Flower with stick of melting butter.

Today, after I'd washed a single dish at Belle Star's diner and rearranged the plastic coffee cups in the plastic coffee cup holder, I said goodbye to Belle Star and headed home to take Warden on a walk. Warden was excited, as he usually is, and jumped up to greet me. His nose collided into mine! It hurt.

Curt. Hurt.

We went on a walk. I saw many people drawing many things like children or trees or flowers and one man was drawing a house, brick by brick, shingle by shingle! I was inspired.

When I got home, I found a pen and a piece of paper and went outside and spotted a flower that I thought was pretty. I looked at the flower. I smelled the flower. I touched the flower. I imagined that I was the flower. Then, I drew the flower. It took me two hours, but when I'd finished, I was proud that I'd drawn the flower.

Then, I drew a stick of melting butter next to the flower. To give it that Jimenez touch!

What do you think?

Johnny Jimenez

I went to Goodwill today, just for kicks.

I found a shirt, it was red. "#1 Grandpa", it said.

I wore it out of the store. I thought, "that's a thing to be".

Two dollars, that's what it cost. "Hell, I make that in half an hour", I said to myself.

A hot grandma hit on me. "Hey, I'm the number one grandma!" she said.
"You have a shirt?"

She didn't. "Sorry, babe," I said.

I thought of my grandson. A pitcher. Great curveball. Nice off-speed. Serious fastball. Into history, World War II especially. A writer, into Kurt Vonnegut, says Huckleberry Finn is the best book he's ever read. His fantasy baseball team is called the "Bare Bodkins."

Johnny. Too common? No, Johnny is good. Johnny Jimenez. What a kid.

"Grandpa Curt, let's make some butter!"

"Okay!"

"I've got some arugula!"

"I've got some Sriracha!"

Alright, the fantasy is a little out there, but I made some arugula-Sriracha butter today, and it was awesome.

Damn.

Gasoline

But who did I run into today? Bailey. I ran into Bailey today at the grocery store and we talked about many things because we hadn't seen each other in a long time. He said that he'd been clean for two weeks. I didn't know he had a problem. I told him that I was also a changed man.

He was buying q-tips. I was eye shopping. Cereal is expensive. We said goodbye.

Neither one of us mentioned chess. Maybe, Bailey's been clean from chess for two weeks. Maybe, he's been clean from...me.

On the way back to my apartment, I smelled gasoline.

When I was fourteen, my best friend and I huffed gasoline. We were curious. We were risk takers.

A man in a mauve minivan wearing a suit pulled up beside me. This was on the way back to my apartment, after I'd smelled the gasoline. He asked me where the funeral home was. I told him he had to turn around and at the light, make a right. He thanked me. I nodded. I wanted to understand his solemnity and the fear of arriving late to a funeral.

We were stupid. We huffed. We were scared. We were in a field.

My fingers felt like worms. I jammed them into the dirt and waited for them to crawl away. I waited for my fingers to eat dirt and dirt, crawl further into earth. My friend, he stood up and took a big breath. I thought he'd taken all the air into his lungs. We laughed.

When it rains, I thought, I'll find my fingers on the surface somewhere.

This is how it was.

Optimism

If I live to be 102, my life is only half over.

If I died tomorrow, I will have spent half of my life in prison.

During my out of body experience, I thought I came to understand that this moment, what's happening right now, is everything.

But it's hard to live that way. It's hard to ignore all the things that conspire to bring you down. Unemployment. Imprisonment. Death.

I'm 51.

51.

This morning, I wake up. I Make a pot of coffee. I feed Warden and take him outside. I turn on the radio. I turn off the radio. I cry, out of nothing. Real tears. I heat some butter on the stove and saute some mushrooms. I play some Judee Sill on the stereo.

Every morning now, I wake up. I Make a pot of coffee. I feed Warden and take him outside. I turn on the radio. I turn off the radio. I cry, out of nothing. Real tears. I heat some butter on the stove and saute some mushrooms. I play some Judee Sill on the stereo.

