Spring cleaning

I am cleaning today. It is spring cleaning, and yes, I know it is late summer. I don't think of myself as getting to it late, but rather, early. Sure, I haven't lived in this apartment very long, but I have two large dogs and one is a puppy. A big puppy. Regrette. Somebody suggested to me that she might be named ironically, which I think is ironic. I just think it's a beautiful name, if you want to know the truth.

I'm not sure I understand irony.

I should come up with a creative use for recycling dog hair. That would be something.

I was going to start a novel this morning, but instead I started spring cleaning. In July. It is almost August. I think of how this blog went from a small undertaking and became a big undertaking through slow accumulation. Think of it! I should spring clean the BetterButterBlog and get rid of all the silly posts that I dashed off when I couldn't think of anything to say. How many would be left?? Twenty?? Ha! And now I am cleaning, scrubbing coffee stains off the not-white-anymore countertops, re-organizing my Tupperware containers. Does it ever surprise you the amount of Tupperware you have in your home? Where did it come from? I guess Tupperware collects like my blog posts have collected. I don't know where they all came from, and some are better than others. Even the crappy small ones without lids seem like they might be useful someday, though. That seems right.

I have become good at throwing things away. That is a good skill to have. If I don't use something, I stick it on the curve on garbage night, and somebody makes it disappear. What a country! What a universe! What an existence!

What would Darwin have to say about Curt Jimenez? Maybe the Betterbutterblog is just a document for anthropologists in the far off future to look at and think about whether this Curt Jimenez specimen had anything to say about natural selection. Who knows, maybe I am the pinnacle of something! A Hegelian peak! Maybe my ancestors were all little blog posts on the way to a butter end!

Maybe I have been reading to much Vonnegut.

Now I am bathing the dogs. Regrette likes to roll in feces she finds lying around on our walks. Can you imagine what stage of evolution dogs and humans were at 1 million years ago?

Now I am washing and changing sheets. Cleaning my single window. Coaxing my self-cleaning oven into action. On my hands and knees, scrubbing the tile in my kitchenette. Poking at cobwebs with my broom. Feeling like Sisyphus again.

Can you imagine a time when the Novel was novel?

Butter Thinks...

Hello. I am butter. I am. I am cut with knife. I am placed in pan. I melt and turn into. And into eggs. Into bread. I melt and turn into. Deep in cast iron. Held tightly. Lying in. Or on your tongue. In your stomach. I wait. On the counter. Hello. I am butter. I am saltier than your tears. I am a color much paler than you fear but don't. Because I am butter. I don't speak. The way you may think. But I am always talking. Where do you go when you've finished eating? I am bored with you. I am. I am disappearing. Quarter cup by quarter cup. Curt, you are silly. You love me. I hardly understand. You. I give you so much happiness. Curt.

A "Hairy" Situation

There was a hair in the potatoes.

The customer sat with his arms crossed. He told Belle Star about the hair in his potatoes and Belle Star took the plate and looked at the hair in the potatoes. She said, "It isn't my hair." The man said, "It isn't mine either." Another customer, a man wearing a flannel shirt and blazing white Air Jordans, leaned towards the plate and said, "It isn't mine." I looked at the hair, black and long, and said, "Where'd it come from?"
"F*** if I know," Belle Star said. She took the plate away, scraped the potatoes and the hair into the trash, and handed me the plate to wash.
The customer took a sip of his coffee. But checked to see if anything was in his cup before he did so.

I knew this girl once. When I was young. Maybe eight or nine. She practiced the piano while her father lay beneath the piano bench. Her legs didn't work. She could never press the pedals. She would say pedal and her father would press the pedal with his hand and she would say pedal and he would let go. She had long black hair. Wild hair that crept down to her waist. I always wanted to get tangled in her hair. I just wanted to walk past her and have her hair grab me and shoot between my arms and legs and cover my body. I wanted to live in her hair. I think I must have liked her.

The Things You Dipped in Butter

There you were, a hot day, a long time ago, a picnic pavilion. A park, a big park, with a lake, a beach, not a sandy beach, but it was a beach. Maybe it was a state park, or Dad's company park, back when such things existed. Your family was there, just about everyone, some now gone, some seemingly still around and yet unaccounted for. They've forgotten you, intentionally or otherwise. A family reunion.

