Sailing to Byzantium

I've involuntarily joined the Insomnia Society.  I haven't slept for weeks now.  I fall asleep easily, but I wake in pain.  It's my back.  If you've never suffered with a back problem. . . well. . . you are the lucky one.  Last night I sought some needed help.  I got hold of some light narcotics.  Opioids, if you will. Tramadol.  It is supposedly like codeine.  I took half.  Hours later, I took the other.  It didn't touch the pain.  

Up before five.  Selavy.  

No.  That's not interesting.  How's this.  Sally texted wanting me to go out.  Yea. . . I haven't mentioned Sally.  I don't tell you everything.  But I was feeling funky and told her some other time.  

"Come on, you old geezer.  Let's have some fun!"

It could be fun, you see, but. . . well. . . I'm not in love.  Still. . . .

"I'll need to take a raincheck."

I don't know if I'll get one or not.  Again. . . Selavy.  

Q got married yesterday.  It's true.  He told me so.  Sent a photo of his bride, son, and self.  They are moving, changing coasts.  They'll be rich now.  Love and money.  The American Dream is alive and well.  

For some.  

I'm still haunted.  

What should I call her?  She sent me a song.  No message.  We don't message anymore.  Just a song.  It resonates with the popular theme of "someone living in your head without paying rent."  I wasn't sure whose head, though, nor whose rent was not being paid.

I decided I needed to go out.  It was Friday.  No gym.  No walking.  Nothing.  Just limping in a corkscrew fashion, fat, untidy.  I was hungry and decided to go to an old old old haunt I never go to since I went to China.  But it isn't a Chinese restaurant.  It's Vietnamese.  I'd go for some pho.  I'd take cameras.  Maybe I could finish a roll of film.  It has been nearly impossible, it seems.  

I parked in the lot behind the building and walked the block, little camera at the ready.  It was hot.  Brutally so.  There was no one on the street.  As I approached the restaurant, I passed several others.  One was new to me.  It had a Michelin sign.  I looked in.  It was sparse, clean.  I decided to try.  

 The small restaurant was almost full, but I found a table for two and slipped into the bench seat facing the window overlooking the street.  It seemed small and too upright, but it would have been ridiculous to take the chair facing the wall.  A waitress came immediately and said she'd bring a menu.  As I waited, I read the placard in a holder on the table.  

She brought the menu.  Udon noodles.  I chose a beef dish with a side of fried mushrooms.  They didn't serve alcohol, so I ordered a Mexican Coke.  

The waitress set the table.  It was a mystery to me, several small bowls and dishes and a mortar and pestle, I guessed, but for what I hadn't a clue.  

The soup came along with many small dishes of. . . I didn't know.  I pinched up a small taste of one.  It was crunchy and plain.  I decided to put everything in the bowl.  I tried a delicately breaded fried mushroom.  It was wonderful.  Then the soup.  It was good, too, and filling.  And, of course, you can't beat a Mexican Coke over crushed ice.  I looked around the restaurant.  I was the only one eating alone.  A line had formed and people were forced to sit on a bench outside.  The restaurant was doing a good business.  About 50% of the customers were Asian.  The other 50% were what you would guess.  At $14 for a bowl of soup, they were doing alright.  

A real outing, I thought as I walked outside.  I'd bothered the usual friends with photos of my food, but the list of recipients is shrinking.  Not everybody wants to share my joy.  

Selavy. 

It was too hot to walk around, and as I limped to my car, I thought I should have ordered a desert.  I'd settle for a cafe con leche.  

At the cafe, I took out my phone and Googled Zaru.  I was wondering about the Michelin sign.  Indeed, the place had won a Michelin Bib Gourmand Award, an award given restaurants that serve simple but  standout dishes at reasonable prices.  There were four given in the state this year.  

So I read.  

As I sipped my coffee, I made some notes in my journal.  I was thinking about the song I had gotten earlier.  My friend had sent me a Spotify link, but I no longer have Spotify, so I went to YouTube to look it up.  It was one of those songs melancholy maniacs like me fall into.  As I listened, I read through the comments.  

Of course people live in your head. Those you've loved. There are loveless people, I know, sociopaths whose love is so shallow or paranoid that they can simply turn their backs and walk away. 

Who would want to live like that.  Broken hearted people are the only ones for me.  

Rent free.  

The song, I read, was from a show that the YouTube commenters seemed to love.  

"Normal People."

I looked it up.  It had nice reviews.  I'd give it a go.  

It was three.  I decided to make my visit with my mother.  

She was not doing well.  She has a doctor's appointment Monday with the dermatologist.  There is a spot on her ear she thinks might be cancerous.  It bothers her, is red and crusty.  But, she said, the entire side of her head was hurting.  

"Do you want to go to the emergency room?" I asked.  

"No.  I'll wait until Monday." 

I reminded her that she had some anti-anxiety pills the ER doc had prescribed when she fell and hit her head.  She decided to take one.  That is when I nabbed a Tramadol. 

I was back home by four.  Fuck it.  I'd felt off all day.  It was time for a cocktail.  Campari, gin, vermouth, lime juice, and soda.  That thing kicks ass.  

I ran a hot Epsom Salts bath and sank into the tub.  Friday night and I was staying home.  Maybe it was the song.  I didn't want any company.  

I fed the cat and smoked a cheroot.  I should give up smoking and drinking, I thought.  Maybe I should go to a meditation retreat.  Maybe I'd meet some fucked up girl there and fall in love, just like in the movies.  

I poured another drink and watched two--no, three--interviews with Donna Tart.  Why?  Beats me.  I have two of her novels that I've never read.  I tried "The Secret History" a couple times.  She was nineteen when she started writing the novel and twenty-eight when she published it.  Publishers were in a bidding war to get it, and she was paid $450,000, the highest price ever paid for a novel.  I bought it right when it was released.  It is 576 pages long, and I have never made it to page 100.  

After watching her interviews, I thought I knew why.  She is from a writing program and talks like she's in a graduate class workshopping some piece of fiction.  It's just too precious, I think.  Still, I decided that I would give it one more go.  

I fixed dinner, the same as I'd had the night before.  I didn't want to cook, so I made a salad with a can of chicken on top.  Most of a can.  The kit-kat was still on the deck, so I left some in the can and rinsed it well to get the salt out as I've learned to do so that I don't destroy her kidneys.  Just a little chicken and a lot of water.  

When I tire of Tart, I put on the first episode of "Normal People."  Oh, no. . . I'm hooked from the get go.  I'm a sucker for this sort of stuff.  I have to turn on captions, though, for I can't understand half of what they say.  The Irish accents are tough.  At the end of the first episode, there is a song.  No, not a song, two or three lines from a song.  I Google it.  Oh, my.  

I send it in response to my friend.  

The fucking show makes me cry, of course, for far too many reasons to explain.  

I watch another episode, then "Babylon Berlin."  Then I take half the Tramadol and go to bed.  

Most nights when I lie down, I begin writing in my head.  Not much of it makes it here, of course.  Last night I was thinking about what I had done with the day, what I hadn't read and what I had watched, and I thought about the difference between watching a thing and reading.  It is a matter of distance, really.  Watching a show is external.  You are reacting to surfaces.  Reading is all interiority.  You and the characters, the setting.  All merge and become one.  You are inside the words that are inside of you.  It is the difference between watching a landscape pass you as you look out from a moving train and being in the landscape itself.  Each is good, but they are different arts.  

Then I thought about the things that don't get said here.  And I hear the music.  

Always the fucking music.