The Little Words Mean the Most

EVERYME

 

 

 

 

the movie

my first country song

 

once you're gone

I'll have nothing to live for

 

'course I've gone that way

a few times before

On our daily walk, Simone and me

 

losing pounds to country miles

against a caressing wind

marching past two auburn horses, one leaning back to pee a hose-worth

 

I raise my arms to the promise of autumn

like a shirt drying on the line of my over-padded torso

years of self-congratulation and disdain for intake discipline

humbled by a declining, cloud-patch, antiseptic sun

and the cemetery we daily pass

 

 

 

Why I worship

 

(2) At the lay-church of Mrs. Meyer's Clean Day, devoted to aromatherapy hygiene

(1) At the Church of BBQ

(3) Science I learned in the last couple of weeks

 

ADVANCED This old thing?

 

 

Greetings from almost-fall in the northern hemisphere

 

 

"Reliably" green leaves

fade yellow petticoats mellow

wish it were dying book's-worth fellow

family tree emerges above the city unhanding branches

collecting on gutter leaf guards a continent away

doo dah

 

doo dah

 

 

 

 

 

 

 WillGerundsRule?

Ask Direct Summer School #2, Dublin, Ireland, August 2017: What does it look like? In part, like this

 

 

the nearby Temple Bar district (NOLA, Dublin-style)

walking "home" to Trinity City Hotel (delightedly recommended) from an animated speaker's dinner across the Liffey at Bagots Hutton; that's Simone's hair in the very lowest left corner

[above] Ask Direct founder, Damian O'Broin, making a point about Irish independence, part of his own family's DNA

[below] Agent of Good, John Lepp, w/ sub-Agent Tom, revere the martyr tributes

 

Regrets To Date

 

Chapter 1b (the other thing)

It is that time of my life; I said that, I know.

         Nothing I did was forgotten. And I regret it all. That's the confession of a thousand years. Growing up Catholic, you confess routinely every week, perfunctorily, in preparation for Sunday Mass.

         That's the nutshell. And that's what disturbs my sleep, beginning and end.

Chapter 1c (mmm)

He heard.

The garage door lumbered up on her side. They'd shared this two-car garage for 29 years. She'd hit it once recently; one of those things: back-up cameras weren't the nanny-cam-fail-safe they pretended to me.

He'd never hit the garage (yet). His brother-in-law, Larry, had. Once in the early years (they'd reconciled), Larry was so frantic to leave, he forgot his SUV's hatch was up. He dug into the garage. All in all, it was kind of funny. Like having a surprise Road-Runner cartoon playing among relatives.

a kind of thought "I don't really care about garages. I'm not a materialist. I'm not a restorer. I'm not all that proud of the artifacts I've gathered and left behind. Things fall apart. New things come along. Count me in. I admire archivists. I learn from archivists. I'm not one. But maybe someone will benefit."

 

 

yeah, sorry

 

 

Most donors are 55 and older, studies show. For good reason. This is not a hill to die on. The science is a wall of granite. People age into their prime giving years. They've bought everything they feel they really need. If they never had kids, they're swimming in cash they have no real use for.

I am 70 as I write this. That scares me less than it scares you, if you think of me as a brain worth salvaging from the obvious.

         I heard hell freezing over on her end. As expected; the usual obstacle.

         I had on the phone a fundraiser in her 40s or 50s. She didn't know or ask my age; as expected; like me at her age. Presumptuous. Anyone older was suspect. I'd written a bunch of books. I was a checklist. There were worst things.

Revealing your age in certain contexts is a death sentence.

         My top mentor through my early 50s was in his 70s.

         Bob

         Typical, I've witnessed later.

         Hidden from me, he took minute-by-minute care of a cancer-riddled spouse 15 years his younger. Bob comforted and nursed her 24 hours a day; responding to Janet's every scream of pain. She died by his side. He declined in silence, suffering from devastating prostate cancer that was never his focus.

Cross-referenced by the VAST majority of Americans who failed history because

 

(A) they lived in Texas or (B) Texas's textbook buying clout influenced their standardized history textbooks.

Stupid doesn't just happen. Stupid at this level is a strategy. Oh, congrats to the ideological victors! Hey, you won for now! Cheers: throwbacks!!! Turned an ever-smaller % of yet another generation from the light toward dead-ender-ism; victimized,

I was the echo trumpet. Hating, if that was your way.

Hey, victims: you BELIEVE it's your destiny. I think it's your EZ choice. Been there. Escaped that. [fingers crossed]

I grew up in a Massachusetts town with no awe-overboard Civil War statues. We saluted the dead on Memorial Day annually. It wasn't patriotism. It easily might have looked like that: uniforms, drills, speeches, marching.

It was for this obscure town remembrance. People came before. They always had their personal reasons for caring. They died for these reasons, some as fragile as a dawn spider's line.

I met many people in Holbrook, MA. My mother took the bus nights into Boston to earn her degree. My grandmother and moral compass lived next door. My lucky girlfriend was sadder than I was and far more hopeful. It saved her. She married the best man in a generation.