Not your mother's side, just your dad's. Uncle Willie and Uncle Ted and Aunt Bar and your cousin Sara without an 'h' that was your age but she always drove you nuts because when you turned 7 you were done playing house and playing with her stupid dolls.

And there are a lot of memories that have slipped away. There were hamburgers, and pie, summer pie. And there was a tub of butter, accompanying rolls, left to sit out in the August heat. Liquid.

A summer miracle, liquid butter. Cauliflower, carrots, broccoli. Tortilla chips, potato chips. The things you dipped in butter. Hamburgers, rolls. Swiss cheese, American cheese. Maybe a piece of Pecan pie. Everybody is at the lake.

Many years later, and you can still taste it.

Maybe that was the beginning of something.

Moving

No one told me where to go. I picked a direction and went and time passed and I got old. The direction I chose was called "moving" and I was moved to a cell and moved to tears and moved to an apartment and moved and am moving still. Even in my sleep, I am moving. Even when I hold my breath and I tell myself that I am not moving, I can feel things inside me moving. Shifting, more like it, or beating.

No one told me that moving would be so difficult. That I would move and that time would pass and that I would move into old age so quickly. No one told me that when I chose "moving" that when I felt I was going nowhere, that when I felt stagnant, when I felt that things were simply slowing down, I was hurtling, the whole time, past so many things that if I reached out to grab hold of something I would have caught fire. I would have vanished and became air.

I want to tell you something. I want to tell you that we are all moving. Always. Our machinery is slowly breaking down. We are always looking to move one way or another and even when we're looking, we've moved so far already. Move away from me and move towards me, but you are moving still. Move away from yourself and move towards yourself and move deeper into yourself and further into yourself into yourself where you know not which way to move. Be afraid. Feel something other than.

I am moving into hurting.

Homes told me once. He told me, "Go."
And I said, "Go where?"
And he said, "Just move and don't ask questions."

Who decided?

I went back to the pool today, by myself. I packed myself a lunch, and brought a book. I didn't bring sunscreen. I decided if I was going to burn, I would just burn. I knew this man once, my father actually. He never wore sunscreen. He doesn't to this day. He would just burn and complain and burn all over again.

I bought a root beer float from the ice cream truck. I cheered on the kids when they did their cannonball dives and their "belly smackers". I lived and loved life. I had brought along a notebook, and I dreamed up new butters and drew little pictures of them in colored pencil.

Someone, a man my age, offered me a peanut butter cookie. And I took it and I ate it and it was delicious. It had lots of butter in it and I said, "This cookie must have at least two cups of butter in it!" and the man nodded in agreement. He was wearing sunglasses. I showed him my butter doodles, and told him about my love of butter. He said that he had a similar relationship with peanut butter, and he told me about crazy roasting methods and experimenting with honey and smoked salt and everything else. Everybody has a passion, I guess. Peanut butter seems kind of limited, if you ask me.

After that, I tried diving into the pool, but everytime I jumped, I scrunched my body up and screamed. I guess I was scared. It's strange, diving that is. I mean, who stood at the edge of a body of water and said to himself: "This is how I will enter the water and I will call it diving." ?

It's weird, I've just been sitting around thinking about the origins of things. History is long, and very complex. Think of butter. Who decided to agitate cream until it became something beautiful? How did it happen?

I left the pool. I took a shower. Afterwards, I looked at my naked self. I felt sunburned and vulnerable.

Everything else in-between

If you say something over and over again, it becomes silly, and over again still, it becomes unreal, and over again and again, and it becomes scary. If you flick on and off the light switch, over and over again, you become dizzy and over again still, you forget in which direction to move your fingers, and over again and again, you want to stop, but can't, and you are moving, completely, with the sound of something beyond light. Right now, I want to crawl on the floor, and rip up carpet like an anxious dog. I want to find something in the wall, like a hole with a burning light, that gives me direction. Direction. Direction. Direction. Direction. Direction. Direction. Direction. Direction. Direction. Ha! Ha! Direction.Direction. Direction. Direction. Direction. Direction.Direction. Direction. Direction. Direction. Direction. Sometimes, at night, before I fall asleep, I balance a pillow in my hands and lift it in the air, above my head. Then, I take one hand away. I do this until I can't feel my arm and the pillow is just floating above me. I wish more things were like this. There, and everything else in-between, forgotten.

