Easy

A bum shares a white sheet, not a blanket, with a fellow homeless person as they walk down the street outside my workplace this morning in a passing glimpse of resilient empathy.

I sit with headphones clouding my senses, typing away on the computer in my cubicle, when I feel a tap on my shoulder. The boss, the bigwig boss of the entire floor of workers, hands me a donut. I drop the headphones and say, "Thanks. Wow. Thank you for making it Friday." He smiles and walks away.

Our Friday work lunch is usually a long trip, several blocks onto the college campus nearby, for the barbecue joint that is tucked neatly into the rigid city lines and vertical structures. We order, we laugh, we greedily fork delicious sauce-coated bird or pig into our faces, and then we walk the heavy lunch off somewhat as we cross city blocks back to our building. Our trip was a little over 45 minutes today, not the hour-plus journey it usually takes, and we smiled at one another like we conquered something profound.

I smiled at every single person I passed in my walking today.

I left the bar and people and the fun and the routine and boarded Marta for the haul home. I read the Bible. I talked to a man who was not liked by the occupants of my train car. This person wasn't mean, he was just slower and loud and kind of redundant. I listened to him and responded to him and encouraged his dreams, which he willingly told me on my trip home.

I took a cab from the train station and left my shoulder bag in his car. He had given me his business card because we found each other easy to talk to and he hoped I'd use him as a driver every Friday. I grabbed the business card and called him, explaining my bag being in the cab. He turned around and dropped it off in my driveway to my relief and gratitude.

I finished my throwaway art project for R.J. Reynolds and listened to the final regular season Braves game and felt the wind of autumn curl around my expectant skin.

This is the day you thank your maker for and count as a blessing for life is soft and comforting and easy on the soul.

Vine-St. Louis Haircut

Close...CLLLLooooSEEEEEEE! to the ear. Scary. Sexy. Invigorating. Satisfying.

Shivers.

He now came upstairs, feeling my shiver and calm.

"What have you done to his head?"
"I'm giving him a cut, nothing."
"Well it is making a mess on the floor."

One-two-three is trilled, "do you like the Transformers?"...asked quite earnestly as if I needed to side in the battle; "and then Marcus said that we were all free and the teacher laughed because Shaun accidentally moved his desk and it sounded like a fart!". IT WAS SOOOOO...stupid...hello? MOM."

"Everyone, this is Mark. He's up from Atlanta and I'm cutting his hair. He's Rob and Laura's buddy and he said he needed a haircut."

"Do you like Optimus Prime?"

"Yes, I like anything that can change into something else."

"Yeah...he's cool."

"MOM, what about the fart in class? That is so gross! But it might have been his desk."
"Then, are you saying it was a gross desk?"

"Hold still..."
Hand on my head, buzz of slicing scissors in my ear, shifting of the Earth's poles in the magnetic hum of clippers circling my skull, and the tender touch of control.

The kitchen contained us all: boyfriend Ronn, 3 kids of varying ages, my drunken ass, and lots of cross conversations.

"Do you like it?"
"I think it is great!"

"Really???"
"Yes. I will think of you every time I look in the mirror."

And I felt the air soften like a pink-cloud sunset when she smiled, content. The wind wisked through my shorn head and cooled me to a soft burning purr.

I swept up the mess and she walked me outside to wait for my ride back to their large neighborhood and we finally softly spoke one to the other in the shadowed driveway. I had said goodnight to the kids. I forgot to say goodbye to Ronn as I rode off.

Greek Chorus

I have company this late night/early morning. The Greek Chorus.

I watch the 2 am repeat of tonight's episode of Intervention on A&E and I see...I feel...the women I've known in my life sitting around me in the den. The tv is low to prevent problems. The lights are down because I want the dimness, only leaving the hood light of the stove on. The cat grooms itself amid shadows, white on black in gray and a permanent muted state, it manages to locate a warm lap of one seeing himself on an episode of Intervention...with the Greek Chorus.

