Visit From My Sister

I love my sister.  She is a wonderful person.  That is not to say that she doesn’t have her faults (who doesn’t?), but hers are the faults of one who wants to make you love her and be comfortable with her and have an good time… I find it hard to judge a person like that.  

She likes to play games (cards and scrabble and ???) but after years of living with a person who loathes games I have lost the capacity for them.  I try.  I fail.  I am turned into a Teutonic worker bee.  I have no love except that borne of labor and accomplishment.  There is no place left in my life for ‘games’.   For example today:  I spent the day working on the cable attachments for the controls of the auger of my snow blower.  I fashioned a new cable and the connections and then, when it didn’t work properly, I took the damnable machine apart and did it again.  It works now and I feel the full thrust of my accomplishment.  I am tired and (having taken a drought of bourbon) fulfilled to the degree that a ‘worker bee’ may feel fulfillment.  Gone are the days of browning on the beach.  Of puttering on the golf course.  Of casually riding to an unknown destination on my motor bike. 

Would that there were a touch of my sister (with respect to the ‘games’) in my wife.  That she might enjoy a game of gin/rummy or climb on my motor bike and go with me for a ride to nowhere.  To stop in a way-side whiskey bar for a beer on a hot day, if we happened to pass one while we were hot and tired and in need of refreshment.  That will never happen.  But what might happen is my sister might convince us, eventually, to take a real vacation.  She might persuade us to fly to some never-before-considered-destination where we have no pragmatic connection and have no excuse but to relax and play.

Life in the Great U.S. of A.

The trial is over (jury service done see here:     http://www.justice.gov/usao/nys/vw_cases/collinsrefco.html).  The leaves have completely fallen and the hurricane has been through and done her damnedest...and we are still here.  There are dogs to walk and all the regular stuff of 'Life' goes on.  I am so happy to be alive and warm. 

Notes from Underground

Notes from Underground

Dusty you start off miserable.

I am guessing that you will not change?

I will try to read you anyway

so long as I am trapped

on this grumbling train.

But as refreshment from

the crumbling acid-eaten words you wrought

I will, at periodic intervals

reflect upon the book mark found

in this ancient paperback I bought.

It is a post card-there is no date

or stamp or writing on the back.

As fragile and flaky as the book

within whose intestine it has hid

for decades from the sun and stars.

On the obverse a photograph

of a Palisade Park, New Jersey bar,

John Lullmann, proprietor.

A low beamed ceiling

and well stocked shelves

the bar-keep gives a lovely lady a light-

all the warmth and charm

one might like-and need-to beat

back the demons of the Russian night.

Martinis and bourbon,

J & B and rum,

warm wood finishes

and leather stools, Feodor,

to have rested your bum.

couldn’t all of you desperate writers-

you Petersburg poets-

have possibly found

a similar venue

to pen your Notes From Underground?

or replaced it all

with a good conversation

and drink from the menu?

Feodor you are miserable

but you might have been fine

if you’d not written even a word,

given the lady a light,

and bought her some wine.