Vigilance

Yesterday, I got to work.  Time to clear the goblins out of my head, and what better way to do that than by setting your house in order?  A trip to the store nabbed me bug spray for the inside of the house, bug spray for the lawn, weed killer, fertilizer for southern yards, and some crazy kind of self-adhesive rubber material for mending the hose where the yardman whacked it with the trimmer.  And while I was at it, I picked up some beauty supplies as well.  A man (especially when he begins falling asleep in public places) can never look too good.  

Home again, it was time to gather my resources--spreaders and sprayers, and thick leather gloves.  Where was all that stuff?  I didn't know.  It had been a long time since I had done any work around the house.  No matter.  I was a changed man now.  I would do something around the homestead every day.  It was all a matter of vigilance and diligence.  That would become my mantra.  Ommmm.  

But I'd forgotten that I wasn't very handy and that I am prone to dexterous frustration.  The healing rubber tape was wound on a core with clear plastic lining each side.  This had to be removed as the tape was unwound.  The instructions told me to stretch the rubber to at least half its length again as I wrapped it around the hose, overlapping each tape width by half.  Twice.  But it was not easy, and soon I had the rubber tape twisted so that each strand was doubling on itself.  And the manufacturers were right.  It did self-adhere quickly.  And so the nice wrap that I began became a knotted, awful mess.  Still, I rolling the twisted, knotted rubber 'round and 'round.  More was surely better, I guessed, and it would make up for my particular lack of technique.  

Of course, it didn't.  

Rather, it directed the spray toward me.  It wasn't as bad as it had been before I wrapped it, but it was a steady, soaking spray nonetheless.  Shit.  Why didn't I just buy a new hose?  Maybe I would have been better off using black electrical tape.  

No matter, though.  I was committed.  First I cleaned out the spreader that was gooked up with a thick, black mass and rolled around the yard back and forth, to and fro.  And next I sprayed, first the weed killer, then the bug killer.  I hated doing it and try not to.  I remember looking at the guys who sprayed lawns and apartments when I was younger, paying special attention to their scrawniness and twitchiness and to their very bloodshot eyes.  This stuff is bad, and I hate to be around it, but I'd be damned if I was going to wake up with a bug in my ear at midnight again.  

When I finished spraying, a bird flying over the yard simply ceased to flap its wings and dramatically dropped straight out of the sky.  Squirrels would be giving birth to two headed babies soon, I thought.  My lips were already numb.  I could feel my blood vessels silently rupturing.  And I still had the inside of the house to spray.  I gave a quick, involuntary twitch.  I was remembering why I didn't like to do this stuff.  

There had been that to do, I thought in my best Bad Hemingway, then it was done.  And so I showered and used the new beauty products and prepared myself for lunch.  Already, the afternoon was slipping away.  I wanted to get out into it in my newly re-tagged Jeep.  But the thing was filthy, filled with leaves and acorns and the detritus from my lawn guy.  A couple small branches clung to the windshield wipers. Tomorrow, I thought.  I would clean it up tomorrow.  

And then the day gave way as it can sometimes, from thought to feeling, from doing to being, the big blue sky and the brilliant sun blending with other blue skies and brilliant suns, lunch alone at a sidewalk table becoming other lunches when you were not alone, the wit and beauty of those lunches and those days.  And lunch over, with nowhere to go, driving here and there passing all the festivals that fill the town just now, driving by the giant food festival spilled out over the big lawn of the art museum, passing a tent bigger than a Barnum and Bailey tens set up in Central Park for Fashion Week (I know, I know), past the Autumn Festival at the Catholic Church with its rides and games, the lights against the purple sky shining through from last year's memory when your friend's son won the goldfish he still has, driving with the wind on your face through memory, passing seeming miles of cars lining the streets, crowds of people carrying lawn chairs and blankets and big baskets of food and wine into the huge public gardens to listen to jazz under the stars, happy, smiling people.  Everything, everywhere.  

Then, with the setting sun. . . you are home.  

Last night, the darkness fell in the present tense.  In first person.  I chopped the garlic and drank some wine while the thump-thump-thump of life beat around me.  On the couch lay a newly released collection of Bukowski poems.  I would eat alone, and tonight, I would pay too much to watch a Pay-Per-View fight on T.V. because I hadn't anything else to do.  But the house was clean, I chuckled, and now the light was very pleasant, and later there would be the fight and, perhaps, a little whiskey.  Not much.  Perhaps one.  Four walls, Bukowski said.   All a man needs is four walls.  Yes, isn't it pretty to think so.