Summer heat, takes it out of you

It's funny how the summer heat takes it out of you. Today, it's too hot to think, let alone blog. What's happened today? Nothing, people are just trying not to die of heat stroke. Maybe I'll have something to say once the sun goes down.

A Naive Killer

Today, I went to the zoo. I went alone. I could have called Ronny, or maybe even Bailey, but I decided that the zoo would be nice, by myself. I watched an elephant bathe and poop. I watched a baby orangutan climb a tree to meet its mother. I watched a snow leopard lie still on its back under a rocky ledge. I looked on as an ostrich walked towards me with its feathers swelling. Its long legs carried it like a woman with something on her mind. Then, I counted the number of penguins in the aquarium. 26. I pet a rabbit and a lizard. I spotted a skunk and watched beavers build a dam.

When I got home, I read a story about a man who collected things from the ocean and put these things--eels, starfish, fish, an octopus--into a fish tank. Then, he put a sea cucumber into the tank and everything died and he smashed the tank so that everything, dead and dying, went onto his floor.

He didn't know that the sea cucumber was poisonous. Does that make him a murderer?

shorts

I went to get my watch battery changed today. My jeweler told me that there are two kinds of people in the world, those who are stressed because they know what time it is, and those that are stressed because they don't know what time it is.

I thought about it, and I think he's right.

Forecast

There was talk about a thunderstorm. But the weather's so nice right now, it's hard to imagine a storm is on the way. Isn't it funny how this happens? How the sky changes, relentlessly? If you really think about it, even a clear blue sky is a tumultuous thing. A clear blue sky is a harbinger of things that extend beyond the sky and lightning bolts. Things like ill-fate or freak accidents.

My phone rang and it doesn't ring often. This was when the clouds were fat and moving across the sky and breaking into smaller things like rocking chairs and melons. I answered. Hello? I said and Guy said, Hello? Curt? I don't understand Guy. He disappears and reappears. He talks a lot. He talks too little. He tries to stay in touch. He tries to break his ties. Hi Guy, I said.

Before a storm arrives, the wind picks up and reveals the pale undersides of leaves. The wind sounds the wind chimes and tells the weather vane in which direction it is moving. In which direction the storm will go.

Curt, Guy said. Curt, I broke my leg. That's terrible, I said. I didn't really break my leg, Guy said. Ha! Ha! He said. How are things? I said. Just fine, he said, These trees are huge, like nothing I've ever seen, you could make a house out of one! A house, Curt! An entire house! You don't say, I said. Hey look, Curt, Guy said, I need to ask you a favor.

A wise man will recognize the calm before the storm and head towards higher ground. A fool will drown.

What is it? I said. Curt, I met this woman, but I need some money to meet her, Guy said. I don't understand, I said, I thought you said you met a woman. Why would you need money to meet her? I met her online, Guy said. She has two kids and works a double and can't afford to visit. To meet me. Can you wire me some money? Guy said. Don't you think this sounds suspicious? Don't you think it could be a scam? I said. There was a pause.

Sometimes, a cumulonimbus cloud can resemble an enormous anvil. Heavy. Formidable. Tornadoes and hail.

This is not a scam, Guy said, I need the money, Curt. Please.

I am too kind. I am too understanding, sympathetic. I will give my hand willingly to the blind so that they may lead me to the edge of a cliff. I am a coward. I am a man that must raise his voice dishonestly in order to raise his voice at all.

Tonight, a storm may arrive. Or maybe, it will arrive tomorrow morning. It will relish in its savagery. It will be a storm and nothing less. It will not go easy. It will not understand anything but its role as a storm.

And behind it will trail a clear blue sky.

The Flying Squirrel

Ronny and I went to the public swimming pool this afternoon. I was reluctant to go, but I'm not sure why. It was a hot day, I was dripping sweat after a rough morning at the diner. Conditions were ripe for a swim, so I convinced myself it was a good thing to do when Ronny asked. "I'll go, Ronny." I said.

And we went. The public pool is fun! There is a diving board, and a slide, and everybody is happy there. They don't care who you are, it's summer, and summer means fun.

Ronny knows an impressive array of dives for a man a good bit older than me. He showed me the "flying squirrel", and the "jackknife".

I worked on my dives. We played some catch. We were there for hours, or what seemed like hours. I wanted to stay, but Ronny told me I had to take him home.

