The Simple Life

Yesterday, the rain came, and now my own home state has turned into the steam bath it will remain until Thanksgiving or so.  People will go mad with heat and humidity.  Birds will fall from the trees.  Insect swarms will take over the land.  It is the apocalypse.  

Or. . . you can just do what I do and change your mind.  Don't fight it.  It is simply God's Way.  He's given us a dystopian nightmare without meaning in which to live.  Embrace it and beg forgiveness for your sins.  There is nothing you can do.  

Well, except as most people say echoing Sam Kinneson--"Move!  It's a fucking swamp!"

Oh, sure, we have the hurricanes and all, but it is still a Winter Wonderland.  And, you know. . . this is where I have my peeps.  

The sky opened while I was at lunch yesterday.  Oh, it was a good lunch, a glorious lunch, and we sat in the booth talking for three and a half hours.  The time flew by, so we were all surprised when someone checked the time.  The food was good.  I had "The Classic," pastrami, corned beef, and sauerkraut on rye.  Big.  I could barely fit it into my mouth.  We ate and laughed and told tales old and new.  And in the end, we promised to do it again.  Soon.  

That's what people do.  

When I left, it was time to see my mother.  We sat inside.  I had a beer and fell asleep on her couch.  I tried, but I couldn't keep my eyes open.  

When I came home, the house was sparkling.  I love the days just after the house is cleaned.  I don't want to touch anything, especially in the kitchen, but since I'd eaten out already, I decided to cook.  And when I cleaned up, I readied the coffee maker for morning.  Since the maids had cleaned it, there was nothing to do but put the beans in the grinder and pour water in the reservoir.  

As I do, in the morning, I hit the button and listened to the grinder as I went back to the bathroom for my morning ablutions.  And when I came back, coffee had run all over the clean counter.  WTF?

Oh--there was one more thing to do last night.  Put in a new coffee filter.  Shit, piss, fuck, goddamn!  How many times have I done this?

I cleaned the counter and coffee maker as best I could, but none of it glistened as it had.  I looked around the house.  A beer can in the t.v. room.  A crumpled napkin.  Some things I'd left on the dining room table.  Shirts and shorts hanging over the pew at the foot of the bed.  

That didn't take long.  

I need a keeper.  Sure.  But I am a fun guy.  I was told at lunch yesterday that people like me.  

"Not all of them.  Mostly people I don't want to like me.  The ones I want to usually don't." 

They looked at me with heads tilted.  

"Women, I mean."

Oh.  Now heads a-bobbin. So I told them my retirement scheme, shuffleboard, poolside canasta, transistor radios playing bosa nova.  And as always, the crowd said as one, "That sounds fantastic!"  I know a cafeteria style restaurant would kick ass if one opened now.  People long for the simple life.  Everybody says, "I can't wait to retire."  Nobody seems to like working.  But I. . . I employed the simple plan I mentioned earlier.  You just change your mind.  

"I can't wait to go to work and see what's going to happen today!"

There is life at home and life anywhere but home.  One is comfort, one adventure.  It is important to have them both in proper measure.  

But yea. . . people, by and large, don't like to go to work.  

So. . . my replacement as straw boss wants me to come back to work part-time.  I can have anything I want.  So, for all my big talk, I don't think I could do it, having a schedule again.  I began to get anxious just thinking of it.  I've become habituated to my lazy life.  

"So, homey. . . just change your mind."

Yea.  

I watched a neuropsychiatrist (I'd never heard of such a thing) do an hour program on the second half of Hemingway's life last night.  On YouTube.  He was pretty good. . . in part.  I mean, he knew a lot about Hem's life for an amateur.  And it scared me.  The things that drove me to do what I did, the physical and emotional damages. . . but, we all have something, right?  Nobody escapes trauma.  If you don't have mommy issues, you certainly have something else.  There just ain't a person alive who hasn't had to deal with something.  No matter what you see on the surface, bad things lurk somewhere underneath.  I'm not saying we are all psychopathic monsters, but. . . . 

So, as I have said so many times before, I try to make things fun.  Otherwise, or even still, life is like a Beckett play.  All we can do is try to be nice to one another.  As Faulkner said, we all hurt people unintentionally at times, but to hurts someone intentionally is the horrible sin.  

Or as Bukowski said, we're all going to die.  You'd think that fact alone would make people be nicer to one another.  

More and more, I understand why poolside canasta with finger sandwiches and cold drinks sounds like such a Valhalla to so many people.  A transistor radio.  

And a good cafeteria with an Early Bird Special!