11 posts tagged “dad”

Wasting drafts of stupid jokes, awkward greetings for unsendable letters.

        Dearest Cara,

By the time you read this, I will be dead.

No, wait. That's not it.

I try to get that stuff out of me before.

MJ is watching me from the floor, hypnotized between sleep and waking. Dad's asleep. I finally got my medicine today, and took it. My chest hurt for a little while, but I think I'm okay. At least, I feel like I'm okay.

Okay. Fine. Good. They all mean the same thing, which is usually "don't ask any further". Sometimes, it's "please, oh God, please follow up so I know I exist to somebody." But most of the time, it's polite.

Polite politics.

"Fuck off with your Goddamn questions" just makes people ask more questions.

"What? What did I do? What's your problem? Did you hear what this motherfucker just said to me?"

We like polite politics around here.

On the phone, a representative from the Democratic Senatorial Committee (asking for money) asked my dad how he's doing today. "Not. Too. Good." He answered. She sort of paused, of course, and then said she was sorry to hear that. She asked for money anyways, but he'd hung up the phone after telling her he was broke, and I was on the line already and I asked her a few more questions.

Apparently there are 28 Republican seats in the Senate open this term. There are 12 Democrat seats up, too. They'd like to win them all. They want our help. We have to get our government back under control.

I told her we had no money to give her, but if she sent us a letter, that she'd probably get some anyways. I asked her when the refund checks were coming out, and she said sometime in May, the first of them will be mailed to people. She said everybody gets $600.

I told her she could have some of that, when I get it. She didn't think I was serious and so said nothing, which I suppose convinced me that I wasn't being serious, and that I'm going to send nothing. She got herself off the phone. She's going to help get our government back under control. I hung up, too, after she did.

I don't care much about politics.

Tonight's a show. The French Kicks are playing; they've come all the way here to play an hour or so at Local 506. I know how a lot of their songs go, and they're good.

There's a black ant walking around in the kitchen - he just went under the table, and he's walking around down there. I don't know where he's going to. If I weren't real, I would make myself the size of an ant, and float around behind him and watch him all day. I don't know why, but God made me too big.

I'm so very grateful for the friends I've had. They've been good to me. So's my dad. He loves me and has hope that I'll be okay.

He thinks I'm going to be better than fine, because he says God's given me great gifts. I just have to shake this, whatever it is, off and I'll catch up so quickly. He says I have no idea.

I get mad at him, because I don't want to just hope for something that feels less tangible than a dream; I looked at my neurocog-evaluation yesterday and today and I feel every possible success I've ever failed at fall on me like a wall of tires and I'm sorry for myself. I imagine a life of not being able to really do anything, and the words of the report grind on me like yellow rope.

I remember reading, when I was a little boy, words from a progress report that my parents got about me when I was in elementary school. It started, "Patrick is a very bright youngster...", and proceeded to talk about me not listening in class. I remember thinking how nice those words sound, how good natured a person might be in order to write them, and how whenever anybody used my name, 'Pat' and 'Patrick' both, I felt like I would be a kid forever. Everybody older than me was always Older than me; I chafed against that, and the inscrutable faces of the Older Kids seemed pained and exaggerated and like they would never be like me again, which repelled me and fascinated as much as the Teachers' all-intending motherliness (which I know now was really more about just being willing to be loving than wisdom or maturity).

I remember once I saw a teacher be a sister to one of the kids.

I was young and I didn't feel like a "bright youngster" but it seemed to be a phrase that people thought should make me feel special, just as surely as they knew it would make my parents feel good. I'd be embarrassed, which once or twice made me say things just to get away from feeling singled out for something that made me stick out from the other kids. I wanted to get that mention over with as soon as possible. They'd tell me I was special, and I'd say "I know." They thought I was being rude on purpose, so they'd look at me sternly. You can ignore a kid or rationalize him away - they could figure I just wanted to go play and let me off. I would be thinking about the other kids, and I felt like they should be defended from any teacherly accusation that I was intelligent, different, special. I didn't ever know how. I felt like we should all be alike and like each other, and I really wanted them to like me, and I was afraid of being different to them.