"It's too soon, Ronny, I'm not ready to go."

"Curt, it's time."

"I'm not ready."

We left, and as we drove home, I thought about endings. Things ending when you don't want them to. Sometimes you're ready, but sometimes you're not. What can you do? I thought of Ivan Ilyich.

Poor Ivan Ilyich.

The Rooms

A man crossed many doors before he came to a room he liked. The room was warm and small, like the inside of a kind animal. The man slept on the floor and watched others passing through the room, looking for a room of their own.

It had been a long time since the man entered the room and during this time, he watched the wanderers like water with no direction. They never took note of him, only the room, and he grew uneasy inside the warm and small room. It was too warm. It was too small. And so he left and crossed many doors, looking for another room he liked.

One day, he stopped inside a room with noise for wallpaper. He saw another man. Sitting like he had in his warm and small room. The man looked at him and told him that the room was taken. The wallpaper was loud. The man inside the room repeated himself, this time, shouting. The man left the room.

The man crossed many more doors. He saw many more rooms. He grew old. His legs could not take him further. He stopped in a dark, cold room. Sometimes, he heard someone passing through, but this someone never stopped and stayed in the room.

Oftentimes, he dreamt of the warm and small room.

He wondered where everyone was going. If the room he was looking for was the room that everyone was looking for. He thought about this for a long time in the dark, cold room. He thought about what the dark, cold room looked like in the light. These thoughts made him very tired. And so, he told those passing through to shut the door behind them. And closed his eyes.

Them Nuttings.

Today, I woke up early and took the dogs for a walk. I decided that we would walk in a direction we had never walked before, and walk until we were lost and had no idea what direction home was. I need this, I told Warden and Regrette. This is a metaphor for something, and even I didn't know what I was talking about.

But that's what we did, we walked, for what ended up being six hours. I hadn't considered how hot it was going to get, and by the end of it we were all walking with our tongues hanging out, panting. I am a hairy man, and I sweat a lot. I walk around without a shirt in the summer, because I'm too old to care. Sometimes small children point at me or make ape noises. They have a right to. I would have done the same thing when I was their age.

I thought a lot. I thought about things I've done, and things I wished I hadn't. I thought about this blog, and it's future, and whether I could see myself still blogging every day at 55 years old, 60, 65. Would I still be washing dishes then? Would my vision start to go? My legs? My mind?

What if you logged onto the Betterbutterblog one day, and it was obvious that I was losing it? Would you do something?

I thought about being an old man, or practically an old man, and my cholesterol, and whether I might just have a heart attack right now and maybe the dogs would finally have the freedom they'd always lusted for. Or maybe Regrette would stay by my side while Warden ran off to get help. Or maybe they'd wait for me to pass so they could start gnawing on my flesh.

Stop it, I told myself. You can't think that way.

It's a funny feeling, being close to home, but far away enough that you don't really know where you are. It shows you how big the world is, in a way. You see the laundromats you'll never use, the pizza shops you'll never try, the small businesses you'll never patronize. You wonder how they'll ever survive when you've never even heard of them, even though you're a horrible consumer, and a closet socialist. You wonder how people get brave enough to open their own business, or you get jealous that somebody's family had come here and started something, and then passed it down to their kids, and their kids' kids. Where's my inheritance? you ask yourself.

And you answer:

What if I hadn't ruined everything? What if I'd gotten that insurance money that went to my dad and my sister instead and I'd opened up a little breakfast joint with homemade butters and cranberry almond pancakes and special homefries that everybody knows are always cooked to perfection and your regular customers come in every day and say "hey Curt, what's wrong with them Buccos?" and you just laugh and shake your head and say "damn them Nuttings" and pour the poor sap a cup of coffee and ask him if he'll have his usual and you get it for him and things are mostly the same every day, but just different enough to make life always seem worth living and to make you never question why you get out of bed on any given day, because you know something interesting might happen and even if it doesn't, at least you know you're doing something that people need and appreciate.

What if?

What if we can't figure out how to get home?

But we do, and it's okay.

It's okay.

It's okay.

violet, violet

After all that time we had put in, Ronny planted his lettuces too close together. But the lavender was doing just fine.

"Can't do anything with lavender," I told Ronny. Do you know what lavender is used for? Evelyn, a woman I dated for a week or two, used to slip me baked goods with lavender. "For your...libido," she used to tell me.

Getting soil to "produce" isn't an easy thing to do. Heck, it takes time and patience, if you know what I mean.

I think it's funny that I'm better at chess and yet Ronny is a better gardener. Jimenez' aren't known for their produce. Killing, maybe, but not produce.

Let me tell you something. More isn't always better, you know what I mean? No?

Once, Mom got upset and told us, "you reap what you sow," and we laughed and said that that was something old country people said. People like that are the only people here, it seems. Quinn, my Dad's friend, was always mean to Mom, in spite of everything. Rock and a hard place, that's where mom was. Sometimes, there's just not much you can say. Though, sometimes, there is too much to say and no way to say it. Ultimately, it's just winners and losers, and don't get caught on the wrong side of that line.

Violet is in Ronny's garden. When Ronny starts talking about violet, he gets emotional. Except when he talks about Violet, his first wife. "You can never understand," he says to me. Zoom into

and zoom out of things and you will understand something, I guess.

R.I.C.E.

Stepped on a nail. Went right through my toe. Didn't know what was going on for a second, then looked down and saw that a nail had gone through my toe. It took a lot more than I thought to pull the nail out of my toe. To feel the nail exiting my toe. Like trying to scoop ice cream that's too cold or trying to pick up a rock and finding out that it's actually the tip of a boulder. I heard a woman talking about a show on TV. She said that a girl had scratched her eyeball so hard she'd gone blind. This girl had a condition where she couldn't feel pain. She didn't know she was hurting herself. I feel pain, in my toe and in my stomach and in my head. I feel pain in my back and in my leg. I worry about infection. Rest. Ice. Compression. Elevation. Sometimes, I think about Tony and the shock of it all.

A bullet. Curt standing there in front of me laughing for a bit. Not knowing what is going on for a second, putting my fingers to a hole in my chest and finding it warm with blood. Already a little lake of myself leaving me. Thinking, this can't be good and falling back into darkness and brush, gravel and grass, feeling the warmth leaving my fingertips first and trying to grab a rock or something, and finding that grabbing is already something of the past. To feel the breath exiting my body. And to think, I didn't know I was going to hurt this much, to feel this pain. Feeling pain in my toe and in my stomach and in my head. Feeling pain in my back and in my leg. Worrying, hopelessly, about infection. Rest. Ice. Compression. Elevation. Thinking, maybe, of Curt, and the last joke he told. And how it was so bad, it was good.

"Indecisor"

At the diner, Raymond asked me if I'd rather be an incisor or a molar. I didn't have an answer. An incisor or a molar? What kind of question is that? Why does Raymond ask me so many questions?

He is not Homes.

He does not have the answers. I don't know why I'm getting so worked up over Raymond's questions. He asks questions, eats, pays, and leaves. I want to ask him why he asks so many questions. I want to ask him what his favorite question is and then I want to ask him why and how he came to ask this question. I want to ask him what he'd do with himself if he couldn't ask any more questions. Would he talk at all? I would ask him what he has on his mind besides questions. I would ask, ask, ask.

An incisor or a molar?

I brushed my teeth longer than usual. I even flossed and used mouthwash. I tried eating french toast with my molars. Then with my incisors. Afterwards, I tried biting into an apple with my molars. The apple fell onto the floor. Regrette bit into the apple and ate everything but the stem. I tried chewing on rice with my incisors. But had to chew one grain at a time. After all this, I brushed my teeth longer than usual. I even flossed and used mouthwash, again.

I don't care about Raymond's questions and I care about Raymond's questions.

An incisor or a molar?

I don't have an answer.

Adjustments

There are millions of nerve fibers that come out of the spine, my Doctor of Chiropractic, Stieg Huffelmeyer, tells me. Stieg is a nice man. A small, stout man who has an earring. He tells me to lie down. He puts his small fat hands on my back. Oh, he says, You're tight, Curt. Very tight. He says, Do you feel like you're lying down straight? Yes, I tell him. Because, he says, you're body is bent towards the right. He says, You're going to need adjustments.

And he tells me to lie this way and that and to put my legs this way and that and to let my arms hang loose, to dangle. And I trust him when he cradles my body and squeezes. I trust him when my back cracks and when he holds my neck and says, Loosen up Curt, and turns my head with his palms quickly so that my spine adjusts.

