Monk

Bo looks so peaceful lying down. I cannot fool myself into thinking that Bo wouldn't choose life if he could. But I cannot keep serving him at his every yelp, all day and all through the night, practically holding his doggy dick for him to keep him from pissing himself. I have given him an entire summer of this personal sacrifice so that he could continue to taste this earth's air and meat. This is just one of those situations when I wish mother were here; after a few strong hints and promptings, she might have taken the weight of this decision from my shoulders and carried it on her own - she was tough like that, unlike Pop and me.

___ ___ ___

Carrying Bo from outside, I see Pop walking down the hall and he softly says, "Eleven o'clock tomorrow."

"Okay."

Before laying Bo down on his blanket, I kiss him on the top of his head, "One more day, buddy."

♠
An amusing snippet of dreaming that fits in so well...

Someone's shooting off firecrackers. So much for that ban. Monk goes out to take a look, and why isn't he surprised? Of course, its mother making all that pseudo-festive racket. It's dark outside, and I stand next to her in the front yard as she continues to shoot off her fireworks.

I tell her she shouldn't blow them all at once. She agrees. And just in time. We see a neighbor woman in bathrobe stepping outside her door across the street, with her hand on her hip and obviously not feeling festive.

Mother snickers and we go inside.

xXx

♠
I got a good night's sleep. Practically seven hours. Not entirely straight, but only a couple of get-ups. It was a godsend. I was a little scared that I was never going to sleep again, never to get a full hour at one time. I was afraid that I fell into a horrible rut, jumped the tracks, got on a wrong groove.

Not being able to sleep is a perfect kind of hell, like not being able to get anything to eat, save a meager scrap now and again. Like I told mom, it is better to sleep too much than not to be able to sleep enough. She was lucky in that.

xXx

♠
I dreamed of mother young, even dressed in that red sweat jacket, the one she wore in those pictures in Japan, dark long hair and thin. We even talked. The trick is that only I could see her and talk with her, even though Pop and Cain were also in the room, and the whole point of this bit of remembered dreaming was to establish this fact. The dream didn't keep long enough for it to develop from there, though toward the end, Cain was starting to believe me, that she was actually there sitting next to Pop talking with me, and he was both interested and spooked.

xXx

♠
I dreamed that I'm lying in bed, and I notice that a crowd is gathering out front for some sort of spectacle or presentation, some politician I think. This puts me off because I cannot masturbate now, but it's no big deal, and I get up and decide to take the dogs out.

On my way out, I see that Pop and Mother have returned and have parked the truck in the driveway. I cannot see them, but I plainly hear Mother's voice shouting something, like maybe she is pointing something out to Pop, or perhaps trying to get someone's attention in the crowd.

I lead the dogs outside. Princess follows me and my orders without hesitation or difficulty. I feel a little upset with Bo, since he lags so far behind and just doesn't seem to listen or care.

___ ___ ___

I'm probably reading too much into this, but the dream spooks me a little, as though Mother and Princess are calling Bo over to go with them.

xXx

♠
When I wake up, I see that the power went out, with my clock blinking away uselessly. I thought there might have been another storm and I slept through it (another good night of sleep), but, no, it's just life at Dung Hill. My left foot is also a little bummed. Too active in my sleep? Nah, probably a dancing injury. That Elvis drives me too wild. I also got up with a dream of mother in my memory.

When a thin, younger Stormy Dreamer approaches me, looking like she is on her way to one of her waitressing jobs, she gasps in the realization that it's my birthday, and she reaches into her purse and hands me a wad of bills and scurries away, as though I make her nervous and skittish. I am happy to see a twenty, and when I look through the bills, I'm even more excited to see another twenty. Knowing that we don't have much, I am tempted to run after her to give some of it back, but I don't.

xXx

♠
Trying to fall into his afternoon nap, Monk has a fanciful memory of being at a restaurant with mother. She engages him in a discussion about why he blames her for his life. This comes out of the blue for Monk, since he had long gone beyond blaming his parents. Unbeknownst to Monk, Dr. B. and his troupe are seated at the next table to overhear the conversation, and this is why mother prompts him.

Monk indulges her, and assures her that he appreciates that she has a good basic maternal foundation in her, that she generally places the kids above her own interests. However, he also acknowledeges that she has that sickly malicious streak, and she nods knowingly and appreciatively, knowing this about herself.

But Monk expresses his surprise over this conversation, "I stopped blaming you years ago. I have even gone beyond blaming society. I am up to blaming human nature. Next... I suppose will be utter acceptance, and I will no longer need to blame anyone or anything. That will probably take me a few years, though. I may need to give up a few more years of youth."

I really enjoyed this afternoon's imaginative conjuration. This is as close as I have been to mother for several years now. I was at the table with her, watching her facial expressions, hearing her modulating intonation, reliving it, more there than here - like a Mallway Dialogue.