I remember the kids who'd struggle, and this one kid in particular, Matt, who was very funny, a natural athelete, seemed to fear no authority, and I thought he was really clever and everybody thought he was cool. He had all these older brothers who were discipline problems and achievers, real Guys. He was kind of vulgar because of his brothers. I went to Pre-K with him. I remember feeling this desolation, this utter distance from people my age, creep up on me, and by the time I was 7 I'd become nobody. I had a few friends. I remember wishing, hoping that I was going to grow up right. I liked those kids, and I liked the ones who didn't really like me okay except for the fact that they didn't like me, and I remember the powerful, awful feeling of rejection that tore through me when our class first learned as a group how to criticize one another. I knew the Older Kids did. I remember this girl calling me a know-it-all on the playground, and I didn't have any idea what to say. I sure didn't think I was; I didn't mean any harm, I didn't think anybody was stupid. I didn't understand. I remember her eyes got big, and she looked like a grown-up adult person, lines in her face appeared. I remember thinking she looked like her mom for a moment - her mom was a lady who was younger than most of the other moms, and athletic, 'cool', and very beautiful. I remember talking about who had the coolest mom, and I remember halfheartedly trying to make my mom seem cool, but my mom was very shy around the other moms, and was kind of pedantic with the kids, so she never really got entered into the running. She was more of a 'mom' mom, I think was what we came up with. I remember, a year later, on the playground, which was becoming less playing and more merely 'talking' by the month, thinking that that girl, whose name was Angie, was going to be very beautiful. I remember wondering if she'd be mean and prideful when she grew up, or funny and relaxed and maybe even spiritual. She was clever, but she was darker than me, and her family went on cruises, and both her parents were Cuban as I recall, and so I felt apart from her by a thousand years.

I felt alone, but that God is real, and that He was Peace, and I didn't believe the stupid banners at church that said so, but I believed Him, even though I couldn't remember even way back then, when he'd first told me He was. But I remember that I could remember a time before I knew, and I thought that it was all important somehow. I remember playing with my little cars and thinking about God, and looking out the window at something beautiful like a red sunset  in the sky or the idea of seeing Saturn if I got my telescope right or the fragile but perfectly-placed like the tall, gold pole with the black VHF antenna on it that perched above the roof and looked like a line drawing, and feeling that I should run and tell somebody this unintelligible thing: that it's good, and that it's important, and that it's holy, and that's important. And that I liked them. I remember being upside-down, looking at the light in the blinds, or the natural cursive in the dust, or the beautiful vivid mud I could make in the little garden space made of bricks that we'd always had big plants in, and that my grandmother would come and garden with us every so often, and all the snails, and know that it was an emergency somehow. I remember wanting to be a poet, despite the fact that I thought that being a poet meant you were a serious-looking young man with dark hair and a long face who wore lots of brown wool clothing and wrote only in inky black pens on letterpads, and as a poet you were a person who wouldn't talk very much to people or make a lot of eye contact, and you were demure and would always stop your writing to serve them. I thought that didn't sound like much fun, but it was worth it if God said so. I didn't know much about poets, and nothing I've ever learned about poets since I was four years old has ever made me want to be a poet, and I thought poets were decadent, bored people who wore clothes they dyed themselves and smoked cigarettes and talked about flowers like they were sunsets: and would garden and wear their flowers too, as if that wasn't fatally presumptuous and just bad taste. I felt like if I could be a good poet, I'd settle for wearing the wool, because I knew I'd be allowed to take it off and be a regular person. I'd only have to wear it long enough so people would know that that's what I wanted to be. And then, after they saw me, I could take it off.

Everyone has to know, God made this for them. It's supposed to be for you. I don't remember thinking it was for me. My dad would give us lots of chocolate ice cream in bowls, and I knew that was for me. He would tell me it was. My dad taught me a lot, and I learned a lot on my own, and I saw a snail on the deck today.

I had a sea-green book I would read called 'Catholic Catechism for Adults', with a smooth cover and it was from the 60's, and in it I learned that being spiritual was very important. I would find it and read it sometimes after playing or after dinner or before praying with my dad and my sister. It was always in my dad's nightstand, on the bottom drawer. There would sometimes be holy cards there, which I would stare at the pictures of saints, but mostly read the backs of. The book and the holy cards and the rosary that was sometimes in there and the magazines all smelled like wood. Because that's what the inside of a drawer smells like, you know?

I prayed that I'd be spiritual, and could see then a clear, and difficult path through my loneliness and into adulthood. I feel like I've been stumbling on and off that path ever since I didn't decide to start walking it for the rest of my life then. My dad was a good man, and he wanted me to be a good person, too. It was his book, and I remember eventually asking him if I could have it some summer when I was still very much a kid, because I thought ownership was adult and if he passed it onto me I could learn it and face the challenge to be holy. He said sure like it didn't matter. He was always telling me that possessions didn't matter, and I remember trying to tell him 'that they matter to me', because I didn't know how to tell him that I wanted it because it was his, and he was good, and I wanted him to know that I wanted to be good like in the book, and that I wanted his help. I remember that book.