Adjustments. Stieg tells me that in a few weeks, my spine will have been adjusted just right. Adjustments. Could Stieg adjust my life? What if he could tell me to stand one way and what if he could squeeze my body and what if then, much of my past could be adjusted, cracked into the right place? Adjustments. No prison. Adjustments. I would have a drink with Tony, tonight. Adjustments. I would have a family. Adjustments. Stella. Adjustments.

Adjustments.

Lessons

I saw them go back.

And then forth.

And again.

They moved slowly, but deliberately, and I was awed by the spectacle. It was a Jaguar they were driving—a beautiful car—but an old and neglected one, and there were two young men in it, thoroughly enjoying themselves.

I wouldn’t have noticed, but they were doing this continuously for 10 minutes, maybe 20. It was unusual.

What they were doing, they told me when I asked, was seeing if cruise control worked in reverse.

The results were inconclusive.

I was fairly certain the answer was no, but I was impressed by their curiosity and their willingness to challenge their assumptions. What if the Jag could? Nothing would change, but hey, kind of a cool thing to know.

I asked myself if there were any ridiculous questions I had that I could get an answer to if I put a little effort into it, as they were. Of course there were.

Do you know how many miles you can drive after your ‘low fuel’ light goes on for your gas tank?

Do you know how many tacos and beers you could consume in 24 hours?

Lots of questions.

I think the guys in the Jag were happy that somebody noticed them and what they were doing. I was feeling conversational, and I engaged them.

“I’m Curt,” I said.

“I’m August,” the fat one said.

Evan was the other one’s name. They weren’t from here. They were from Montana. I asked them questions about mountains, about fly fishing. About roads, and cars. About fast food restaurants and organic farming. About trying to be different and about doing what everyone else does. They were young. 18, 19. The age I was, when I confronted fate and gave myself up to it’s machinations. I talked to them, and looked deep into their eyes, trying to see the future in them. I tried to sell them an idea through my eyes that I knew I couldn’t communicate through my words. You will only be young once. Don’t waste your youth.

Here is what Old Curt would tell Young Curt if he could:

Don’t shoot your best friend, even if he has finished the last of the milk and he is not repentant.

Don’t shoot your best friend, even if he holds every advantage over you and doesn’t even acknowledge it.

Don’t shoot your best friend even if he is an antagonizing asshole.

Old Curt’s time is running out, and he knows it. His story is unique in certain ways, but probably not so much in others.

They were polite, they listened to me.

A lot of things though, you just have to learn for yourself.

No Spring Chicken

What a day. This morning, I took Warden and Regrette on a nice long walk. We were almost home, when Warden started barking and then Regrette started barking too, and then the next thing you know, they were barking at each other and then they were trying to kill each other. Trying to sink their teeth into a neck. But the only thing they sank their teeth into was my hand! I wasn't very happy, so I made myself a big breakfast, complete with buttered toast. I listened to some music and sat down on the couch for a long while. I must have been tired, because I fell asleep for two hours and when I tried to get up, my lower back hurt so bad, I sat back down again and tried to get up again and sat back down again. Finally, I made it into the kitchen and then into the bathroom, where I found a bottle of Ibuprofen and took one. I guess I pulled something in my back this morning. I forget. I'm no spring chicken.

I need to make an appointment to see a chiropractor as soon as possible...

A Physical Phone Call

Ronnie called. He said, Curt, did you fall off the face of the earth? I said, Why? He said, I haven't seen you in what seems like a million years! I shrugged my shoulders, but he couldn't see that I shrugged my shoulders because we were on the phone. Ha! Ha! Then, I realized that he couldn't see what I was doing at all, so I said, What's up? And I balanced myself on one leg and stuck out my tongue and I thought, Hmph! I bet Ronnie thinks I'm just sitting around, looking dumb, waiting for an answer, like everyone else! He said, I was looking for a chess partner. I said, I don't know if I'm up for chess today, and I stuck my arm out straight, as straight as it could go, and then I bent it at the elbow so that my forearm was perpendicular with the rest of my arm and I let it dangle just so, and with my other hand, I hit it so that it moved back and forth like a pendulum. And I watched it move. And Ronnie said, Well, want to come over for lunch? And I said, Sure, I would like that very much, and before I knew it, I was on the floor, looking up at the ceiling and saying, I'll see you in a bit to Ronnie. And I hung up and just looked up at the ceiling.

