: Hello, Burns Unit. My mother is in a pitiful state: She has lost seventy per cent of her skin – face, arms and hands, chest, back, tummy, thighs and feet; her breathing is aided by a ventilator through a tracheotomy; tubes come in and out of evey orifice for food, blood, piss, you name it. She is very ill. And all this from a drug allergy. When my father rang to say that the doctors had given her a less than fifty per cent chance of survival, I dropped everything at work, rented a car and drove the 170-mile journey to her bedside. The medical staff are amazing. I can’t even begin to express my admiration for, and gratitude to, everyone who is working so tirelessly to save my mother’s life. The nurses are constantly monitoring, testing, adjusting and tending. Registrars, consultants and surgeons are honest yet encouraging in their counsel, answering any question with patience and warm sensitivity. She really couldn’t be in a better place or in better hands. There is no end to this story; no one knows how it will end – all we can do is hope. Now I’m going to make that phone...
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