He was always saying that I was just like my mother. I figured I knew what he meant, because I felt like I saw the resemblance, and I knew he was disappointed when he said that, and I remember trying to use my little toy ideas to convince him that it was okay. I remember climbing onto him by his work uniform, and smelling him because he smelled like grease, and his metal ball point pen would poke me or scratch me, and I loved him so much when he came home from work. He would play the piano and drink bourbon, and I loved his songs.

I didn't mean to write all this here, but I miss my dad while he's asleep and I meant to just tell this next part, but this is still true.

We listened to this Gershwin I downloaded for him in the garage today. "Rhapsody In Blue." If I could do anything in the world that was good, I'd put my heart to write that. It's a beautiful, beautiful speaking piece, and I feel the call to say things that way just as surely as God made me and just as surely do I feel my body's broken and worry that none of my wheels will ever turn that way and I wonder at what I was made to be. It's a great gift, somehow - even to feel inside yourself, what it is that you could-might be.

I wish with all my heart and none of the rest of me that I'll learn from my mistakes. I miss all the people I love so much. The wise, the gone, and the going.

I was young and I knew it.

My dad just wrote a short story.

"Two loaves. $7.32."

"They're going to eat us alive."

"I'm going to drink for the rest of the day."

An alphabet of nerves rise in my stomach, and out come words. "Why is that?"

"I don't know."

He goes around the corner, and I hear the bathroom door close.

"She said a lot of things to me."

The end result is not the same.

I'm looking at a life of being washed up on the beach time and time again. My thoughts run me aground, or the open water doesn't want me - the tides keep bringing me in. When the time of forced-sabbatical is through and it's time to face the sea again, THEN your self-imposed exile starts to seem like the terrifying sentence...

This is typewritten onto my thin skin: before you go, have learned something real, have left something finished, and when you go, go in strength. It's pushed into me from the outside, and it lingers and it hurts. It's a directive in need of a plan. Its plan needs a man. Canal. Panama?

My folks are destroying themselves, individually, quite on their own, and together. It's as steady and lawless and obvious as anything. And, of course they're going to survive. I keep thinking that I'm going to wait out their chaos and save the day at some crucial moment or witness a change or catch somebody from something awful; I'm not.

At the very worst, I should take my dad's faith seriously. He thinks he's suffering in his relationships for a Reason, and just because I think I know better doesn't mean that I can influence him, and sure doesn't mean I have anything to offer him. After all, he's not going to be happy having done things my way - far better to let him live out his life according to his own idea of moral success than to try to get him to rehabilitate my fucked-up sensibilities about how a family should go. I'm looking for love in all the wrong places.

I'm desperate for all this theology to make sense, and my soul seizes up with contempt at loved ones anyways. I make myself sick most of the time.

We walked Duke campus today, dad and me. It stings, watching kids my age walk among beautiful buildings, and envying them for all their hard work. I didn't do any hard work in high school. I did a lot of other things. He was interested in the architecture, which annoyed me. The glories of the vaulted ceilings of the Duke Chapel, the lead windows in the student buildings, all the incredible old stonework, they all move him. He sees chairs set up for an orchestra and the choirs and he gets quiet and solemn and his voice becomes soft and choked. He ambles along.

I have become so afraid of his silent revere for good work, I smear these hot, thick words over everything to prevent that hated quiet from opening up around us. I can't let things be beautiful around him lately, unless they're tinged with my program of remorse and sundownerism.

But it's a beautiful place.

Dad says he sees that there's something wrong with me every time he talks to me. Every time I ask him what he means, he tells me that he has great hope in this free clinic I'm going to next week. Then he tells me I have great gifts. I can't get him to understand how bad I want him to just tell me what it is about me that doesn't work. Yes, it's occurred to me that I'm selfishly trying to manipulate him into validating my thoughts, give them the same weight that I give them, and offer me a reassurance that, according to my own figuring, I really don't have to throw out everything I've ever done, said or been, relax, and pursue my dreams leisurely because life doesn't matter. Gee Dad, should I continue building a philosophical Cross to attempt to hang myself, past and present, on, in imitation of the Guy who proved to me that life really is worth dying during? Because if doing that is a good idea, I'll do it and then I'll turn the simplified instructions I generate along the way into a Very Serious Book. But you know, it's not too late to make an A-frame.