Today, I turn Judee off. I love her, but there are five-hundred voices shouting in my head, and I that's enough for me to deal with. I throw some diced onions in with my mushrooms.

I think. Constantly.

"Curt," I say to myself. "Is this all there is?"
"Huh?"
"Is this it? Should I expect more?"
"Should you expect more? What do you want? Dancing women? Breakfast in bed?"
"I guess I just want life to be obviously worth living, all the time."
"That's a lot to ask."
"Curt, I have needs."
"Curt, you're being unreasonable!"
"I think I'm being perfectly reasonable."
"Curt, there are starving children in the world!"
"That makes my situation okay? That means I shouldn't question my own existence?"
"It's all relative, Curt."
"Bullshit."

My mushrooms are done. My onions are burning. I'm still crying.

Is this all there is?

This post is exactly 51 words long for a reason.

I
called
off
work
today.

Belle
Star
wasn’t
happy.

Who
knows
if
I’ll
get
fired
again...

I
don’t
know
if
I
really
care.

Dad
called
early
in
the
afternoon.

He
said,
“Curt,
how
are
you?”

I
said,
“Fine,
I
guess.”

Then,
he
said,



“Happy
fifty-
first
birthday
son.



How's
it
feel?”

More

There is an individual, somewhere in my neighborhood or thereabouts, who writes "Moe" on just about every sign and wall you see around here. Well, that's an exaggeration, but "Moe" is everywhere. He writes it with an umlaut on the "o", so I guess it's pronounced like a mentally challenged person saying "more".

What a strange obsession. I've written before about Warden, and how he likes to mark his territory. I guess "Moe" is really in touch with his inner dog! Or maybe he just wants to give us a unifying theme in our complex environment.

Me, I've taken to saying it out loud every time I see it, just because it makes me laugh. I don't know how "Moe" pronounces it personally.

I think if I get into graffiti as a hobby (lol), my signature would be "Butter", also with an umlaut. I would like to be one of those people who marks the top of a bridge or an overpass and every time you pass it you wonder, "how the hell did they get up there?" Now that's something to be proud of!

Hunger

I just ate an entire pizza by myself! I can feel my stomach expanding still. Full. More Full. Expanding. Most Full. Expanding. Explosively Full. Expanding. Infinitely Full.

But I know I will be hungry soon.

I ordered the pizza because I was hungry. Even after I'd finished my shift and Belle Star made me a Rachel on the HOUSE. My hunger was insatiable.

I waited for the deliveryman and while I waited, I started tidying up the apartment. Then I thought, "Why am I cleaning the apartment up for the deliveryman?" So I stopped. I turned on all the lights because I didn't want to seem like I ordered a pizza for myself. I wanted it to seem like there were other people lounging in other rooms, excited for pizza. Craving pizza. I didn't want the deliveryman to know that I was alone. Why? I don't know why. Maybe it's because pity makes me uncomfortable.

When the deliveryman arrived, I was so excited for the pizza that I dropped it after he'd handed it to me. We stared at the overturned pizza box. I handed the deliveryman the cash and he took it from me and we stood there, still looking at the pizza on the ground.
"I can get you another one," he said.
"When?"
"In an hour, maybe," he said, "maybe less than that. But maybe longer."
"It's fine," I said.

After I closed the door behind him, I sat on the floor and ate the pizza. It was delicious, despite its appearance. I ate the entire thing in 20 minutes.

I am hungry.
What do you do when you are hungry but nothing you eat keeps you full?
I want to be content.

But it's not happening.

Change Post

If you change, do people remind you of your old self, afraid that the changes happening before them are not for the better, but not for the worse, but are making you not you not you? Do they say: "Remember when..." or "You used to..." Do they say these things with Remorse? Denial. Fear. Anger. Do they?

And if they do, what do you do? Do you scratch the inside of your palms with fingernails you wished you didn't chew off because an itch is an itch and with no means to itch an itch, an itch is still an itch. Do you drink as much water as you can so you can excuse yourself over and over again in order to use the bathroom and then you wonder if flushing the toilet is really worth it because you'll be back again, soon. In five minutes. Then five minutes after that. Then maybe ten. I guess it depends on how big the glass is, really. Do you try to find a pattern in the light? Or do you just go with it because it's easy to just go with things nowadays and not worry about the light or the way you must look in the light and how the light makes you look at other things differently like these things are looking at you.

I want to make change butter. A butter I am afraid to recognize as butter. A butter that does not recognize its role as butter. I want to eat this butter and not know what eating is because the butter is change butter and change butter does not understand how to be eaten nor does the consumer know that change butter is butter willed into being butter.

I want to change speak. I want to speak without thinking because it must be nice not to know every word so intimately. It must be nice not to speak only when the listener cannot see how your lips are moving, how they are changing. With change speaking, the change becomes the speaking, and the words matter much less than the action of speaking with change. With change speaking, listening is never a chore.

The only chore is speaking without change. Then, words take on new meaning. They say Love in okays, and No in maybes. And this is confusing. And never goes anywhere unless you are not you.

What I'm thinking right now

Work sucks.

Dishes

Sometimes, in prison, I would be assigned to dishes. We didn't have dishes though. We ate off of plastic trays and used plastic sporks. So, I was really assigned to trays. I would rinse off dirty trays for hours and to keep me busy, I'd invent little games. If mashed potatoes were served that day, I'd flip a tray over that had a mound of mashed potatoes on it and count how many seconds it'd take for the mashed potatoes to fall off. The highest I ever got to was 132 seconds. Sometimes, I'd look for Jesus in the gravy. Dish duty was the worst. Minutes felt like hours. Hours felt like days. But that's how I met Homes.

Homes didn't talk very much, which was nice. I liked to concentrate on my games, and sometimes, I'd be assigned to dishes with someone who talked about the last girl they stuck it to, which was...well, something I didn't want to hear about while I was washing trays. Homes, he understood. We worked hard together. Our silence was conversation enough. And when we did talk, it meant something.

I thought about Homes when I went to wash dishes at Belle Star's diner yesterday. I miss him. Belle Star has dishes and metal utensils. She has plastic coffee cups that go upside-down on stackable trays. She showed me how to arrange the coffee cups on the trays. There is a radio that's always on in the kitchen and instead of silence, there is pop music and the sound of people talking in the dining area.

Yesterday, it was just me and Belle Star. She said her "help" called off because "who the f*** knows why!" Needless to say, Belle Star was not in a good mood. But I did the best I could, washing the dishes as soon as she handed them to me, cigarette in her mouth. I must have done alright because she only called me a psycho a dozen times!

At the end of the day, Belle Star offered me a cigarette and I took it, even though I don't smoke, because I knew it was her way of saying thank you.

"Why did the pirate say he had a steering wheel in his pants?" I said.

Belle Star looked at me. "Why?"

"Arrr it's drivin' me nuts!" I said.

"Go home Curt," Belle Star said. "See you Thursday," she said.

Loops

I woke up at 4 am this morning, thinking I had papers to deliver.

Of course, I didn't. But I woke up anyways. Today is my first day at the diner, I go in at 2 PM.

I made a decision not to waste my morning. I fed Warden and put his leash on. We would walk and listen to music and watch the sun come up.

I have an old Sony Walkman my Mom gave to me in prison, and one cassette. It is Bruckner's 9th symphony performed by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Georg Solti.

Bruckner, I like to think he is a kindred spirit. People thought he was simple, and maybe he was, but he wrote some crazy music. Warden and I circled my block, and listened to the whole symphony. If I counted correctly, we did 38 laps. That second movement makes me think of the Schwarzwald.

I'm anxious about the new job. Kind of excited, kind of scared. I have a heightened paranoia about people accepting me in new situations, but at least some people at the diner know me already. I have a joke prepared for "breaking the ice":

Q.) Why did the pirate say he had a steering wheel in his pants?

A.) Arrr. It's drivin' me nuts!

I like that joke. I still feel like my vision quest was very successful, but I'm having a hard time transferring that feeling and sense of accomplishment to my everyday life. I suppose I need to get settled back into a routine and get past some of this stress.

Wish me luck! You'll hear the full report tomorrow!

New Vision

I really shouldn't have. I don't have an income. But I did.

I went to the eye doctor to try on a pair of contacts.

I wasn't going to, but the woman sitting at the front desk looked so kind through the window. She smiled at me and not many people smile at me! So, I opened the door and stepped inside and forgot that I'd been fired from my job. I forgot that I didn't want contacts. I forgot how to say...no.

"Walk in?" she said.
"Yes," I said.

She handed me a sheaf of papers and a pen and I checked many boxes and signed my name several times. I looked at the door and thought: "I should go. I should just get up and go. Why am I doing this? I don't want to stick things into my eyes, right? Right. Go. I should just go."

BUT I STAYED.

Then I was in chair and shaking Dr. Beamen's hand and he told me to rest my chin on a strange contraption and look up and down and this way and that and past his ear. Once in a while, I caught a glimpse of his eye, magnified. It looked like an egg, sunny side up, the yolk blue.
And then before I knew it, a contact lens rested on my fingertip. Thin. Clear. Fragile.

Dr. Beamen told me to hold my eye open with one hand and carefully insert the contact lens with the other. There it was, inching towards my face. A disposable contact lens.

My first attempt was a failure. The lens crashed into my eyelid and fell onto the floor. Dr. Beamen handed me another lens and again, I raised it to my eye. Nope, this time, my eyelashes swatted the lens down my finger and into my hand.

An hour later, the contact lenses were in my eyes.

I put my glasses in a case and walked out the door. Dr. Beamen told me to call him in a week to see if I wanted to order a years supply.

I can't count how many times I've reached for my glasses today only to find that they weren't there!

When Warden licked my face, he licked my eyes. I've never felt his tongue against my eyes!

I don't know whether or not I'll keep wearing contact lenses, but it is nice to have people I know, like Belle Star, come up to me and say, "You psycho! What'd you do different today? You look..off!"

People recognize that I've changed somehow, even if it is a physical change they note and not a mental/emotional change.

And it's kind of nice... : )

Normal

Back to normal.
Normal.
Normal.
Normal.
I could type it 100 more times. I don't think I understand. Thinking about normal is like thinking about heaven. Sure, people talk about it, but that doesn't mean it exists.
Back to normal.
Normal.

Man, what a week. What a month. What an existence. I feel like a changed man. Am I a changed man?

I went to grab breakfast at Belle Star's this morning. I am almost out of money. I ordered a bowl of Cheerio's and some coffee. The last time I ordered this, it cost me $2.35.

"That's $3.05, Curt," Belle Star said.

I explained to Belle Star that I had had this exact same breakfast two weeks ago and it cost me $2.35.
"That's fine, Curt, give me $2.35."

Back to normal.

You break away for a little while, you connect with the world, you begin to understand your place. And you come back home to all your responsibilities and that understanding starts to slip away.

Hold on, Curt. I say it to myself, over and over. I write it on my hand.

I am holding on. I am not giving in.

Back to normal.

Normal.

I made some butter yesterday, some lemon pepper butter. My dad was in town today and stopped by to visit for a little while. "This doesn't taste like lemon or pepper," he said, definitively. "This doesn't taste like anything." The butter was delicious. He went to the fridge for the regular store-bought butter and spread some on the other half of his biscuit.

Normal.

When was life normal? As a kid? As a teenager? Was normal ever something to aspire to?

I was sitting on a bench outside the diner this afternoon reading, with Warden tied up next to me. A woman my age came up to me and started talking to me.

"Is that your dog?" she asked.

"No," I said, "I saw him just sitting here, and he looked lonely."

"He's a beautiful dog. I wonder if he was in the dog show this past weekend."

