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.