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 It started with a rear window that wouldn't retract. I rolled the window down and down it stayed. Then the headlights would turn on, at odd moments while the car was parked. I'd reach for the button on the keyfob to lock the doors and see if that would reset them but before I could press it the lights would go off. Then a few seconds later, back on. So I started taking the train.

The overhead fan in the kitchen shorted out last year. Then, over Thanksgiving weekend, the oven went. There's a loose board on the wainscotting in the bathroom. Water jettisoning from the radiator at 3AM and pooling languidly under the south corner of the throwrug. Not particularly anyone's ideal destination.

The weedwacker won't work so the yard's overgrown. Last week I went at the high grass with a pair of scissors for an hour and developed a nasty inch-long blister on my middle finger. Now every day I replace it's the band aid because the adhesive fails to stick more than 24 hours.

The snazzy new shoes I bought impulsively are, it turns out, too tight. I shift uncomfortably everywhere I go, and sometimes when I suspect it won't arouse anyone's fury, I take off my shoes on the train and sit there in my socks. There's a hole forming under the big toe of my right sock. My pants have a detached belt loop.

One thing about living in the present is we make it impossible for ourselves to do it. We divide the present into seasons, into months, into days, scheduled meetings, lunch breaks, paragraphs, sentences, words, ellipses. We stretch out time to accomodate our plans and it crunches each present moment like some Newtonian accordian into oblivion. We plan, or know that we should plan, or spend our days avoiding planning, putting it off until... suddenly the future becomes now and we can avoid planning for the next thing, riding one wave of anxious procrastination to the next. And there are some of you lucky people who may burn your bridges and forget the horrors of your past altogether, but not me. I live there, too, there rather than here. Comparing this time to ancient times, comparing my milestones to my parents', trying to honor their legacies by... what? Getting up in the morning and finding the cat spit-up on my slippers?

My great grandmother used to hide her smoking. Mom would bring us kids by the second floor apartment to check on her grandma and the place would be immaculately maintained with Pledge and Lysol. Not a mote of dust in sight and every little trinket and doodad in it's place; the candybowl, the glass knickknacks, the 30 year old remote control on the smearless glass-covered agate coffee table. But should you happen to pop into the bathroom, behind the expertly folded powdered towels and the bowl of potpurri and seashells, was the faint whiff of a Parliment Lite.

Before I settle into an empty seat on the train and scroll through the newsfeed to see who died today, I hunt for the seat. The rumbling and screaming contraption tumbles us all around but especially me since I'm on my feet. Outside, a stream of twilight florescence is the perfect repition of vanishing. I'm quick to lurch into a germy seat facing backwards, opposite a man wearing a tie decorated with roosters. His eyes do not interrogate, thankfully, me but remain indentured to his phone as I take the last sip of my Celsius and tuck my knees in, ever cognizant of my tall body's inconvenience for existing in in this shared space. The train creaks and wails and I close my eyes, embracing my old neglected friend exhaustion. The man gets off at the next stop where I notice that he walks with a cane. I steal his seat when he leaves and throw away the empty drink can in the bin.

Found myself wondering why some people meet with life's little disappointments by going into a fulminous rage. Maybe I lack fight. Younger me might have pushed back harder, a profane-ridden retort to the aggregrate of slight ingraciousnesses of fate... I'm getting older. I tuck in my gut and pull up my pants and get to work fixing. Yank things apart, replace broken pieces, try turning it off then turning it back on. How many times must we do this? When will it be the one last begrieved inconvenience and then I tear the whole place down and move to Bhutan.

In between the obituaries on the newsfeed there is a post-splashdown interview with astronaut Christina Koch who revealed that her old high school had erected a statue of her and it made her uneasy. "I was worried that the people that would walk through the door and see it would think that they weren't enough because that statue was too perfect of a representation. At the little speech-making that I did when it opened I made sure to talk about the person I was in high school and how unsure I was of myself... how many mistakes I made. How many people I hurt, people that hurt me. I just wanted them to know that they don't have to be as perfect as the statue."

