Saturday, February 23, 2008

Long Weeks and Alleyways...

I know most weeks have seven days, and that equates to exactly 168 hours - now the overwhelming majority of those hours are spent either sleeping or working - and the remainder are spent in leisurely hours doing what comes natural, or feels best at the moment, or just doing nothing.

This week, someone threw a monkey wrench in my plans - sort of gigged the spokes of my bicycle that had been running effectively (even if two flat tires and a rear brake that did not work slowed me down a bit) - but I found myself in a place that was Thorazine like, and somewhere between a dream state and a small piece of hell. I lost control, and honestly, it was the first spring I had jumped into since a little boy tubing down the Itchitucknee Springs, cold and fast, but comforting above the waterline - warm sun and beautiful Creedence Clearwater playing in the background.

Tomorrow is the first day of the rest of my life - what am I walking into, I have no idea other than a place where honesty is supposed to be the measure of the day, but I suspect we are somewhere between a mediator and a referree who will gladly accept his money to make sure that he feigns listening for an hour or so.

I am not really sure where this post is going - I started thinking about cranberry juice and apples with peanut butter, those are good simple things, easy things to enjoy. Then they just get complicated with wax on the apples and peanut butter recalls and the cranberry juice only being 20% juice versus the real strong liquid. None the less, I fixed a glass of high fructose corn syrup and cranberries, and felt my gums cut on the apple with the pasty peanut butter smeared over the top of each slice.

I sat on the slide today and talked on the phone with my best friend, really, right now, my only friend who can understand what the hell I am talking about - I don't have much to be honest or dishonest about, except to say, that there are things that just really matter, and then there are things that don't - in fact, to be a rebel this evening, I washed the lights with the darks on warm water, and overloaded the dishwasher just to have something to do. It was a good call - the weather was 78 degrees, my daughter played in the roses, Charlie searched for plumbers putty, and I just enjoyed the warm plastic and the Florida sun.

I finished my book, it took a while to read the cuckoo's nest, considering that there are parts that were difficult - at times I felt as if I were the big strapping Indian - pushing a mop, keeping my mouth shut, waiting for a McMurphy to make me a bigger stronger man - most times I felt like Harding - the overeducated sell-out that left nothing to chance, and voluntarily committed myself to a secure world of routine treatments - until I feel well enough to do something different.

Learning comes in wierd ways, and my learning last week was painful, but necessary - there are different types of love in this world - passionate, friendly, simple, new, longing, maternal, paternal, brotherly - the list goes on, the knowledge that I gained is that we all need it sometime, and that is what makes all of the difference.

No comments: