Q: How am I?
A: My dad was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. My cat’s body gave out like an abandoned building. My home is beautiful. I have money in the bank. I fell and my back hurts. I have an abundance of groceries stored. Most of my family is well. Fifty percent of my cats are in great health.
Q: Is that it?
A: Well, I am writing this. As previously mentioned, one symptom of my middle age/the Trump nightmare/covid has been that I’d rather not think about how I am, or record what’s happening to me.
Q: Couldn’t it be worse, though?
A: Uh, yeah. But come on. That doesn’t help.
Q: Is that all the darkness?
A: Well, a friend who knew me in a specific way I think no one else has, he died.
Q: That sucks.
A: Yeah.
Q: How do you sit with that?
A: A little bit at a time. Sometimes I want to work on a piece of writing about him, and other times I want to forget he’s gone forever, and I don’t want to think about it, or write about it, or talk about it, because I know it will never be over, anyway.
Q: Would it be better if you hadn’t been out of touch with him?
A: I don’t know.
Q: Was it your fault? Could you have fixed things?
A: Oh, I’m sure. Lol. That thought lives in the desert, where I sometimes go to meet it and have it ask me to jump off a cliff. I don’t jump.
Likely the only true solution is to adopt another cat who is inhabited by his spirit, and that cat will be ornery indeed. But won’t drink and smoke as much as my friend did.
I’m not going to let this cat smoke.
I’ll get him nicotine patches if necessary.
I know they are expensive and cause weird dreams.
Q: What about those four or six days of complete darkness KC had this week?
A: That didn’t help, yo.
Q: Yo?
A: I had dinner with an old friend and my sister and we reminisced about the days of “yo,” among white young people who were visiting southern California.
Q: Were those good times?
A: Yeah. We looked for LACMA when we were in LA, and saw a Van Gogh of crows. We saw the wonders of Disneyland, and got ears made out of glow sticks that were pretty and lightweight and affordable. We went to The Flower Fields and my little cousin hoisted his stroller onto his back so he could go his own way. He was two years old.
Q: There were problems then, too, though.
A: Oh fuck yes.
Q: How about that tree in the front yard, though?
A: It’s incredible. The red against the blue sky. It feels Japanese. I had people over and we sat and just looked at the tree silently for ten minutes.
Q: Your dad, though?
A: I can’t.
Q: How did you wake up this morning, though?
A: My back didn’t hurt. I had a warmie patch on it all night. My little cat Leia was sitting on my shoulder, and she spent some focused time grooming me, giving my nose a little lick, my ear.
Q: How did you hurt your back?
A: Trusting myself. No, not asking for help. No, gravity! My grandpa, Don Biskup, used to blame gravity for unpleasant collisions.
I thought I had hung my lovely sky chair (hammock chair?) on my porch. I went out on my beautiful porch (I think I mentioned my home has beautiful hand painted tiles around the roaring fake fireplace, and a perfect porch with the best red-turning tree in the city or maybe the world), took my book on Ignatian spirituality (I know!), was sitting, gently floating, and then I was on the floor, and my back had hit the sharp iron corner of my table, and my arm was bruised, and my cat jumped away, onto another part of the roof, and down to where the front door is, so I had to immediately get up to go get her, in the grand tradition of being the baby, I was hurt, and so she was scared. Maybe I had to run downstairs, chase her as she escaped under the neighbor’s deck, and then crouch down, always wondering if my neighbor has a gun or is otherwise not cool with me being in his yard.
Eventually she came out. I grabbed her.
Goddamn it.
Q: I heard you had an appointment to have your back looked at.
A: I thought I did, but then I got there, and I had missed an earlier appointment I didn’t mean to make.
Q: So is that because of work stress, or your dad getting diagnosed, or having to run your cat to the vet for $400 worth of care, or setting alarms to give him heart medication, or being injured or what?
A: I think sometimes people just forget stuff and make mistakes.
Q: Ah. How did you respond to your appointment not happening?
A: I went to Hy-Vee, my favorite grocery store, and I bought sunflowers and the Thanksgiving things: pecans, pie crusts, sack of potatoes.
Q: How was that?
A: I get strange pleasure from spending as much money as I want on groceries. It’s a small advantage of having been broke. If there had been like five more people in the store, I would have had a nervous breakdown, but as it was, I only had to address cart traffic jams like 15 times, which is within my capacity.
Q: I thought you lived in New York City. And you can’t handle the crowds in a Raytown grocery store?
A: NYC crowds know how to behave. Everyone is on and alive and functioning. Well 99.9% of everyone. They neatly avoid each other like square dancers almost all the time. They know how to weave. Now I’m missing NYC again and the parade is tomorrow and it’s the best.
Q: I know. It is the best.
Going On 