The Faded Sleeve

“My fingers smell like citrus. How strange,” he said while sliding the cranberry curtain a smidge to his right so he could get a good look at the family across the street tossing toys into the backseat of their four-door coupe.
“They must be going to her mom’s house,” he surmised while taking an unhurried step down the sun soaked hallway of his second story apartment in Woodberry, then elaborating, “for dinner.”
“And I shall make asparagus with baked parmesan and …” he hesitated while gazing down at a dusty crate of records from the ‘70s.
“Perhaps I’ll listen to Alice Coltrane,” he declared while delicately bending a knee to flip through the album covers before glancing upward at a wall map of the United States, ripe with purple pushpins that celebrated all the places he visited throughout the decades.
“NYC was splendid. I should jump on that Amtrak. It’s just a two and a half hour ride and a judicious pour of dark roast. And I’ve been dying to finish ‘I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.’ It’s a crying shame my hip is so prickly. I need to get on the yoga mat.”
He returned his gaze to the vinyl as a wailing fire truck rumbled down the avenue.
“Om to my kundalini rising, here she is,” he whispered excitedly, pushing himself up from the wooden floor into a semi-perpendicular pose, with the album “Journey in Satchidananda” tucked beneath his arm.
“It’s a full moon tonight,” he murmured while spying a folded piece of paper buried deep inside the left-hand pocket of his saffron robe. “What do we have here?”
He repeated the mantra in his head: Breathing in, two, three, breathing out, five, six. “It’s decided, I will invite the downstairs neighbor for brunch! Then I can ask them if my nag champa chaps their tranquility. I’d hate to be a buzzkill yogi.”
Filled with unreliable confidence, he prudently walked to the end of the hallway, stopping at the mouth of the living room to unfold the diminutive note he found in the confines of his hooded cloak. It read, “The lemon is in the kitchen. Sprinkle it on your asparagus.”
After a mindful exhale, he gingerly lowered himself into a lotus position on the yoga mat in front of the turntable. He slid the record from the faded sleeve and reverently played the B-side first.

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Bona Fide

Today his mother told him to never go into the basement.
“Why?” he asked.
  “Because I said so,” she replied.
  “But I’m 13 now, I understand things. Is it toxic? Haunted? You can’t just say ‘never’ without an explanation.”
Long silence.
“Ask your father.”
  “For fuck’s sake.”
  “Jackson! Never say that shit again.”
  “Everything’s never now.”
His mom quietly folded the last pair of undies. “I will always love you.”
“Is it because of the still?” he quipped before obliterating his chocolate chip cookie in one satisfying bite.
“Like I said.”

~

At 6 a.m. the next morning Jackson walked into his parents’ bedroom and poked his dad’s fleshy deltoid with a broom handle.
“For FUCK’S sake!” his father roared.
“Pops. I want to learn how to make corn liquor. I need a job that pays, man, so I can buy a Mac and wax Promethean. I’m focused, resolute. I can clock before school, nights, weekends. I want to be your deputy. POPS! You awake?”
“Now I am. Meet me in the kitchen. Five minutes.”
Jackson ran out of the room, brushed his teeth, snapped on some green rubber gloves and a surgical mask, donned the yellow hard hat and safety glasses his Uncle gifted him for his birthday, and skipped down the hallway with bona fide momentum.

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Do What You Love

How can we survive another day?

I recently read Uncle Tungsten: Memories of a Chemical Boyhood, which is an affectionate and detailed memoir by Oliver Sacks. And now—I must acquire a wall size periodic table of the elements so I can memorize the noble gases. The idea of reading a book and learning something new lifts me from the gravity of stagnation.

I wasn’t a doomsayer at birth, but I was born reluctant.

Everything has always been slightly fuzzy to me. I am constantly practicing the ninja warrior feigning sleep pose, which embraces the power of sublime ignorance.

Today is fresh produce. If I bought it yesterday it would be unripe. If I bought it tomorrow it would be decadent.

I love the scene in Silver Linings Playbook where the Bradley Cooper character throws the Hemingway book out of the window because he wasn't satisfied with the ending.

"The world's hard enough as it is guys. It's fucking hard enough as it is. Can't somebody say, hey let's be positive, let's have a good ending to the story." — Pat Solitano

Ok Pat, let me be that somebody. Here’s my enchanted finale.

My bedridden grandma was an avid reader. When I visited her in the convalescent home I would always bring her two things: a pint of bourbon and a mystery novel. I would sit in a chair next to her and we'd both read our books and I'd leave after she fell asleep. On a Friday when the sun was setting low, I watched granny take a nip, then turn a page. Nip, then turn. Nip. Then turn. It was a soothing visual for me, seeing her under the blanket with those rosy cheeks. At the time I was reading The Collected Poems by Sylvia Plath, which trained me to focus and read slowly. I was immersed in the poem "Channel Crossing" which read:

"On storm-struck deck, wind sirens caterwaul. With each tilt, shock and shudder, our blunt ship cleaves forward into fury. Dark as anger, waves wallop, assaulting the stubborn hull. Flayed by spray, we take the challenge up, grip the rail, squint ahead, and wonder how much longer such force can last."

When I finished the verse I noticed a peaceful silence. I lifted my eyes and looked at Grandma's gentle face. Was she? … Oh no. The mystery slid out of her hand, bounced off the comforter, and thudded against the dusty wooden floorboard. Her bookmark—freed from the deckled pages—fluttered beneath the hissing radiator, disappearing amidst the fur balls and the dust bunnies.

I stared at her glassy eyes: absent of desire or suffering.

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