This past equinox we went down to the river. As mentioned previously, the river is a special place for us, to be visited on all the high holy days of the year and for remembrances. The river had changed to its winter channel, nearer the far bank where it would stay until spring and early summer snow melt brought it back to the near bank. I've written about the river many times, but somehow, such a psychic icon in my real life, I've been unable to write it into anything fictive. Seems odd, especially in light of all the other things that make it into the unpublishable manuscripts that sit unread in my cloud storage - sex, substance use, all the characters that populate this town, my history, the future, the past, work, malaise, relationships, mental health, society, friends, family, women. Nothing escapes, yet the river has yet to make an appearance. Puzzling.
We took in a dog for the low, low price of 300 bucks. He's a rescue, 3 years old English Cocker Spaniel named Scooby who's a complete baby who got himself so amped up this morning, simply by the fact that Andrea was alive, he anxiety shit all over the carpet. Uly loves him, of course, but I can't help and think of the eventual future where the Scoobster dies and Uly has his heart broken for real, for the first time. It reminds me of all the pets that have come before and now occupy real estate in my mind. That in itself, is a complete mindfuck, that these previous creatures take up at least one neuron each as a word, and many, many more in the form of the connections they imprinted on my brain. Being a sentient, long lived animal is truly its own special kind of hell.
The cat, both cats actually, have somewhat taken to Scoob, with this fat bastard rubbing his face against him on the first day. He's only swatted at him once, and that when Scooby got too far into his personal bubble as Captain was trying to walk across the living room. The animals, the whole house, churns along in a kind of harmony, the kind of Americana that haunts you, will continue to haunt you, long after a slide into senility, and the terrible awareness that all this comfort is predicated on the misery of many, many millions of other beings is monolithic and I'm reminded of the hidden track on the Tool album "Opiate" where Maynard is screaming, "Life, feeds on life, feeds on life, feeds on life!"
Here is Uly in the crate we got along with Scoob and it brings to mind the Porno for Pyros song "Pets". I have a similar image of Gavin in a crate with Rommel at around the same age. I couldn't find it in the Zuck-machine but I know its on there somewhere. Currently, the image resides on a coffee mug, one I used this morning, that was a present from the boys this past Christmas (?) or perhaps the one before. My world is full of things like that from them, the two oldest, and these things dot my home and work like thorns - a plasticine award declaring me the "Number One Dad" from Kiernan, an envelope with Gavin's script addressed to "The greatest father a kid could have", their increasingly mature school portraits on the front of my refrigerator. I've heard people wish for their children to stay little, but the older mine get, the more brutal this life becomes, and I somehow become more okay with it, as if its arrest would be the worst punishment of all.
I've seen a lot in the news lately about Greta Thunberg and her impassioned rhetoric RE: world leaders and their dithering on climate change. I've said this before somewhere too, but the looming climate situation is one that I have ceased to follow. Part of that is mental health related and part of it is the knowledge that me, in my limited capacity, can do very little to change things, especially things on a macro scale. Even in the micro I'm pitifully ineffective. For example, I took a picture of this bag, with the express intent of putting here, taking up digital space, whose storage and dissemination will require an untold amount of resources, all to remind folks that they can do little actions like not litter, or pick up trash they find. Yet I, who thought all these things, did not take the bag because the nearest trash can was out of my way, I was walking, and I had no PPE with which to grab it. When will I stop being a piece of shit? The answer, as we all know, is never.
There is snow in the mountains. The weather has been rainy. I completed a draft of stories about ancient philosophers grappling with modern problems. I am filled with an irrational and absurd hope, not just for me, but for us all, even though I know things do not change, will never change, and yet there will always, always, be many of us who carry the fire, as McCarthy so wonderfully says in No Country for Old Men.
Aight, Imma head out.