Here's how it worked: The sofa was too far away for the volume to reach my ears and maintain quiet and so I moved to the singular chair with matching footstool. That caused the cat calamity in that it had just finished all the licking preparations before the proverbial cat nap. I moved, taking the remote, grabbing a fresh beer at 2 am, and slunk into the unfamiliar and still-not-worn-in-yet chair. Intervention came on and it was some boob who messed his life up but shoot! he was a smart and good guy, kinda talented too. I zoned into the drama, the cat groomed on the footstool in hesitation, my beer disappeared sooner that it should.

Somewhere in the drama of how this goober on Intervention was shooting up smack 8 times a day I started to nod off myself, bored and it being on into the morning hours. But something he said grabbed me: "Here I am, killing myself daily, when I know how much she loves me." (referencing his only soul connection, his ex-girlfriend, as she sobs to the camera about how jacked up he was).

But that sentence hit me, hit home, hit the stones of my soul. And the Greek Chorus wafted onto the opposite chair, the long sofa, the footstool, and peeked from the hallway. I felt other eyes as well, though undefined, in the darkness of the hall...like one of them had gone to pee or to my room or was hiding for revenge.

Across the glow from the tv was Jenn in the big chair. Oh, I had heard it a trillion times from her how f-ed up I was, how I was missing it, how I had it and was blowing it, how could I let it all go and lose her?

Next, at the far end of the sofa (my damn cat slinking up to her lap, traitor!) was Tyger, no words to say, no adminitions. Her eyes cast lost, cast deprivation, cast woe, cast failed attempt. Those eyes, those shining eyes peered from the dark and told me what I could never have as she slowly stroked my white, deaf cat. Not a word was said...and truly, I felt no pain. My heart was broken already.

Beside her sat Amanda/Autumn, a twin figure. Two women who entered my life one after the other, both bearing bad news about where I was going and both only concerned about themselves, merely observing my sinking ship which floated away, as they did from me, without even a postcard to remember.

And then the shadow came from the darkened hallway. These words haunted me, poetic and precise and diplomatic and deeply slicing and then gone. What was I to think? The fear, the cut...the denoument and discarding of attention. That ghost shrieked back to whence it originated, a whirlwind in a lonely closet of a disorganized mind that can't be straightened not matter how many unappreciated times you locate the missing set of car/house keys.

And near me, always close to me in who I really am, she lounges on the footstool. A smile bursts forth from those drapes of darkness; the one from all those years back. Hey kid, have another, c'mon. We aren't done yet, I haven't finished talking! Are you listening? Are you registering again and again and again and again the circles of my life that I choose not to break? Oh, let's have fun and forget it. Let's just have some more of this good, gd, good time, so shutup, wake up, continue to listen again and that's right...shut up, listen, again.

Selfish but haunting like the howl of a wolf, cunning feigned closness like the clasp of a crab claw, evil is the black of the night reflected in calculating eyes. Memories fucking finally expressed on all you wenches in my blog writings like the cautionary pottery of other historical bitches, left as postmarks for mankind to beware your kind...and only now, eventually, understood by me.

After writing, after venting...I go back to the den. My soft white cat lies asleep at the edge of the couch...waiting for the stroke of ghosts only she can see and I still feel.

Vine-St. Louis Day 1

The traffic was continual, humming into his left ear amid neck craning for views in all of the car mirrors, ready for a glimpse of his visitor. He was supposed to be here three minutes ago, totally pushing his luck by being parked in the airport pickup and they tow and ticket readily now. The heat, the traffic, the stress: all gone when the visitor poked a friendly face through the open passenger window. Back slapping and handshakes and grins followed, and they were out of there and onward to the long weekend ahead. He hadn't seen his old friend, his truest companion in the state he left to save and repair his family, in over a year. And it felt good to be sitting here in his car, talking silly stuff and feeling close after such a long absence.

The visitor looked about the same, a couple of more lines around the eyes and shorter hair. But it was the same old guy he shared so much with in South when all his other friends were left behind and his home town was distant and that new city felt cold and unwelcoming. This friend, this local "cool" guy, befriended him and together they shared good times, bad situations, and all that shit in between that glues together the days on the calendar.

Stopping in for some beers, gas, and snacks, they both realized how much their old times had changed, the move back home separating the familiar routines, making the contact between them less frequent. Ah, but the visitor was here now, his past connected, a landmark in their friendship. Nothing but fun for a good couple of days.

To Be Continued