Sunday, January 9, 2022

Then. Loved It Now




Cancelled a call this morning.  I had to struggle with the idea, which is insane.  I could squeeze it in.  I could let it run in the background.  I could take the call out on my mom’s porch and then come in.  But there was another call at 9:00AM and one after that too, and my stepdad had fallen, my mom was shaken up.  The call could wait.  And I told them as much.  Everyone will be fine.



The water looked remarkable, as it always does, a few hundred feet above the great fjord.  It’s never wise to look too long left or too long right, surely as one drives over the narrow bridge.  But there to the right, plowing straight on into Fanny Reece Park, was an impossible misty cloud that enchanted the whole river crossing, until I looked back to see welder and his flashing light and unassuming cone suggesting that work was going on and I straightened my path and kept my eyes on the road. 



“I can’t find it.”  “I’m sure it’s in there.  "Boredom" by the Buzzcocks. “OK. Got it.”  And seeing as how it was my turn I decided our tour of the music of my teens would next stop it on the Spiral Scratch EP, with Howard Devoto who was only with the great lads from Manchester for this first effort.  I drew my daughter’s attention to his whiny snarl suggesting it was reminiscent of Johnny Rotten’s and I sang along, happily.  And though it would have been best, I suppose to ensure the next song was something sung by Pete Shelley, I opted instead for “Harmony In My Head” sung instead by the band’s loyal-lieutenant Steve Diggle.  Loved it.  Loved it.  Loved it then. Loved it now.  “I listen to the high street when it tells me to,” driving along the dreamscape of Route 9 in Poughkeepsie. 

 

My mom was on the porch, and we sat and she told me of all that had happened, to my stepdad since last we met.  A relief then, that nothing is broken. He simply has to heal, which is no small task, as ninety-two.  Friends had dropped off a walker.  He needed it now and it was jarring to see, obvious that now even simple things were painful.  But I have seen him through worse, certainly last summer when he had the tick that gave him Babesiosis.  This struck me as something that would be painful and deflating but that would in fact heal.  I sipped some coffee for as long as I could and then headed back home, listening to Amy Goodman talking about vaccine diplomacy.

 

 

 

Tuesday, 06/08/21

 

 

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