Rescue yourself from a life you're about to waste on a self-possessed search for depth. The world is fine. Anyways, they could do without your 10th century guilt-trip. Obviously, you're just trying to justify your weaknesses anyways. Bro, do what you want to do.

Lie here and bleed? Be an artist. Shake blood onto canvas. When you need technical guidance, call a Suicide Helpline.

Fake it until you make it? Be an Artist. Shake stage-blood onto canvas. When it looks sufficiently cool, call a friend.

I'm the type of person who'd get swept over a waterfall and blame the rushing of blood in his veins for throwing him forward to his death. I want this stuff to make sense from the inside out, and I feel that it does. And I want to do it all without praying. Because I'm bad at that.

Oh, this stupid puzzle. It's selfishness both ways. The answer is a clever punchline, the words of which I heard once, a long time ago, and don't recall. But I remember the gist of it. It's selfishness both ways, and I'm not a human being because I'm too selfish to really understand.

But my quiet dad isn't wrong.

How to survive on just Ovaltine and coffee.

We don't do a whole lot around here, but we celebrate what we do well enough.

Took a nap this evening, and after the phone woke me up I went back to bed where Dad was sleeping and he woke up and told me monastery stories.

We got that CV joint installed today.

Made a couple trips to Wal-mart to get medication for my mom.

Drank a lot of coffee - it stays you warm.

We try to make adventure of little things; it helps us to talk sideways about bigger things that slip out. I can't imagine what my dad's life was while I've been away at college - I can't believe that I never thought about it much before now. He'd have been alone every day, all day while my mom went to work, you know?

She comes back and complains about things, raises her voice, and he goes out for a drive. He leaves the room with his head down. He shuffles off and waits for her rages to shout themselves out of breath, waits for the bile to wash itself back down her mouth and he'll offer her something to eat. He admonishes me to love my mother and hold my piece, and I try to convince him that he should stand up for himself regardless of the poison he's sure to bring out. I tell him things must change. I get the uncomfortable feeling that I am Lucifer himself in those times.

Millions of minor epiphanies I've stacked up like bricks, each one with a capital letter on it. How long before I can move in? Each one's a primary color. How long before they fall all on top of me?

I stand under the mouth of the open garage door, looking up at the pines -- all on their branches little cones are set up above us, at different distances, so that they make you see little living constellations; They're so small still. It's early --

and take a sweet sip,
and sip.

Dad doesn't know what I should do with my life.

"I wish I had an answer in me to give you but I can't because there is nothing there."

He could tell I was disappointed.

"I can see that you're disappointed."

It was true; to the point of blaming him in my head for not knowing what life is for, I was disappointed.

His advice: be among people who are going places, ask God to help you, and be lucky.

It's not really great advice exactly - the sentiment is there, but after three and four times stated, the flavor of those answers just sucks. Make friends? Pray? Wait for lightning to strike?

"I'm sorry, I know it's not good advice."

He can see that I'm disappointed.

Where's the martyrdom in that?

I asked him, "hey dad, what do you think I should do with my life?"

He didn't know.

I'm trying to figure out how to be a good person. That ambition's no credit to me - hah! My frustrated attempts, my visible frustration, and relentless question-askin'. Serves nothing. Whom do I serve?

Trying to figure out how to get to be a good person - who to get to take me in, what to do and be when I get there. What do I have to say for myself?

I asked so as to not think about it anymore.

It's probably good advice.

Having run out of friends and idols, our beleaguered hero flaps some of the dust off his stupid cape and sets off walking barefoot.

Today I'm going to take some pictures of the old house that burned down about 12 days ago.

There was a fire awhile back, and a small abandoned home on Carpenter's Pond Road just down the way burned to the ground. All thats left are a few brick columns, and a few happenstance boards propped up against them. Everything else is char. Dad thinks somebody must have broke into the house to spend the night, and their candle burnt the place. Or, it could have been arson: the house, we think, was owned by the people who live in the house about 25 yards east - itself something of a shack - and they could have burned it to save the money it would cost to bulldoze it. As it is, they'll still need a bulldozer, so maybe not. It was a pretty old building to look at: a house that'd rejoined the woods around it, in a way. It was covered in dirt, and the paint was almost scraped off by all our weather. I didn't see the fire myself.

A few weeks ago I saw a different fire, though. Another guy not too far from here had a barn full of machine tools, a pretty nice shop, evidently. It burnt. He had built a lighthouse in his front yard years ago, which is still there.