Once I went to see great grandma and she didn't have her hearing aids in so she didn't hear me knock nor come in. She was sitting in her chair facing the wallpaper, face averted from the window, the light, completely oblivious to the occassional siren blues and reds. Her mind had gone somewhere else, she was thinking of something else, she was somewhere else unaccountable. I thought for a moment she might be dead, of course, but then she turned and saw me smiled and it was like sunlight through the leaves, the radiance and the shadows dancing there together in the crowsfooted corners of her eyes. She was happy to see me. I've spent years searching for another smile like that one. She reached out her bruised hand for me to hold and I held it and smiled too, I couldn't help myself.

Go to work, pay your bills, wash your clothes, clean behind your ears. Brush your teeth thoroughly after each meal, except this one, fruit plate and some black coffee, so I can spend the day smelling of apricots and Folgers. Tomorrow is, as the saying goes, a new day, but today is, too. Or it can be. That's the thing about a story of the broken, it obfuscates everything that's actually working out alright.

Koch continued "we have a long story. A lot of people behind us, a lot of misteps, couple victories, but all that came together to make us these people that very humanly carried everyone's dreams around the far side of the moon. You know, before we did that, we were enough. And I would say to them, you are too."

A woman taps my shoulder and to wake me says "I think this is your stop." I wipe the drool from the corner of my mouth and I thank her without looking at her, grab my things and rush off to walk the rest of the way home. The night's chill is so exhilerating that I forget that my feet hurt. Walking with my neck craned upwards searching for stars between the clouds. When I reach the door I the notice that the lock latch mounting is going slack. Where did I leave the screwdriver? Friday's payday. Maybe I'll have enough to get someone to look at the car.

Intendantalogue

People lose things all the time! Keys, wallet, phone, that word — what was it, jobs, health insurance, minds, youth, conventional attractiveness, civility, tact.

We arrive and awkwardly appraise the arrogant aesthetics. Arrangements imply the abhorrence of chaos.

Heavy doors with inlaid halberds guard their leatherbound analects. Each quarterly dividend a sermon.

The well-suited servant stirred pepitas and cranberries into the salad. A wall of grand accomplishment accompanied her assurity of self.

It was the best bath I've ever had. Outside a stand of solemn maples fidget like strangers in a bank queue.

But bureaucratic strivings belie the belief that lives like ours are beautiful. Despite liberal dispensation of ebullient encomiums, we remain straggly of soul.

A vibrantly indigent potluck of short fuses and arrested opinions. Whose streets were poorly lit, whose music fills us through the anxious hours.

Note the chip in the windshield. It whispers a want of surety, probably. Foreclosure is imminent.

People lose time all the time! Thanks Candy Crush. There it is, time, streaming, out the hulu in the wall! Code Blue, this fall on CBS.

Yet for all the firmness of your kind inducements I would not behave any different. Differently?

On behalf of the doctor the nurse pronounced it some kind of blood deficiency, insufficiency, everyone dies. We have to.

Act now for the Final Hours of Extra Savings. After all the cure for mourning is motion.

Despite a pensive and intricately nihilistic disregard for tenderness I woke up next to my friend on the sofa and did not remember having had sex. Next stop, a frenzied stall, to binge in the ripening warmth of memories, Christ they're on the cusp of re-manifestation. Time is in limited supply. She may have been the strong silent type, but she was just passing through.

People find themselves in all sorts of things; danger, trouble, a mess. But also families, clubs, conventions, church council, systems, the grip of social forces, a zeitgeist, hermeneutic loops, forearms deep in a sudsy quotidian epiphany.

A little while after the weather report the little girl asks “why is Fox so angry?” and sure enough, men sweatily bulging out of expensive ties spout their vague little daggars of schadenfreud and there is little in the way of palatable explanation to a six-year old.

There are those who revel in angry exhortations, like farts or masturbation. In my considered opinion there's only so far that splatterpaintedirritation will get you before you turn into whiteness, nothingness, no thoughts, no thing so much as a backwards facing testament to the real world lying ahead. Where does it come from? I don't know. Loss, fear, sadness. She thinks about this over snacktime grapes and cheezits. Chews and nods to her own private funky beat. It's so easy to go with the flow, why doncha? You might like it. Although you may just as well subvert expectations short term and survey the insurmountable benefits of cherishing change through non-conformity. Bask into the light and run yourself the risk of wonder.