Thinking about this dialogue, Monk even gave up the unconscious sigh, "I love you."

___ ___ ___

It was then that I realized this was some needed self-therapy. Monk has recently been regressing in his attitudes and emotions, actually going back to blaming his parents for his absurd life, even feeling some hatred. We obviously needed to come out of that tailspin, which could have been a symptom of approaching dementia.

xXx

♠
Nights dark beyond darknesss and the days more gray each one than what had gone before. Like the onset of some cold glaucoma dimming away the world.

-- "The Road" by Cormac McCarthy

Monk finished reading a chapter of "Reading Vergil's Aeneid" at around four-thirty, and he was looking forward to spending a long afternoon with "O." However, he realized that the three-day weekend begins tomorrow, and instead of glutting himself on porn, he started "The Road" early.

This one by McCarthy is looking even better than "Blood Meridian," which is a darkly lyrical favorite in its own right. The plot in "The Road" is simpler and more elegant and therefore starker and even more absorbing. The man is a poet-novelist and we are beggar-readers.

I do believe that it spurred a special memory of mother with its brooding and desperate reflection. It occurred when Pop came out to see if Bill was outside to talk to. Since this makes Monk self-conscious about his reading, to be seen openly from outside the window like that, he shuts the blinds for privacy.

This 'shunning' brought to mind the springtime afternoons when mother would similarly impinge on the privacy and comfort of his reading. She would come by the window with water hose in hand to water her hibiscus. And Monk can practically see her there as if it were yesterday, with the kind of clarity that his recollections had in the first months after her death. Monk can see the attentive concern on her face for her dying plant, which is slightly tinged by the comical since her inability to keep her plants thriving had long been a family joke, that black thumb of death.

Monk came close to tears after all these years. That is a testament to the power of McCarthy's narrative of a father and son attempting to negotiate a barren world with more pride than hope.

xXx

♠
As the wintry chill returns with the evening, Pop gets Monk into that discussion about which is better, the heat or the cold, with Pop declaring that he cannot stand the cold, and how he feels it in his bones. Monk expresses his wonder that Pop can be found sitting outside on the patio in the middle of July, and Pop agrees that he has no problem with the heat, even one-hundred-degree heat.

Monk was thinking about how he is the opposite, and how he shared this preference for the cold with mother.

But then Monk realized that this may be too simple. For instance, if they had to go without both the air-conditioner and the heater, which would be harder? Monk figures that it would be very uncomfortable to go without the a/c, and many cold showers would be needed, but it might feel like a mortal threat to go without the heater, even in the southwest. The cold really does have a bite to it.

One supposes that Monk's preference comes from the orientation to the temperature and weather when it is just a little outside of the ideal or optimal. That is, Monk strongly prefers it to be a little cool than a little warm. It is perfectly fine with Monk if he needs to wear a light sweatjacket to keep off the bite, but it comes close to torture when they are just shy of the a/c zone in the summer time. Besides, Monk does not like going shirtless, not exactly having the six-pack abs to make that work well.

Just beginning to feel a little like sweating feels more bestial, whereas one feels only more civilized donning a jacket.

xXx

♠
On the pre-dinner rounds with Bo, the neighbor's night beacon across the street lights up. Monk thinks again with bitter regret about mother's offer to put up horizontal blinds on his window, in addition to his vertical ones, instead of using the black garbage bag that he has been using to obscure that light from shining brightly into his room all night long. Those blinds would have been perfect! It serves to demonstrate how irrational Monk's aversion and negativity can be.

As Monk continued thinking about it, he realized that there is no reason why he cannot use his vertical blinds to cover all his window. After all, the reason why he could not before was because the younger Bo was wont to stand up at the window putting his forepaws on the window ledge. Looking at it now, I can still see how Bo scratched it down to brown wood. Bo would bark at passersby, especially other dogs and cats, and he would be pounding down on that ledge as he barked commandingly, scratching into the wood. Bo would just jump through the blinds when they were drawn across the window, wrecking the vanes a bit. Bo never jumps upon the window ledge anymore, and he has not done so in years, having stopped long before mother died.

However, the answer cannot be that easy and happy. Especially now, the winds are too strong to have the blinds drawn, making the vanes dance noisily about with every gust of air. With horizontal blinds, one could bring them down across the window, all the way down until where one keeps the window up, which is most of the way. The top half of the tall window is permanently closed. As I said, the horizontal blinds would have been perfect. But it is not often that windy, and when it is, it is also usually sensible to close the window that much more - in winter, all the way shut, or even very near it so that even strong winds would not be problemsome.

But we will give it a try. Experimenting a little with it now is not so encouraging. Though, it shows that even with the horizontal blinds, the neighbor's glaring beacon would be annoying because it comes in real low anyway. But these vertical blinds, when drawn across the window entirely, may do the trick. It would definitely help coming in and drying off after a shower easier, instead of Monk having to put up a poster to block the view.

xXx