"I don't think so," I said. "If he was a show dog I don't think they would just leave him out here."

I put my sunglasses on.

Back to normal.

Epilogue

Things are much different and they aren't. I'm still Curt G. Jimenez, but I'm not Curt G. Jimenez.

This is what I did with Stella's ashes:

When I wake up, my skin is sand. I am naked and supine by Lake Erie's waters. Warden is next to me, sleeping with his eyes open, distant and near at the same time. I dress myself without wiping sand off my skin. I want to carry these bits of Eerie shore with me everywhere I go. I want to leave a trail behind that only I would be able to understand.

I am walking with Warden when I see two boys by the water, crying. I ask them if everything is okay. One of the boys holds up a paper boat. Inside the paper boat is an ant. The other boy says, "His pet ant died."

"I'm sorry," I say. I wonder if this is the first time the boys have dealt with death. What are they feeling, exactly? They are so young, maybe six or seven.

The boat is placed in the water and one of the boys brings out a matchbook and lights a match and sets the boat on fire. The boat burns quickly and we watch in silence until there is nothing to watch but water and water and water. I ask for a match and the boy with the matchbook hands me the matchbook. A man's voice calls, "Ben! David! Where are you?" and both boys run away.

I find a piece of flat driftwood. On it, I form a pile of twigs and leaves and scatter Stella's ashes over the entire surface. I light the twigs and leaves on fire, I push the driftwood into the water, and I watch as it burns, until there is only water.

"Stella," I say. That is all I can say.

My Vision.

The waves are small, but relentless.

Warden is off his leash, but he is not interested in anything but watching the water with me. He is exhausted. It is late. Or it is early. I haven't checked the time in a while, but we have been sitting here for a long time. I'm not interested in the time, I tell myself. I am watching the water, and my whole life rolling by in it. I haven't slept in 36 hours. I haven't eaten over the same span.

Warden can sleep with his eyes open. He rests half his brain at a time. He is afraid that he will miss something if he gives in totally to sleep. I stopped worrying a long time ago that I might be missing something. That's a lie. I obsess over whether I'm missing something. Somewhere, right now, something is going on and I am missing it. My whole life, I have been somewhere doing nothing, while somewhere else something is happening. Something great. Something important.

I think about my situation. About my crisis. About my crises. My whole life, a series of crises. Catastrophes supplanted by catastrophes. It's not so bad, I whisper to myself. I know this is true. I know this is a lie. If I have twenty years left, am I blessed or cursed? That is the question, I suppose.

Warden is snoring now, the sound barely audible over the quiet crashing of the pedestrian Lake Erie waves, and I think about love. About those I've loved and lost. About those I can't love as much as I wish I could.

His eyelids flutter. Sand has embedded itself deep into his fur. For a split second, I worry about it flaking off into my car's upholstery. Than I embrace my elementary understanding of Buddhism and shake off the idea. My car doesn't exist, I think to myself emphatically.

I don't exist. Or I do exist. I am pure existence. I am everything. I stare, and stare until the waves become wings and I am floating over the lake, watching Curt Jimenez and his dog Warden sitting quietly and contentedly in the middle of the night, just watching water. I think, that is something what they are doing. They think they are missing something, but everything that is happening is right in front of them.

I soar higher. I can see that it is cold, but I am no longer something which is bothered by such things. The wind is not a nuisance, but a friend, an ally. A peer. It is a force, like me. In a trance, I slowly and deliberately take off my shoes, my socks. My pants, my underwear, my windbreaker. My sweatshirt and my t-shirt. I am naked. I am pure Curt Jimenez, unencumbered, unobstructed. I am back at the beginning, or I am a millisecond before the end. I am outside of time. Warden snorts and gets up, and expresses disapproval as I begin to run. And run. I run out into the water, until the waves roll over my head. I shout at the top of my lungs. I emerge from the water and roll in the sand, laughing and crying. Warden licks my face, and I hug him with everything I have.

Now I am really crying. Not with sadness, though.

I have had my vision.