Records Spin

Side A: Tracks 1-3
1. Lamb of God
2. Anatomy of a Stain
3. Simian King

Under the highway you blink and you miss it.  I know its there and I still pass by without realizing I've gone too far.  Occasionally.  The watering hole.  The place I go.  The drinks are cheap and they know my name and have the decency not to use it when referring to me.

"Heyyy!  Ole Masky's back!" says the bald guy.

"And old Masky's front," I say, "I'm all here!"

"Shut the fuck up," says a guy at the bar, half spinning around on his barstool with an angry look in his paunchy eyes, "I'm telling a story here."

"Joel's telling a story here," the bartender informs me in a conspiratorial whisper.  "Whadalya have?"

"Let's start light and go dark."

"If I had to kill someone to save my family I probably would," says Joel.  "Like that time I killed a guy to save my family.

"You killed a guy?"

"I warned him.  'I'll fuckin' do it,' I said 'don't think I won't'.  So he says to me 'if you do, I'll fuckin' kill your family.  And then I killed him.  And sure enough, mysteriously, next day my family's been murdered."

"So to save your family you got them killed."

"I didn't get 'em killed.  It's a mystery.  I said that.  Fuckin' keep up."

"So whadja do?"

"I got a new family.  But first I spent the next half-decade living free out in the wilds of American generosity.  Some weep for the wayward soul of man, but not I.  We live in a generous land full of generous spirits.  Hobos, tramps and whores.  I slept on trains, woke to the sight of the countryside appearing and disappearing frame by frame out my window.  Then I met a girl and settled down.  Popped out a few more kids and were doin' great but then she died.

"Your second wife."

"Third.  But yeah, my wife."

"So whadja do?"

"Well we had an extra bedroom.  So my daughter asks if her boyfriend could move in.  She was 11 or 12 then so I figured it was alright.  The guy seemed cool.  Kept borrowing my razors though, that was a pain in the ass, but the guy was alright.

"Your twelve year old daughter had a boyfriend who shaved?"

"Yeah.  Alex, or Alan or something.  He was in college.  Bastard bought me this here pen."  Joel picked a fountain pen out of his shirt pocket and displayed it to the huddled throng.

"What was the occasion."

"Father's day.  I'm a granddaddy."

"Today."

"Yesterday.  Ariel Lee Scriebner.  6 pounds and some ounces."

A few people clap. 

I grappled at a complimentary bowl of week-old popcorn, the door in the back opens and Jeff emerges, stumbling.

"Shit yourself out a baby?" Joel asks. 

Jeff squints.  "I fucking feel like crap," he says with no enthusiasm.  Jeff's the big guy who works the door.

"See some ID Dayton?"

"It's Michael," I say, squirming to free my stolen wallet from my left rear jeans pocket.  Jeff glances at the license without looking at it.  He hawks a revolting wet cough and retreats to slump on his perch at the door to watch no one come in.  The bartender sets another beer on the bar for me and I move it onto my napkin coaster.  A dark ring emerges.  I take a sip and set down the cup again and again, in an effort to draw the Olympic rings.

"Guinness," the bartender says, "A velvet universe in a red Dixie cup."

Three guys are playing Magic the Gathering at a dark table in the back.  An Elton John song comes on the jukebox and everybody groans.

"We used to listen to this song back in high school," someone says.  "I had a chemistry teacher who fought in 'Nam.  He used to tell some crazy stories.  We never had to do any work.  Just get him started talking."

The bartender blinks.  The bald man orders another drink, by setting down his empty glass.  Hearing no objection, the guy telling the story continues:

"One time he told us about how they found this chimpanzee right?  Or orangutan or something.  Anyway, everybody in this village was dead but the monkey lived so they kept it around as a kind of a mascot, and one day the guys in the outfit were hanging around having an arm wrestling contest.  Seems somebody thought it'd be a good idea to let the monkey in, which was a stupid idea since monkeys have infinitely stronger arm muscles than any human ever could."

"Infinitely." I repeat.