It's supposed to be warm today. I'll go for a run. Not too late, though: it'll be getting cool this evening.

I'll be sad to see these days pass. They aren't easy or 'fun', but it's important to be here. I don't want to end them.

Dad's in bed again. Mom's at work. I'm useless. As usual, it seems.

Last night, I helped my dad set up his old Marantz stereo amplifier (analog!), with some speakers, and a tape deck. I used to have this old setup in my room before I left for college - then, I had two other speakers. Sounds good. The volume and balance pots on the amp are messed up though. There are two more speakers we could hook up, but I'm pretty sure they're humidity-damaged by now, and as I recall, the bass response on them was already shaky. Oh well.

We listened to tapes of great piano players, and my dad made himself a big Jack and 7. Every once in awhile, he'd go off to play something on the piano himself, inspired by something he'd heard. I didn't really miss my guitar.

I found a bunch of old punk tapes, too.

My dad's always had better taste in music than me. I think I've always known this, even as I made him buy me rock albums, excitedly stole Kelly's cds, copped records, downloaded indie rock for mixtape-stuffing. I've heard some good stuff on my own, made a good run of hearing as much of "right now" as possible. But I can't compete. This is it, I'm tipping my King; his ancient cassettes are easily and simply better than anything I've heard this year, maybe last year too. Losing this one is as inevitable as growing up.

This was a lot of fun, though.

Hunting for a CV joint kit for the Tercel. Apparently the boots are cracked, and this eventually means that the drive axle will wear out or break on us if we wait too long to replace the whole thing. If this house weren't so depressed, we'd be out there and on top of it.

I, at least, hope to work up enough fire to go to the gym today. The only other option is to put on a sweater and go for a walk. As beautiful as these days are getting, with the new flowers and all, I probably shouldn't be alone with my thoughts.

"It's not in the hands of an abbot."

"What isn't?"

"To dismiss one of the brothers."

Dad picked up a few books he special-ordered from Borders yesterday, and he's a man obsessed.

I'm looking out the window, and across the breakfast table, he's reading, an old, bent pair of glasses sliding down his nose. My coffee is cold next to me. Stupid laptop.

"It's beautiful that Peter Grace reconciled with Brother Leo right before he died."

He's talking to me about a millionaire philanthropist whose wife, a "very spiritual woman", was of common cause with the monks. Her husband, after a falling out with them in the 60's, remained estranged from their community for many years. He died of cancer in 1995. But, before he died, he wrote a letter to old Brother Leo, the monk who almost got dismissed over the odd scandal that ensued because of this, seeking his friendship.

Brother Leo promised him that he always had his love. My dad says it's a mistake in the book, or at least, that it's extremely irregular, but Peter Grace is said to have been buried on the grounds of that abbey.

What is grace?

After a good talk with a monk at one of his monasteries last week, fond memories of old names and places have rekindled something in him. He went out and got these books he was recommended, a history of Spencer abbey and a dedication to one Brother Leo, a man my father knew in Argentina, and he's been poring over them ever since. He keeps a notepad by him in order to write down things that these books help him remember.

The monk was Brother Michael. When my dad left that monastery for South America, his given name was vacant: this Michael he talked to was the one who adopted my father's name. My dad was also Brother Michael. They hit it off immediately.

It's always intriguing to hear of him speak of this past life of his. I wonder what it means to a man to look back on so much time of his life, so much time since? I listen, familiar with most of the stories right now. It makes me a little sad, to see him a little sad. I keep asking him if he thinks he'll find mention of himself in these books; I think it would be fun to see my dad's life mentioned in a book about important things or holy people, but I think he's even annoyed by the question.

A little bush out back has some new white flowers.

Yesterday afternoon I raised a little window in the kitchen, and nobody noticed it. Now, we get a slight, cool breeze every once in awhile.

Dad's going to physical therapy today.

Right now, he's taking a nap. Or at least, he's supposed to be. You can feel the pressure his slow footsteps make from just about anywhere in the house, even without the creaking wood to tell you where he is. I sense he's up doing something, upstairs.

I better go.

"The Lord, He lifts me with His strong arms.
  oh yes, He does."

We get storms tonight.

We've had a little rain already.

My dad said, "I know why you're looking at me that way, I can see what you're thinking, I know what you see when, what you see when you look at me." I'm standing at the sink, the water is running, and I've stopped washing. I'm looking at him.

