ALAN ALDA

It seems my grandmother has always been so riddled with anxiety and perhaps depression that she has been medicated since at least the 1950s.

I never knew that.

Add that to my mother who should still be on something (she was on Ritalin all of her childhood) and my father who killed himself with alcohol, and I have some new insights into myself.


Today I put Jesus Penis in her “my other ride is your leg” shirt. This was after I ran, moved and piled wood for a couple hours, showered and dressed myself. Oh, and I just saw a group of children, none of them older than 12 walking down the road with a shotgun. Just past my house, near the sugar shack, the child wearing head-to-toe khaki took aim at the sky and pretended to fire.



My grandmother pronounces khaki “car-key” and I used to argue about it with her. My aunt says that since she has been off her medication she has reverted to being the bitch she really is. For example, grandpa needs his remaining eye examined and she said he can wait til she has her appointments at the end of the month, she can’t be bothered with it. And when he asks to go to the library, she ignores him. He confessed to my aunt that it is, at times, difficult living with her.

Bitchshereallyis.

I am going to go see them next weekend and take him to the library and show him how to use his email which is something he used to be able to do with ease but now, since he fell and hit his head, cannot remember how. And I am going to look at the pills she is now, once again, taking.

I am watching a 70s movie with Alan Alda and Meryl Streep. They are married, not to each other, and have an affair as they do political strategizing. Even though Alan is tall and dark haired I do not find him hot. He’s only okay.

My neighbour is moving bales of hay around.

Where, do I want to live.

My little car started up with some short protests and is ready to be driven really hard.
I found your clip-on sunglasses under the seat, in their case.
I assume your glasses, the only place they actually fit, are all the way over there with you.


In the movie, Alan Alda’s wife is trying to convince their daughter to move because dad misses them so much. That it is their duty.


When I think about my life as it is stretched out before me what concerns me more than anything is escaping the collapsing walls of my emotional inheritance.

What have I got to work with. Everything is easier than calm and peace and happiness. I meet these things with anger and mistrust, fists raised. Because I cannot recognize feelings so unfamiliar I don’t really see how I can know when to stop.

Except, perhaps, to just commit to a generalized and energetic stop, no matter what the circumstances call for. How? There is a wasp flying around the room. It sounds angry.

Alan Alda to Senate hearing: “What about simple human justice?”
His daughter has now got hepatitis ‘cuz she got a tattoo on her ass. She insipidly avoids his questions about her life, her new ink and her boyfriend.

“I don’t have to explain my goddamn ass to anyone.”
He tells her he loves her, so, so, much.


Jesus just drank some water and is chewing her foot.




()

My very simple dream car.

I am 119 pounds, or so.
The sun is just going down now, I have eaten and I am purposefully not cleaning washing the dishes until the morning.
This is easier than it used to be.

The way my grandmother had Christmas supper cleaned up before we even sat down to eat.
The way my mother made fun of her for it.
The way Dana did the same thing, cleaned constantly.
The way I do? Did?


It actually hurts to see the trap in that. I hate my attention to details, the curse of it. My aunt making fun of how my grandmother washes all the walls of her house every spring.
I’ve done that.
There is nothing wrong with cleaning, details, order. But there is something very wrong with this trap. Because, even as I (we?) perform these rituals, anxiety multiplies upon each repetition.

The rivers here are overflowing their banks and on the radio and in the Community Press newspaper there are warnings of their power to drown anyone who dares to go too close.