"So they let him in and he beats everybody in the outfit.  All of 'em.  Just WHOMP, and its over.  Heh heh.  Trouble was, the monkey thought he was the alpha male after that and started beating up on 'em and trying to get 'em to do things for him.  So they had to shoot 'im."

 

 

SIDE B: Tracks 1-3

1. Elegy for the Written Word

2. All Hallows Eve

3. Brothers

There's a camaraderie in the place that feels like home.  Maybe it's the musky smell of countless cigarettes, hops and mops.  The guys in there don't get out much because the world doesn't offer anything but punishment, and inside this dim cavern is a haven where the drinks keep coming as long as you occasionally pay, and the conversation flows like the heat off a warm country hearth. 

"What if deep space were filled with flesh-eating bats?" someone asks.

"Then I guess we'd be fucked."

"I was just thinkin' 'bout it cuza sumthin' I read."  A new guy walks in and Jeff holds out his hand to check ID but the new guy doesn't see it and walks on past.  Jeff doesn't object.  He looks like he's going to be sick.

"What's the last thing you read," I asked the bald man.

"Godel Escher Bach," he said.

"You mean like recreationally?" the new guy asked.

"Yeah.  For fun."

"My cousin's buddy's dad's Playboys.  Had a not-so-secret stash right next to the toilet.  Hell I'd spend more time on that shitter than I would home in bed!"

Jeff made a bursting noise and ran along the bar for the restroom again.  We heard him lock himself in and groan painfully.

"What's eating him?"

The bartender shrugged.

"What's the last thing you read," the new guys asks, pointing to the house tap where the bartender fizzles out a pale brew.

"Cicero."

 "You're looking a bit scruffy," Bill says, "when's the last time you shaved?"

"April."

"How's that girl you were seeing?"

"Dead."

"You still seeing her?" Joel asks.  The new guy punches him. Joel sniggers like a little ogre.  "What?  He's Dumb-Ass'd Man.  Just cuz she's dead don't mean he can't still tap the girl."

"That's Da Masqued Man," I correct.

"Ya I been meaning to ask about that," the new guy proves, eager to ask a question he's been harboring since I came in, "What's the deal with the mask?"

"Halloween was a hard time for me, I'll tell ya.  Little kids on the street laugh 'cus it looks like I'm dressed up in my costume early all those few weeks leading up to it with the mask and all, then the night of people ask why I don't dress up."

"What'd you dress up as?"

"Last year I dressed up as myself."

"So, without the mask?"

"Yeah.  I looked just like a normal person."

The clock on the wall chimes and someone points out that it's now midnight.  Wednesday.  Game day.

"Yay."

"Alright let's play a game."

The bald guy perked up. "Still writing those?"

"I thought you wrote poetry on some web blog?"

"It's called Blogetry," I said "and yes, I am still writing them."

"Have you written anything good lately?" the new guy asks.  I pulled out my little black notepad.

Everyone's in everyone.

Capsized hulls salty all

lucky not to get

Caught

In tidal pools of stars

Where gulls cry

deep seas swell and sigh

Eating

Rose and fall and dark and all

Tired souls whisper "Gone"

And dead and live are one.

Silence.  The bartender stares at me.

"You should go back to college," the new guy says, "that's good stuff."

"Not bad."  Joel scoffs.

Jeff flushes the toilet but doesn't emerge.  The dishwasher rattles'n hums and the guys playing cards "Hurrah!" and stomp their feet.

"Have you got a brother?" the bartender asks.

"None of your business."

"Well, I think he was my business.  Last week.  You read that thing and it made me think.  That voice.  Guy sounds just like you.  Looks sorta like you.  Had a pretty girl on his arm, shorter hair, drank a lot and left a lousy tip…"

"Sure sounds like my brother.  But that's impossible."  Last I knew Nigel was in Milwaukee.

"The guy said he was out here on business.  Had on a nice suit.  Treated that pretty little girl like shit."

"You've got a brother Masky?" the bald man asked.

"Yeah," said the bartender, "you remember right?  Last Tuesday.  That jerk with the pretty girl.  We don't get too many guys like that in here."

"Or girls.  When's the last time you talked to your brother Masky?"