The Water

           

At one point during the hot minute that Dane Cook was on top of the comedy world, he had a bit about knowing a cry was en route. I think today has been one of those moments, but right now it’s acting like that sneeze that just won’t come already.

            It’s the first heavy, summerish day of 2020 in Kansas City. I’m in my home that I don’t know how much longer I’ll be able to stay in, the lingering threats of COVID-19 are looped around the ears of the face-masked, and American unrest rises by the hour with every heinous act committed by police officers and the stubborn, unchanging minds of so many who just can’t seem to shift their thinking by two millimeters.

            I’m about halfway through A Deeper Understanding by The War on Drugs, and via a shot in the dark, I’d say this is my 50^th listen. This record serves as a kind of medicinal antithesis, and what a dose might do for an ailment seems to be the opposite with depression; your brain magnetizes to things that seem to only pull you in a step further.

            I’ve taken two naps today (one of which was in the same room my kids were watching something), and worried continuously across the week that my air-conditioning unit will vanish like a dying Jedi at any moment. From my dining-room-window view, an Amazon van slows but doesn’t stop.

            The shit is thick and so I turn to one of my only forms of healthy therapy and start the mower.

Dream Fiction no. 7: Raccoons & Fishermen

             

Had I done a better job, had I had the wherewithal at age 30, I would’ve better documented the Ireland trip, and in hindsight, some key experiences cry out from memory lane, lamenting the faintness of their existence in my mind. Fiddle-playing John Madden from Killarney will always burn the brightest, but the Portuguese fishermen in Dingle remain a close second.

            There’d been the aged what-the-crick bartender who held a fleeting residence in the romantic corner of my mind, and of course my girlfriend at the time, whom I’d eventually marry (and eventually divorce). I’ve never been able to take my mind off of those fishermen, though. Their fervid drinking, wind-chapped faces, and hands that resembled those of Oswald Cobblepot. That I thought for a moment that I could converse with them proved somewhat correct; I knew Spanish, but had never heard Portuguese. Hell, it had probably never even occurred to me that other versions (beyond Castilian) existed.

            This young brunette, Rachel, and her son, me and my kids along with Emily and Jaden, Tiffany and a friend of hers, and Customer Service Manager Mickie Hammer, all of us…holed up in my old room, along with my mom, and a few others…the lot of us crammed into a somewhat-dilapidated version of my mom’s old house. There were wind gaps and leaks, snow on the ground outside, a possum that’d repeatedly gotten in, and then there was the Ben Katz crew at 5:00 in the morning with their dog that bites a lot…the angry fashion in which I’d asked them to leave shortly after their arrival.