The meds are keeping me sober
doped morning haze notwithstanding.
After the third day, muscle relaxers
wane, I’m not feeling especially high
only tired and sore from sleep,
sleep I can barely get with my back
and leg and hip onto some new
place I don’t know, a land as strange
as whatever terrain was strange
to the men in elaborate dress
eager to be too much themselves.
I am sober and drinking a fifth
cup of black tea and will likely
wake before dawn and think of
where we are, closer to where
I was when I was younger, years
behind where I should be.
2
Not drinking because of the pain meds. I joked that death from booze and muscle relaxers would be something close to how Marilyn Monroe died. Worse company?
(I know that Monroe was taking barbiturates, which I don’t think are the same as muscle relaxers, but the joke remains because I like it. I’m not really suicidal, by the way. No more than anyone else, I suppose. I just like dark jokes. They offer simple, cheap comfort. And comfort is comfort is comfort.)
I unpacked more books today and found a place for each bookcase. The study, as we’re calling the second bedroom, will hold most of the poetry and the books by my heroes (Joyce, Bulgakov, Beckett, O’Brien, Winterson, Woolf, Thomas, Quin) as well as the Latin American library I built over five years of reading poetry and novels from that region. The main floor is a hodge-podge of texts with a shelf dedicated to James Kelman because he deserves it. The rest will reside in the basement. I’ve accidentally made a sort of upstairs-downstairs ranking, but I do love all the books as much, I suppose, as wealthy aristocratic pricks loved their servants.
3
One week with a garage and already I’m annoyed when I have to find and pay for parking. This is the lure of the area—plenty of places to leave your car for free.
Next weekend, I’m meeting friends who don’t know that I’ve left the north side. They invited me to a spot in Rogers Park where we often meet. So I will have an excuse to venture back to the now former stomping grounds. I sincerely hope I get these invitations regularly, as I have this idea that I’ll make a monthly pilgrimage to some of my cherished haunts. But I am sure that the invites will dwindle in synch with my motivation. Resolutions have a way of breaking.
4
“Resolve is never stronger than in the morning after the night when it was never weaker” – Johnny, as played by David Thewlis, Naked, 1993, directed by Mike Leigh.
5
I can’t imagine myself as a pill popper. I hate taking these pain killers. I’d sooner open a bottle. So much easier. Not really, but there’s more in a glass of scotch to savor.
I like the smell of the grass in the morning when I’m walking the dog. Maybe it’s my imagination. There’s no smell, really. Just a small expanse of green that strikes because it’s more than I am used to. I could never be the guy who mows a lawn. The HOA expense is worth it if I never have to think about yard work. Gardening. Mulch. I’m just not that guy. Not good with my hands. Can barely swing a hammer. I wish I was that guy, but that’s not in the cards. Although… now that I am a (sorta) homeowner, perhaps it is time to be that guy. Or a version of that guy. Late bloom into something close to a functional “man.”
I Googled how to unclog a sink once. And then took pipes apart and snaked a drain and all that. The results were minimal—the landlady still had to call a handyman. I watched him address the clog. He took so many things apart and used tools I wouldn’t begin to know how to handle.
There’s forever a part of me that feels like that guy is doing something of value whereas I make pretend and teach young people about the products of other people who make pretend.
6
This morning I slept in for the first time in weeks. I usually rise by five or six even on weekends. Lately, leg and back pain have gotten me up closer to four. But the pain is (saints be praised) subsiding as I’ve been stretching and taking it easier (read: not lifting and moving everything in sight for hours on end). I descended the stairs from my bedroom to the main floor because I now have stairs and floors, plural. I made tea in my kitchen and then some eggs and potatoes for me and my sleeping wife. Woke her with breakfast and then we walked the dog and went to the hardware store because there is a never-ending need for more stuff around the new place. Chairs for the back area, apparently, though we found none. Settled for hangers and grout cleaner.
Yesterday I flattened thirty boxes. Maybe another twenty to unpack still, but it’s Labor Day so I don’t feel compelled to do much labor. We’re not barbequing or doing anything much to celebrate the holiday aside from enjoying the new space. Later, I’ll cook some fish and veggies in an attempt to get back to healthy living, which this last month has robbed me of. The last weigh-in saw three pounds added to my frame, all of which I can see. I fear I’ll become a doughy suburban version of myself if I don’t maintain vigilance. Once the hip/leg/back heals, I’ll join the gym down the street and restart the workouts. Maybe in a year I’ll be where I want to be: leaner, stronger, smarter, less spending money in my pocket but the little money I have invested in something more than a night out. And someday I can sell this place and (hopefully) cash in and use those proceeds to fund a true bender, one I’ll not return from. A true going out with a bang and a barbaric yawp to end the days. Likely the most realistic retirement plan I can fathom.