And I saw Ronnie hanging up the phone and moving from one room to another. I saw him opening his refrigerator and then inspecting his bread. I saw him clearing the counters and then kissing his wife on her forehead. And his kiss smelled like the coffee he'd finished right before he called me.

Ice cubes

In the last year, change has come to me without me looking for it. Things settle down, and then something crazy happens, something totally unexpected. You aren't paying attention, and you fall in the bottom of a very deep hole.

Do you love change? Stability? Routine? Randomness? I don't know what I prefer. Sometimes I want the world around me to be stable and monotonous and then I can focus on the creative dance in my head, free from distraction. But I know change keeps me fresh, at the same time.

The only constant is change. That's something I could say, over and over.

Also, youth is wasted on the young.

I was at the bank this morning, waiting in line at the drive thru behind a man on a bike. I heard the teller tell the man that he had to be in a vehicle to be waited on. The bank doesn't have walk-in service.

"You've gotta be f**kin' kidding me!" the man said. It was hot, and the man was very sunburned and covered in paint.

"I'm sorry."

"What am I supposed to do??!" the man said.

The woman shrugged and told him there was another branch down the road a few miles. The man stared at her for an uncomfortable moment. I found myself on the verge of tears.

The only constant is change.

I wish my anecdote had a relationship to the content of my post.

Mom used to say, "when life hands you ice cubes, make ice water."

The Jimenez's, she said, were never lucky enough to get lemons.

Diligence.

I have to be diligent. And I have not been so, lately. Sometimes, it feels like I've done so much and so little in a day and when it's time to write, it's hard. Today, so much happened and nothing happened at all. I washed dishes this morning and Belle Star talked about some customers, some f***ing nut jobs, but I wasn't listening too closely, so really, Belle Star talked about nothing, you see? And then, after I'd walked the dogs and picked up their poop and given them treats, I decided that I wanted to make a butter. A delicious butter because it'd been a while since I'd even made butter! But instead, I took a sweaty nap and so, the butter stayed inside my head, like too many things, and remained a good idea. I have many good ideas, some great ideas, and a ton of bad ideas. But I think that's how it is with most of us. I'm always amazed when someone consistently brings a good idea out from inside them and sets it down like a Thanksgiving turkey, hot and succulent, for everyone to enjoy. I'm even amazed when someone consistently brings a bad idea out from inside then and sets it down like rotting milk, curdled and odorous, for everyone to whiff and shy away from. Me, I'm probably like you. Maybe not. Maybe you are consistent. Much more diligent in the fruition of your ideas. But maybe you are like me. Always thinking. Always full of some potential. Some kind of energy. Always inside yourself, peeking out once and a while. Terrified of the failure of your ideas. Terrified of ideas. Thinking of all the possibilities. Just thinking.

Because

Because it was another scorcher and because I was off today, I decided to take the dogs out to the state park where the water was almost too cold and just right at the same time, and the dogs fetched sticks floating in the current and sometimes, a man or a woman or a child, would pet the wet fur on the the dogs' backs and nod in my direction, thankful for the opportunity to have pet a dog in a state park on a hot day in July, thankful that I was off today and decided to take the dogs on a journey that I'd almost forgotten because the last time I was at the state park I was with my best friend and we had taken mushrooms and everything was startling and loud and then incredibly quiet and still and the water was rushing towards some end I understood but don't understand now, and never will, you see, because back then, thoughts weren't so demanding as they are now and choices seemed limitless and all were fruitful and laughter was really laughter and not laughter with undertones of some vague idea of an end.

And now, after a shower, I remember Tony talking. A lobotomy and how cool it would be to have one, wouldn't it, Curt? I am walking home from the swimming pool. I am looking down at my pruny hands and Tony is going on and on about the brain and my brain is wondering what my fingerprints would look like right now, with these pruny fingertips.

I don't know why I remembered that just now. But it hurts to remember something so small and insignificant sometimes. So fleeting. Ephemeral.

I didn't put my head under water when I was at the river, but now I wish I had.

An Open Letter to You, Blog Reader

Dear Loyal Reader,

There are some things on my mind. I think we should talk about them.

Where are the boundaries in our relationship? What if I was in love? Would I tell you? Should I tell you? That is something to consider. Have I been acting different lately? A little aloof? Unpredictable even? Do you wonder where I've been, what I've been up to? Why I didn't post on Saturday?

