Ornery Pontification (the birthday post)

I like the double meaning behind August. I've been feeling august today. This blogger is of an august temperment. Why?  Well

It's my birthday!!

Did you know that two out of my three siblings have birthdays in August? It's kind of nice. Generally I feel that the celebration of birthdays is a kind of philistinism but I do, in spite of it all, like that my Dad gets a little picture of me that pops up on his phone on this day every year.  Whether or not he chooses to call (or figures out how to call) that's his business.

So, yes, I'm pushing forty, yes that telescopes time vertiginously.  It's alright though.  I had lukewarm coffee and stale corn nuts for breakfast.
It's alright.  Work sent Paul home early so I could stay and clean out the shitter for him and I'm not even mad; he asked with those big puppy dog eyes and that guy is a total Chad. I get it.  We all get older if we're lucky.  So what if I'm not doing my best possible work, and so what if I'm living in this town that ain't Chicago and so what if my practical social circle is almost entirely comprised of kids who know me through a job that I find plebian and unimportant and unfulfilling and embarassing . There's still time left before it's over. And Im making the rent payments.

here, for my birthday, have a story.  No, have a few:

My husband and I lost ho-ur old car right during the pandemic.  It was alive, but bear'ly, and then it was strugglin', and then it was gone. May she rest in peace.  But we weren't going anywhere because, like the say the pandemic, so we said we said we don't need but the one car now we're not even going to the Wal-Mart hardly once-ta-day so we did that but n-ow, n-ow's I say we've got everything back open and this money burning a hole in ho-ur pocket I says to my husband I said honey let's just buy a new one so tha's what we did.  Brand new car.

Story the Second:

Spiru wore the shirt his mother gave him.  African silk. A reminder of a much warmer place, like in a dream, little crescents of heat overlapping in profound swells of increasing torture.  Here at the office from his seat in the cash office below the air vent he felt the steady brace of cold airconditioned bliss hit him square on the head and felt, of course, his heart-rate drop down below sixty.
Spiru thought, "Who am I?" and didn't mean the assets management analyst making just less than current market mean of comparable salary, nor did it mean the son his mother does not worry about.  He thought, if only he had a companion: "if only I had a companion," he thought, "some sort of female presence to enlighten and enliven" his days.  But how to go about such an endeavor?  TInder was a bust.  It always felt to him, despites its obvious popular appeal and social expediency, like a faux pas within the grand scheme of etiquette. Other men knew how to dance, his previous attemps to "cut a rug" had been marred by personal disaster.
"Your call has been forwarded to an automated voice messaging system." Spiru had checked out so he walked out of work.  Only later did he even realize he did it.  There were nine people at the bus stop counting him and he thought "how did I get here?" and didn't mean a man recounting his last 15 minutes once he was in the bar and had glanced at the taps and ordered a beer and sipped it and safe!, he meant out of work, it was only 4:30 after all, but he couldn't have standed it there any longer.  The man next to him at the bar sat in a perpetual shadow, Spiru thought, a fact, that was instantly proven wrong as two beautiful lithe co-ed blondes came out of the ladies room and he lit up like a marquee.  They moved as one and smiled propulsively.  Spiru thought, boy had it been a while since anything that wasn't a string of digits had illuminated reality the way their smiles twinkled.  "How do you do it?" he asked the slightly older half-in-shadow man who replied, "Hm?" adding, disinterestedly, "that's an interesting shirt."  Spiru wore the shirt his mother had given him.  African silk.  A reminder that he was not living his life to it's utmost potential.  "How do you do it?" he enquired staccattoedly.  The man belched out an enchantingly baritone gu-faw laugh and confided conspiratorily "You've gotta have a goal. To pick a direction. Once you have that everything," the girls snapped a selfie and discussed hashtags and he chuckled and turned, adding, "also, just between you and me, I realized that the reason they always smell so good is because they regularly bathe.  With soap."  Turned away now, "Good luck kid," and Spiru was looking at himself in the mirror behind the modestly stocked sparsely-bottled bar thinking, "who am I?" and did not mean the one the boss rated highly in his bi-annual evalutation and when asked again had to say "who?" adding "oh that guy, of course, yeah yeah great- Eric give me that, one sec, lovely."  He meant what was he, what was this call being forwarded to an automated messaging system.  Why was he so satisfied with his little dream world so much of the time?  What new does he have to add to the world?" and also there was a girl there and her back was turned but what a impressively arch of back she has if only she would turn and it occured to him to talk to her as the old man had recomended.  Yes.  Spiru was getting up to talk to her.  Spiru wore the shirt his mother gave him.  African Silk. The reminder that a gentleman is always a gentleman to a proper lady and what was he going to say? How about "buy you a drink" that's the kind of things other guys say all of the time.

