How Soon Is Now?

Wow.

Eyes open. Alarm off. It alternates between a rinky-tink cell song with a catchy melody that I've heard somewhere on Genetic World, and a high-pitched beep that is designed to get less of my conscious and more of my attention. Alarm off once, I roll over and tuck my arm around Verano. Alarm off twice, I roll over and she tucks her arm around me. Alarm off three times and I finally swing a leg over the side of the mattress, watch one foot and then the other settle into the office-space rug we've got under the frame. Shiver. Day's started.

A shower. The bathroom is small, I throw my bath towel over the radiator so that it will be toasty when I'm ready for it. Today the water is lukewarm because the tank needs work. This is the second time we've put in an order since we've moved in. Verano abhors it, her icy pep; condemns it with a spit and spite that question what she intends when she describes herself as a "Buddhist". I don't enjoy cold water on a chilly fall morning either, but there is a charm to the routine that keeps me from getting too upset. How many people in the world have an office that they can complain to when the water isn't running hot? I'm not blessed and I'm not thankful. I have what I have. If I want less I'll always be vulnerable to it.

By the time I'm out and dressed odds are the time is 9:45, and I'm running late for work. I have a bike, Ole' Iron Horse, it's blue and squeaks like a bad horror movie, the Cat always knows when I've come home. Down Pine Street, from 44th to 38th; along the campus walk to the Bridge; passing the Museum of Archaeology and the Palestra and Penn's new athletic grounds, with a balloon inflated over the main field in anticipation of the winter months; up over the bridge span and then it's a straight shot on South's quiet and sparse streets: 26, 25, 24; pass the liquor store, pass L2, whose owners I've met; pass Pumpkin, whose bitch of a manager was called out online, on the very libel site that V. aiding in shutting down (before it could get to Starr, much to our disappointment)...pass the hospital and the Jazz mural and the colorful Thai restaurant that I want to try, but will not be able to find when the time comes...Broad Street, along Broad for a few blocks, The Philadelphia Theater Company, The University of the Arts, the Kimmel Center with a giant inflatable rat set up outside because the stagehands are on strike...Wilma, The Academy of Music, also on strike for the weekend, Across the Street is...

...where I lock up, and punch in to. If it's a Saturday I might be the manager, I might be the bartender. If it's a weekday I'm likely managing, especially now that the fantastics T. & t. are on their ways out. If it's a Sunday I'm here on my day off.

It doesn't matter if it's six hours or twelve, time passes here in a consistent fashion that rarely changes for the day. People come, people eat, people go. We watch Broad Street give birth as the offices empty and the theaters fill; we watch Broad Street blossom into life during parades and festivals and motorcades and Happy Hour; We watch Broad Street pine when City Hall decides it's eleven, or midnight; and die hand-in-hand with the late hours of the evening, or early hours of the morning, whichever have you. When Broad Street is little more than a corpse ready for burial, I lock a door behind me, get back on my bicycle, and go home.

Verano is upset if I come home and she can smell beer, or cigarette smoke; it's different in the morning, when she's not tired and we can make breakfast together. She doesn't like that I spend so much time working, but money is money and her pay rate is much better than mine. She spends less time on the clock. I theorize that she spends more time finding ways to avoid her responsibilities, which is more or less where Schooling and I parted ways, too...my work now is much more cut and dry, and I bring very little of it home with me. I wonder where her line is, and now more than ever, because she wants to be the things that she can be, and deserves to be, but can't take the clear steps to get there. I don't think she wants to do the work.

I realized this weekend, with an uneven dread, that the woman I am sharing life with bears a closer resemblance in attitude and world-view to my Father than she does to my Mother...and with a certain degree of self-analysis I forgive myself for this, because I wouldn't be able to live with any body that reminds me of my Mother. That's what getting over the last girlfriend was about. Regardless, I find myself worried. Dad lived in a cloud of mountain fog for most of his life, and now that the temperature is changing and the mist has dissipated, he sees what could have been different. I don't want Verano to have the same revelation in twenty years, she needs to have that revelation now. At the same time, she needs to admit a temporary defeat, something of an armistice, so she can take care of herself. I'm not pulling these hours that she doesn't like so that in five years I can claim asylum: I'm trying to establish myself.

Biking is a great time to think, I pulled an anecdote together while I was pedaling home last night. We're both infants. She wants to crawl, crawl and crawl and crawl, until she finds a place where she is happy enough to figure out how to stand. Which is one way of doing it, right? You see a lot if you're mobile, and you're sooner to discover what it is and where it is that works the best for you. She doesn't even crawl, she sort of half-walks, because she is an avid and impatient little breath of sparkle-eyed, happy life. Of course, that means a lot of bruised knees early in life, but bruises go away when you don't think of them.

But I don't want to crawl. It means I'm static, but I've decided that I'd rather learn how to stand, so that when I'm finally walking I'll be able to explore the world on steady legs. I'll miss a lot of perspective that Verano has, but I'll have the confidence and security that I need, personally, in order to enjoy life when I decide to seek it out. I sometimes imagine that I am clawing through a translucent latex barrier that has hindered my blood for generations...
I admit that the imagery is egocentric (and trite), but I've gotten out of small town, too, and to my knowledge I don't have common ground with any body else in the families.

So what happens with such different, fundamental attitudes?



It's been a very long time since I've written here; so long, in fact, that I had to reactivate my account in order to log in. I'm inspired by a fellow writer whom I work with, who sent me a link to her wayside work. I plan on making it work--writing, I mean--in the long run; right now I'm trying to clear the necessary room off of a messy desk. I don't want this place, Something Else, to be only an account of my struggles, but I do want the benchmark. So much has happened in eight months, and I'm so sorry for only giving you an idea of what it all is. If that's why you're here.

With that, I hope that my next post is a little less subjective (read: a little more interesting). I need to get the old voice back, too, but the whiskey I've put into my coffee--it's 2:20 pm and I have work in less than two hours--needs to vent a little. Ta.


Oh, The Cat likes Garbanzos. He's an odd duck. He almost cost you this posting too, and interrupted the IIO song that was on Pandora. He's a Russian Spy.