Is that any of your business?

Who are you, anyways? I'm not sure I can trust you!

Reader, I've been putting a lot of personal stuff in the BBB, and now it's out there, and now it's scaring me!

If we were just out at the bar, having a drink, would I have told you all this stuff? Wouldn't I have just sat there, staring at my drink, trying every once in a while to tell a joke or to give a funny retort to some great story you told? Wouldn't I have gotten excited and tried to talk too fast and then been embarrassed and said to myself, Curt, you aren't that interesting. Why do you keep talking as if you are??? and then just clammed up.

Later, in your apartment, winding down, would you have said to your wife, Curt was there. He was quiet. He is a hard person to know. I think maybe he doesn't like me.

Or, Curt is so quiet, I think there is something wrong with him.

Is there something wrong with me? Is this blog an illumination? A journal of my mental well-being, or lack thereof?

I'm not as quiet as I used to be. Or I am, it's just that I'm around some people now I'm comfortable talking to. Or there are always people around who I just don't click with. Or I'm even more quiet, I just feel less so because I write now.

In prison, I read Games People Play. Have you ever read that? Are you playing games with me?



I'm in love.

Do you believe me?

Yours til the kitchen sinks,

CGJ

Honesty? In more or less words.

I am afraid. And we all are, really, and happy and unhappy too about things that should and should not make us feel the way they make us feel. I want to eat ice cream now, because it's more than warm out. It's hot. I want to wear a shirt and feel cold. I don't want to wear pants. I want to break a dish at the diner and say I broke it because I wanted to, that it was annoying me and so I threw it on the floor and took pleasure in watching it break. Into so many little pieces. Pieces of dish embedded in my soles, maybe. But I'm afraid to do such things. You know, when you're lonely, you do some things that terrify you. I am not lonely, but I do enjoy the company of no one, sometimes.

When I was a kid.

Sometimes I could hear Mom cleaning the kitchen or the bathroom, in the middle of the night. I could hear her scrubbing the floors or organizing the food inside the refrigerator or putting back the dishes. And sometimes, I could smell the cigarette smoke. And I knew that she was smoking and that she would deny it if I asked her in the morning if she had smoked. And once, at a family reunion, I caught her in my parents' bedroom, putting on one of Dad's ties and looking at herself in the mirror. The tie, large and foolish, on her small frame. And she smelled the tie and she might have licked it, just to see what silk tasted like, or maybe to see how my father embedded himself into fabric through fabric. And when she returned to the reunion, she smiled like she knew something wonderful that no one else knew. And she filled a bowl with more french onion dip. And she was always afraid of something. This, I could tell. This, we all could tell.

I wish I could be honest. Really honest. It's hard to be honest. Really honest. Being truthful is much easier than being really honest. Honesty is much more abrasive. Honesty is lying naked in the sun with no sunblock on while truthfulness is lying naked indoors with the air-conditioner on, or maybe a window wide open. I am afraid of honesty.

And so, I lie to myself. I settle for truthfulness and call it honesty.

Argh

Time flies.

One Big Drug Haze

Are there times that you wish you were not who you are? But you are who you are so you think of what you could be. Curt. Did I tell you how things work when you think they work one way?

End of the day, I like to come home and have a beer or two. Find out what I like in a space that is my own. Gosh. Heck, things move so fast in a space that is my own, if that makes sense.

If you want to know the truth, I'm not sure I have much to say right now. Just wait for it. Kind of day where you have to think, why do I blog? Let me tell you, there was a day when I thought, This blog is so hard to write, but then I wrote and I did not want to.

My mom used to say, hey Curt, why don't you go out and play? No time to play, mom, I would say, just time to think. Oh, she would say, now you have time to think! Please leave me be! I would say. Quite a few times, I would think that things were not the way they should be. Right was wrong and wrong was right or yes meant no and no meant yes or right was left and left was right!

Sure, mom would say. To think was to think and to not think was a waste of time. Up north, things were not the same way they were down here, I knew. Vick said that things were the same, at this place and that place, here and there, north and south, east and west. What he said, I knew he knew, and I would say, oh Vick I know that's right. X does not mark the spot, he would tell me, It is X and Y and Z, he would say.

You know, those days seem like one big drug haze to me now. Z and Y did not count, as far as I could tell.