Vision Quest: Part 1

The coin tosses determined in which direction I was to head. North. Warden sat in the back seat of the car and the buttercream cake, next to me, in the passenger seat. I grabbed a cup of coffee at Belle Star's joint and said, "I'll see you when I see you," to which she responded, "You f***ing psycho!"

I rolled down the windows. It was bright out and I could tell that it was going to be a hot day. I looked for my sunglasses and realized that I'd left them at home. But I wasn't going to turn around.

Driving through west-central Pennsylvania is enjoyable. Little villages pop out of nothing. It was hard to resist stopping at them. The sun was frustrating me so I stopped at a gas station somewhere past a town called Hermitage to grab some "shades". I found a pair that I really liked, with tortoise-shell ear things.

"You know those are women's frames?" the teenager at checkout said to me. It startled me, as I was in a bit of a highway trance.

"I know," I said, "they're for my wife."

The teenager looked at me and then at the car. Warden's nose was sticking out through the small opening in the back window. "She's at home," I said. "My wife's at home."

I don't know why I felt like I had to justify my purchase. Maybe it was because of the way the teenager looked at me or the way he said women's frames. So what if the sunglasses were women's frames! I wanted to say to him: "I like these sunglasses and I don't care if they're women's frames. Look, do you see the tortoise-shell ear things?" I would have pointed to the tortoise-shell ear things and said, "They're awesome!"

But instead, I mentioned my "wife" four more times before I was handed back my change. I waited until the gas station disappeared from my rear-view mirror before putting on the sunglasses.

I'd been driving for about an hour when I heard Warden gagging in the back seat. When I turned around to see what was going on, I saw that he'd gotten sick everywhere! He was afraid of his own throw-up and tried climbing into the passenger seat with the cake. I pulled over to stop him, but it was too late. He stepped into the middle of the cake. I felt some anger. I counted to ten. I thought about the plan I had for the cake. There wasn't one. Curt Jimenez. Never a plan.

"It's okay Warden," I said, soothingly. I might have said, "It's okay, Curt," instead. The past is the past. A mantra. Rick always told me I needed a mantra. I repeated it aloud for Warden and he licked my face. Then he threw up in my lap. This was unfortunate. "Remember your breathing exercises," I said to myself. I didn't have any breathing exercises, and I punched the dashboard. The hazard lights turned on and I found myself unable to turn them off. I told Warden that I thought we should pull over. A young girl riding in the passenger seat in a car driving next to us opened and closed her fists several times to indicate to me that my hazards were on. I smiled and stuck my tongue out. We got off at the next rest stop and I started the first day of the rest of my life all over again.

Clean pants. What a luxury.

For this trip, that was rock bottom. It really wasn't that bad. Certain things, Warden can't stomach. I'm not sure what they are exactly, but I guess the important thing is to accept that he has a sensitive digestive system. Maybe he was just emotional about sharing the car with Stella's ashes. Regardless, we regrouped, and I started to enjoy the trip. The sun was no longer a nuisance, and I think I was looking pretty cool, if I do say so myself. We stopped and visited the Straub Brewery in St. Mary's, PA, and I had a few drinks at something called the eternal tap. Any day of the year you can just walk in and enjoy two delicious glasses of Straub beer. The woman working in the gift shop chased me down when I didn't notice that I was supposed to sign in. "HI!" I said to her, excited about a conversation with a non-dog. She wasn't interested. "Sorry, but you have to sign in, sir," she said. "Do you have I.D.?"

I do enjoy beer. A little alcohol gets me reminiscing, too. About lots of things. About the time when Mom took me to visit her brother in Indiana and we went out of our way to visit a pharmacy shaped like a mortar and pestle in Kentucky. I wanted to take a picture just of the building. Mom insisted that I be in the frame. "These places, they just exist, and they'll exist for a long time," she said. "I want to take a picture of you. That's really what matters. It's important that we're here. Life isn't about buildings."

