Category: Summer In The City

I’ve spent several afternoons over the past months sitting here at my desk, at the end of a day. The light for most of the summer streamed through the windows that are straight ahead, and I battled that late afternoon light with baseball hats, pieces of cardboard taped to the window, my tennis racquet in its case, and odd body contortions.
The days are getting shorter and the light is not an issue any longer. Today it is making orange quavers full across the office and living room, and on the fireplace all the way over there. It gets me to thinking that I likely will not be here in this place next year, and in that I will not be here during this time, I will never see light quite like this again. I try to enjoy it for today. Try to take a picture, but although photos are really made of light, they never quite do it justice. The way in which you experience it in person cannot be captured. I am not sure whether that is good or bad. I would like to keep a little of this orange light today in a bottle to bring out and remember this place on days like this, in the early fall.
I am house hunting and will be gone within months if not sooner, and that new place will not sit on top of this hill just so, at just this angle, with those trees just there. Everything will be different, the light, my likely preoccupations, me in general.
I will have to see what the summer is like in this city from that place. Let this one be all those memories, mostly good. Remember this light; close eyes now.
Yesterday was the last for most MLB teams. Regular season is over, I’ve turned the air conditioner off. It’s over.

I walk into therapy today hellbent on not crying like i have the last few weeks (Steve and I are set to discontinue our meetings next week so he can get on with taking care of his health issues and I can get along to whatever it is I will do next), so I don’t. I tell him that am feeling more motivated, getting things done, not feeling like an impostor, not letting the women get me down. He says since I don’t have much to talk about, maybe we should just let today be our last session. I agree, holding back tears. It just sneaks up on you.
Then I come home. Down the highway and the parkway, through the detour, and into my driveway. Coming up the steps and along the walk that borders the front corner of the house, right before the dogleg, hidden by those unruly shrubs, I find a man-sized pile of shit: first the smell, then the flies, then the visual. It’s either from a man, a bear or a great dane, and I’m betting on a man. There aren’t that many bear sightings in my neighborhood, and why would a dog find its way to that hidden spot when in my experience they would rather do it in grass where they can scratch? Dogs don’t ever seem to have issues squatting and doing the deed right in front of god and the whole world.
The pile is right up close to the exterior wall of my house. Just where a man could’ve squatted and rested his back against the bricks, extending his legs out far enough so as not to get it on his trousers. I have shat in the outdoors before, just not on someone’s sidewalk.
So if it is a man, I think, why would they do it there? Perhaps they are homeless and have nowhere to do it. Perhaps it’s Leroy and he’s mad at me for some reason.
I guess it doesn’t really matter. It appears a man decided to come and shit on my sidewalk and now I have to fight the flies and the stench and go clean it up.

Those of you who know me will think me up all night on a drunken bender, but my life is filled with profound sadness this evening.
There’s the one friend whose love of his life is leaving him, and another that just wishes that he had such a love of his life.
It’s early and the morning birds are singing and my tongue is tired.

So long and not much noise here. My therapist may very well be dying of lung cancer. Not the type of lung cancer that builds and builds, but the little nefarious sonofabitch that gets right in there next to your aorta and tries to take it all out of you. The guy’s skin is turning gray and his hair is already gray and I feel like it’s any day now, and I ask why him and not me.
We’ve got two weeks left of this experiment that we started three years ago: three more weeks of therapy and then I got to do something else. He says he thinks it might be good to pursue a woman therapist since that’s where my problems lie, with women, and that she may teach me how to trust the universal her.
We talk lots of how I am feeling. I guess that’s what therapy is. We have been especially keying in on how I feel about the separation. He asks if I feel anger, and I guess I do. The adult part of me understands the state of things, the child feels abandoned – the worst and constant fear. I cannot talk to him about it until he tells me to talk to a third person in the room that is not him.
I tend to cry a lot during these recent sessions.

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Beware the ides of July, the day before you leave for Chicago and the day where every minute will be twice as long as they were yesterday. And the day after… before the airport, every minute thrice as long as even today. Logarhythmic expansion.
And at work there’s too much to be done. Self-imposed deadlines the I am trying to shirk. Trying to just cruise into it all, to not have an all-nighter like I seem to always have when getting ready to depart for a few days.

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I’m having the after lunch cigarette and reading my book about the 60s around-the-world sailing race, when he walked up, looking like he had taken a hammer rather than a toothbrush to his teeth.
“What’s that book about?”
I show him the cover, A Voyage for Madmen.
“Ah… vo…age…for…madame… What’s it about?”
“About these Europeans who raced each other in a solo non-stop sailing race around the world in the 1960s.”
“Sailing?”
“Yeah, with boats that have sails on them?”
“Oh yeah, that reminds me of… what’s his name?… You know who I am talking about… What’s his name?”
“I don’t know.”
“You know!… What’s his name?…. It’s uh… It’s uh… Oh, that’s right… Columbus!”
“Well he was an explorer and sailor. Not really in a race around the world. But I see what you are saying.”
“Yeah, Columbus. Just like him. Have you ever raced an ostrich?”
“An ostrich? No.”
“What about an elephant?”
“No not an elephant either.”
“A horse?”
“I’ve ridden horses before, but not in a race.”
“I’ve raced all three.”
“Really!?!?!?”

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Yesterday I heard a co-worker that sits near me, who I don’t really know, was speaking frankly with someone on the phone. From the best I can tell the person on the other end asked one of those simple questions like, “So, how are things going?” I guess we most of the time fall into the pleasantries of saying, “Things are going fine,” but that’s not where Peter went:

Well, Katie and I are getting a divorce, and my brother calls everyday and he’s losing his mind. Says he needs to check into a psychiatric ward. Wants to know what I think, but won’t tell me what all is going on.

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Outside the morning birds are singing:
Doo ree doo, doo ree doo, ree doo, ree doo, doo, doo, ree, ree, ree.
Not trailing off in a doppler way, but in a song of their own. I should not be up this late. Should be asleep. Faced too much art market, divorce market, break-up market, make-up market. Too old to spend this time in bars. In bars, as most of us, looking for connection, love, acceptance, novelty.
I start with birds. I end with me. Women can do anything that the boys can do. Insulate me from this world. Show me your paintings. Let’s love one another in a melting igloo, or at least, let’s love each other.