Third Story:

From the ferry, after sundown, I looked at the city twinkling and saw promise and magic.  He had a drink, a beer, there next to me and looking at the same city saw only homelessness and drug addition and despair. 

I never knew that then.  It was only once it was over that I could see that really we were living in his story.

Fourth Floor:

My cousin's staying on the couch.  It's been 3 weeks.  My parsimonious uncle Herbert often advised me when I was staying on his couch that "a couple weeks is fine but more than a month and we'd best be discussing either rent or at least a plan for evacuation" so I figured that asking my cousin for help sweeping the floor wouldn't be too far out of line. What I learned was, if you want something done right you'd better do it yourself.

Five:

I feel tired.  I can remember all the things I used to do, but I just feel tired.

"Are'y tired just thinking about it?"

"Ha.  Yeah.  That too."

Seventh Story:

God missed the early flight and bought one of those grey neck pillows that promise to make necks feel better than ever. It's doubtful. God's neck pain is like Shroedinger's cat. Navigating the crumbly middle-skies, appraising earth’s sludgy surfaces and orifices, God fell asleep.
 
That’s how I explain what happened on Tuesday.

Eighth Flights:

This is a story about insignificance.  A story we won’t tell for years. About the wind and rain.  Of course it was raining.  She was raised after the rain.  Or was it razed every time?  The disinterested light wasn’t interested and why didn't you check to see if something was inside of it first? I was raised to follow footsteps.

"Get it? His jumper cables were his tie, so the bouncer yelled "Better not let me hear you jump anyone or start anything!"

"A dream and we were driving through these mountains mountains with their toupees of snow, and your Dad turned into his dad right before my eyes and I couldn't stop the car or pull over."

Odin sacrificing his eye to see Ragnarok.  The term sugar daddy was invented in San Francisco. Could a quantum retrocausality do it?

What kind of an idiot signs himself up for summer school anyway?

My last will and testament will be a real banger, y’know?

Many people saw it as either: “a truth or a lie” But the deeper conversation orbits perspective, she continued, "capital P. It’s about asking: “Whose perspectives are dominant? Whose are reliable? Whose are suppressed?”’

A none other than a poem, (devised before your very eyes)
        to grow on:

The words:

A thin nothing
between her place
how to -do it- don't know
-trigger the whole in some poetic happening
or patiently visit
Graciously her french throat Decraux
Delicate by comparison to her chin
 
Nothing conscious
Ash dotted the place
Although I know what that means
feeling buttoned up, harnessed
the world stable in home
possible patiently promise

A poem with them:
 
A thin nothing
between her place and
feeling buttoned up, harnessed
how to -do it- don't know
-trigger the whole in some poetic happening
or patiently await
A thin nothing promising
Gracious, her french throat
Delicate, compare! her chin
Nothing conscious
A thin dotted place
Between the world stable
In a possible home promising
A thin nothing. Don’t know.
-trigger the whole in some poetic happening
or patiently feeling buttoned up
harnessed, gracefully
Delicate by comparison to
A thin nothing.