It was 2 PM. I decided to drive north until I hit Lake Erie, and then find a place to camp for the night, maybe even for a couple of days. As I was driving, flipping through radio stations, I heard a song, Tik Tok. In the spirit of renewal, of leaving the past behind, I decided to make this my Vision Quest theme song. It made me feel alive! The rest of the trip, Tik Tok came on the radio every time I needed to hear it.

I was still feeling pretty "pumped up" when a show came on the radio talking about a cross country bike race where people have to stay awake as long as they can in order to win. There aren't any stages, with time off like normal long distance bike races, like the Tour de France. These people just go across the country as fast as they can, sleeping as little as they can physically manage. They test their limits. They hallucinate, and the hallucinations distract them from what they believe are there limits, and as a result, help them get to the next level.

And I pulled that idea into my plan. I was Lake Erie bound, and I was going to stay awake as long as I could. Searching for visions. Searching.

"Warden," I said, "Tonight, I'mma fight 'til we see the sunlight..."

Return!

Warden and I have returned from the vision quest.
I don't know where to start.
There's so much to write about!
I'll have to organize my thoughts in the next few entries.

Thanks for hanging in there!!!!!

-Curt G. Jimenez

Pilgrimage

Today is the first day of the rest of my life.

Rather, tomorrow is.

Today is the last day of that last life. The one that I'm leaving behind. Tonight, I celebrate it's ending.

For those of you who follow this blog for entertainment, or as a distraction, I apologize that it gets so heavy at times. I guess it's become more of a reflection of me than I ever thought it would be. Regardless, thank you for listening. Don't give up on me.

Tonight, the car is packed. Warden is on the floor, resting. A cake is sitting on the counter. A cake which would be in Stella's belly were she still alive. A cake baked in her memory--with a delightful buttercream frosting--in honor of the time she opened the oven and helped herself. Only death could keep her from driving up my grocery bill.

Tonight, I drink to her memory. Perhaps Warden and I will go for a late night walk in the cemetery.

Tomorrow, a coin flip. Rather, two coin flips. A flip to decide north/south or east/west. A flip to decide the winner of the winner. The gas tank is full. My bank account is cleaned out. I will be gone for a few days, recharging. Renewing. Reinventing. Vision Questing.

When I return, perhaps blogging will not be something Curt Jimenez does anymore. Perhaps this is Curt Jimenez' last post. Perhaps...........

"Dropping Heavy Questions"

I made butter.
It was delicious.

I was eating butter with toast, looking out the window, when I thought about Dad. He is a good man. Dad was always quiet, but I think that's the nature of dads. Maybe? I wonder what my life would have been like had I not gone to prison. Would I have met someone special? The "right" one? Would we have had children? A boy and a girl? What kind of dad would I have been?

Quiet. A butter aficionado (of course!).

What kind of husband would I have been?

Quiet. A butter aficionado.

Would I have lived in a house with a lawn and a two car garage? Would I have had a 9-5 job? Would I have even started this blog? Scary thought...

I was thinking about these questions, eating toast, when Warden came up beside me and "let go"! He never goes inside the apartment!

"Warden!" I shouted.
But he just kept at it and then walked away.

At least I know what kind of dog owner I am.

Patient. A butter aficionado.

bittersweet

Opening day is today. Baseball! The Pirates start tomorrow.

The Yankees and Red Sox play tonight. Blah. They can't both lose, can they?

Mired in unemployment. Or pseudo-unemployment.

The Pirates are most likely going to stink again. I won't get my hopes up.

I feel lonely.

When you don't have anything to do, sometimes it feels like there is too much time during the day. It doesn't make sense, but it's true, for me at least. I only have so many years to live. Shouldn't I cherish every moment? Does everybody feel like this sometimes?

What do people do when they want to feel alive? Where do they go? What's it all about? One can only watch The Loved One and Harold and Maude so many times.

I should say, "happy Easter!"

Is it a happy Easter? I think those days are gone, for me. I'd like to have a conversation with Jesus.

I should like hockey more.

What will save me from a drinking binge?