My dad's sagged into a chair from the breakfast nook, pulled over by the little TV underneath our "not very good china" china cabinet. His body is heavy and hunched, and his face is screwed up, little blue eyes foggy from wine.

He sent me out to get milk and eggs. He'd forgotten that we were out of eggs when he went to the store, and he was too stiff to make the trip again. He's been frustrated all day, in pain, and hobbling around the house. He wanted to make these mini-biscuits for himself.

While I was gone, he got himself drunk, and my mom came back from work early.

When I walked in the door, he was shouting that his pain comes from God, and that makes it okay. As I walked past him, I told him that it was probably because of something he did. I wanted to pre-empt our daily lecture on Mary and St. Faustina. I didn't mean it about him, specifically - I'd been thinking about me at the time. I said it because I'm a worthless bastard.

He's been sputtering, spilling words for the last 20 minutes. The whole time I've been bristling inside, trying to ignore him forcefully enough that he won't talk to me. I don't want to have to look at him. I answer everything asked of me quietly.

I'm looking at him because I want him to see why he shouldn't talk to me, why this stuff is important. There's no "look". I let his words hang in the air without response. And I look away.

He tells us, near the top of his lungs, as we half-heartedly puzzle over the biscuit box, that Lyme disease makes a person "ex-TER-emely DE-pressed". He says he wants to drive to the monastery in Berryville. Mom says he can't; it's too far to drive. She says this absently, as one would speak to someone else's child, if they were prattling on in one's kitchen. He hangs his head, body limp with impotence, acquiescence. This is his sarcastic joke, and he holds the pose until the moment expires without effect on anyone. Being suspended there, he rocks back and forth mechanically, as if he might get up, seeming to test his pain against being shut-down one more time consecutively. He stays put. All the letters he's saying are in the wrong order, it seems.

At least he's not talking about St. Maria Faustina Kowalska again. There is no pity in the room for him. My mom and I entertain different interior lives, impossibly selfish. I imagine the vacuum of guilt, loss, and longing that will open up in this house when we'll someday no longer have him around to tune out. I'm not too stupid to see how we're earning it, moment by moment. All my silly grievances outside this house... my prayers seem stupid.

I say nothing. I don't want to shout at him. I've got nothing in my gut but shouting. When he moves to get up, I leave the room, find a window to look out of. I refuse to help us along.

I see him about 10 minutes later. He punches me on the shoulder, lightly, to lighten me up. He feels hot, and too close to me. I avert my eyes from his, wait for him to move off. My muscles are ready for a fight, my eyes are burning with emotions I can't name. My heart is turning into cork. I smell the wine on him, sweet.

He announces one more time that he cannot be talked to today, to nobody in particular.

Right now, there's thunder above the roof.. Mom's in the kitchen, on the phone with my sister, figuring out dinner. The dog is panting quietly, stretched out in the archway. I'm in the dark in the living room. Every once in awhile, a peal of bass will shake the windows, or some lightning will reflect meaninglessly against the walls in front of me. Michael Jackson gets nervous; he gets up to pace, drink, smell things, meander closer to me. I wonder what's to come.

Woke up while it was still blue outside, chewing over a paragraph I was writing in my sleep. It was a movie review article, at least, and not a piece of philosophy, or, thank God, more reading of books that don't exist.

The movie wasn't real either, and the paragraph wasn't coming out fabulous, but it had a believable premise, to a point. Scarlett O'Hara was sitting on the porch of a restaurant, commenting to some dapper partner on the O.J Simpson case, and a priest walked by and said something vaguely theistic about our collective Innocence or Guilt, which she scoffingly presumed upon to mean that O.J. Simpson was less deserving, perhaps racially, of salvation than most.

In my dreams at least, Scarlett O'Hara is a breezy, myopic liberal, O.J. Simpson went to jail for it, and the Catholic Church always makes a cameo.

In my dreams, I am working.

My dad, over breakfast this morning (peanut butter sandwiches and chocolate chip cookies), told me that he dreams about work problems a lot, too. He retired years ago, but he still dreams of fixing airplanes, putting things together, and being with the guys.

I probably dream about this stuff four nights a week - many are the times that I've woken up humbled by some dream I had, where a conversation of "what really happened" played out a little farther, always fictional, always real.

Dad went back to bed, but after my coffee I'm on something tentative of a mission t' root up all this black plastic bedding from where the plants used to be out front, and level the whole area. I've got to shake off these crazy dreams.

Expecting a high of about 64 today.

Now that the sun is working like normal down here, I'm even getting up on time.