We Have a Soul

 

A funeral yesterday.  My aunt’s big smiling portrait there at the front.  Glad for that.  Glad to remember her.  She had such a benevolent smile.  Cousins and more cousins all of whom look vaguely like me and my sister and my father.  The priest was from Brooklyn originally, or so he told us.  I decided for myself that he was Irish.  He looked like he was part of our family.  And he was gentle and intelligent and most importantly funny, in a way that was relief.  We Irish are good at funeral’s. 

 

Terribly long drive home though.  I created a must-make time for myself.  At 5:00PM the Budget Rental place would close.  If you got there after that they could charge you for another day.  This, even though the reasonable gentleman behind the counter had told me, if you write on the note in the key drop that you missed the drop off by a few minutes, we’ll take care of it.  “We have a soul.  Even though this doesn’t.” he said, gesturing to the computer. 

 

I’d done all my must-do calls on the way down.  And on the way back I tried my little brother and I tried my little sister, neither of whom were able to attend.  I wanted to unpack the family-affair.  I called my dad and stepmom as well.  They’d stayed behind for another evening.   I left a message. I got sick of the predicable “random” of spotify’s attempt to spin hardbop and found myself playing a succession of dramatic albums:  the first Bad Brains cassette, “You” by Gong, Coltrane’s “A Love Supreme” as loud as the poor car stereo could project. 

The traffic gets increasingly aggressive as Southern Jersey becomes Northern Jersey. People are flying past me well over one-hundred miles an hour, flooding my testosterone making me drive faster until . . . ten miles or so from the Newark Airport it all comes to a halt.  It’s only 3:45PM.  I don’t think you can call it commuter traffic. But we’re stuck.  Waze suggests we’re gonna be stuck for many miles, for many minutes to come.  Instead of a warning that suggesting “police reported ahead,” I am told that I should reconsider the estimated time of arrival.  I’ll now be arrive at 5:20PM and even though I know it doesn’t really matter, this frustrates me and I curse the traffic, which lets up and then settles in again later, brutally, near the beginning of the New York State Throughway. 

 

Back home it’s pizza Friday and I manage to stay awake for one and then another Game of Thrones episodes.  What a blessing that I don’t have to commute anywhere.   

 

 

 

Saturday, 05/22/21