Dancing is a nice distraction. Can kind of make you feel like you have your life together.

I feel lonely.

How excited should you get about Pirates opening day?

Dancing

Sometimes, all you need to do is dance. Get lost in dance. Understand in dance. Make no sense in dance.

Today, I danced. I danced alone, in my apartment, and Warden danced too (whenever I held a treat out for him!). I turned on the radio and listened to the Top 20 station, and I danced. I spun around in a circle and clapped my hands. I jiggied into the kitchen and drank a glass of milk. I danced through the commercial breaks. I danced as the same songs were played over and over again. I danced until I was soaking wet.

When I stopped, I felt like I'd done something important, even though all I did was stay inside and dance. I looked out the window and a kid said to another kid, "The sky, Thomas." He pointed upwards and I followed his finger. The sky was orange, red, and pink.

Thomas didn't seem to care. He looked up for a second and then ran down the street. The other kid followed soon afterwards. But I stared at the sky until it was dark out. Then I turned off the radio.

Rebound

I must have walked twenty miles yesterday. Just trying to figure some stuff out. Move on. I was exhausted.

It's funny the way your own feelings color the way you perceive everything. I'm scared, terrified, of what's going to happen now. I see fear in people's faces. Everybody is scared of something. Warden is scared that I'm going to leave one day and never come home to let him outside to poop.

Over the years I've conditioned myself to stay optimistic, and I know things will work out one way or another. It just seems like time and time again the rug gets pulled out from under me just when everything seems to be coming into balance.

Curt, I whisper to myself over and over, it's going to be okay.

It's going to be okay.

You'd have to be some kind of salesman to sell this product:

Curt Jimenez, fifty years old, almost fifty-one, convicted murderer, seeks employment. He is socially awkward and prone to absentmindedness. He is, however, very friendly, perhaps uncomfortably so. He has almost no employment history due to a twenty-six year imprisonment. He was involuntarily dismissed from his last job--delivering newspapers--for sassing his supervisor. He dropped out of high school at 17, but he did manage to earn his G.E.D. in prison. His skills include: creative butter making; writing (?); handling monotony without complaint; and showing up every day.

I did talk to Belle Star, who says that there are a few evening dish-washing shifts available at the diner.

"We can never get enough f**king psychopaths working here," she says. It is a joke--she calls everyone a psychopath--but it hurts a little bit. I'll need a thicker skin if I'm going to be around people a lot more. It'll definitely work in the short term, so I tell her I'll take it. Maybe I can supplement it with a little landscaping work over the summer. I like being outside.

Rent is cheap, my expenses are pretty minimal. I have a simple life and I don't want for much. I can sell my car pretty easily if things get bad.

You know what though? I've got a little money in the bank. I've got some time on my hands. I've got some unfinished business.

Curt, I tell myself, this new freedom is a gift. Adversity is opportunity.

I call Belle Star and ask her if it's okay if I start in a week. I'm going on my vision quest!

April Fools'

It's April 1st, and I keep thinking that the Ghost will call me. He will say, "Hello, Curt?"
And I will say, "Yes, this is Curt."
And he will say, "Curt, this is the Ghost."
And I will say, "Oh, um."
And he will say, "About last night--"
And I will say, "Sorry, I didn't mean to be so--"
And he will say, "Curt."
And I will say, "Yes?"
And he will say, "I really yanked your leg, didn't I?"
And I will say, "What?"
And he will say, "April Fools'!"
And I will say, "Haha! Oh! I knew something was wrong. You were being kind of rash."
And he will say, "What. Rash? What do you mean?"
And I will say, "Oh, sorry, it's just that--"
And he will say, "Ahh, got you again! Hahaha!"
And I will say, "You sure did! Hahaha!"
And he will say, "See you in the morning."
And I will say, "Sure thing, sir."
And he will hang up.
And I will hang up.

But the Ghost hasn't called me yet.
I haven't laughed all day.
Warden's licked all the tears from my cheeks.

I don't know how to begin because I don't believe in the end.