Forward, also Up.
Wilderness of living man, It’s a slow day as days go anymore. First of the month and I’m all a thing at peace, a tranquil stone in a still pond, that’s me alright, clouds looming and the sunset coming, I’ve been at rest and will remain that way on this day, with nothing at all to set me in motion.
There’s a sometimes guilt that comes from that, from too much of too little doing but I was thinking – about what’s happened, the last few weeks, I was thinking of this last month just passed and what all was done and I think – “I’m a miracle, kind of.” But I thought or presumed it might a fine time to recall my August. You know it started out with hints and vague feelings, that hottest month ever just ending, we knew we’d be moving and there was a sense in our house of it coming, in the too hot, too long dirty rooms. I’d been at it, two jobs, for months by then, and only recently parted with one of them, so not at all in a state to exist in a real way. My roommate all night skyping with his far off lady and me working and coming home and working and never ever washing a dish or sweeping a floor. Wrecked! The whole house, and dark all the time and here it is, final exhaustion. Well, comes the news we’ll move and make a deal with the landlords for their bigger/better model, just down the block. Spend that first week packing, almost recovering from having not one job but two –and almost, almost am ready on the 5th when we get our keys and are told – “go ahead.” So from the fifth to the tenth I moved every night, a few boxes and items, mainly by hand, mainly walking the few blocks carrying my everything that is mine. That went on until a car was needed, available come the 10th, the last day, and in the meantime it’s never quite sure where I should sleep or what bills to pay or what I am doing. Mainly I am at work and tired there, but affable I think, and not showing the wear. Then move, then sometimes maybe have some people over, to the new house, that first week, for drinks and later a band at the band-bar down the way – and old friends from the Akron coffeeshop just appearing, out of nowhere, so beer on the wonderful porch in the dark without electricity yet.
My roommate had vanished, or all but – his lady having returned and now living down the block, I take the bed I loaned him and he’s never once slept in this house we live in together, he’s every day been with his lady and that’s fine, but strange, or a little confusing. On the tenth it’s all moved in. On the 13th his car is towed, confusion with the landlords, they must pay the fee themselves so use this as a chance to get angry about our old house – “clean it up!” say they and so we do, go back with bleach and bags to discard all that remains. Now there’s a dishwasher and I buy new dishes and throw away everything, throw everything, everything out and start new, fresh with new items that haven’t moved and moved and moved. People were saying to me – “Why are you moving?” And I thought – well, shoot, it’s August isn’t it? Because I have been drifting! Which I’ll tell you is a shocking thing, because I don’t like that – I’ve been adrift for some time though, as you may have known, I’ve been nearly almost the vagabond in this town and all on account of being adrift and unsolid in the realm of work. Well I didn’t have that many couches to land on and then I didn’t have that many choices for where to go and then I just got narrowed down and narrowed down and then I caught a break, found a for real job and a true place to live and to furnish and… and… And now I’ve got feet under me, a way forward and a plan to live. I dreaded all the uncertainty forever and I dreamed terrible dreams when I could sleep and I worried all the time and you know – it wasn’t that bad. There I was, here in the Wasteland, grasping at hopes and struggling for something stable, treading water and the whole time I was thinking: “It’s weird that I was so afraid of this.” Because it wasn’t that bad.
But I count this last month, just passed, as my re-entry into the humble middle class and the silly, funny normalcy of the west. Of course I spent the second week of August finishing up moving in and then hosting the Best Day on a shoestring and by the seat of my pants and that was a surprising good time, a lucky chance that turned out lovely. I would’ve given it a pass but my little kid, dear one of mine, she says We Have To! So we have to. I’m down you know, I’m able and whatever, kind of capable. I carried that whole couch home! I still can’t shut up about that, after everything and all the tired worn-outness of the summer, that was a summer, to be sure, that was for enduring – and there I was, accomplishing.
Which I guess is what this is about – because I mean, I’ve been so… I feel tired, today, lately, for a while, I was feeling tired and rundown and weakened. I was feeling like I’d stumbled into some kind of morass of depression and ennui – but instead, I’m like, righteously beat, from having actually accomplished kind of a lot of stuff! So today I’m proud of myself and feeling like recounting things. So – Moved, The Best Day, Made A Life For Myself, Done Pretty Good At My Job (cause on the third week of the month I spent the whole time in these meetings for my work. Product training and so on – here’s a weird thing that happened:
On the second or first day of the meetings we were training with our cement patch, or concrete – I don’t quite know the difference yet, anyhow we had this big mixer going and it had gotten solidified, too long talking, we let the blades get cemented to the bucket, so work the bucket. Since forever I’m not mechanical, it’s a blank spot in my experience. As a boy I used to have to do some rudimentary things to my car, because I was always wrecking it – because I wasn’t ever good at driving, and wrecked it all the time and still have (probably) some kind of PTSD about cars and don’t feel bad At All about not having or wanting one. But! So I ended up disengaging the wrong mechanism while we all leaned into the bucket of the mixer and the whole machine bucked crazily, throwing us off of it and torqueing itself in some fantastic way so that afterward you could see that these meshed flanges of steel had been somehow disengaged with what must have been an incredible force. It was pretty crazy and I felt very bad.
Later I was joking with one of the salesmen that I’d just met about how the old salesmen couldn’t quite figure out their computers. “I mean, what can I say about it –if they can’t understand a 20 year old technology? Did you see how bad I fucked up making concrete? A 10,000 year old technology?”
Anyhow, because the whole thing broke and had to be repaired by the mechanically ingenious people of my work it happened that all the people of the company were simultaneously engaged in building a wall out of concrete – quite by accident, but a happy one – it was deemed by all a great success of teamwork and group unity. So I… I almost killed myself and others by being shitty at mechanics, but also it worked out in everyone’s favor – which is – you know what – I want that to be the story of my life. “He almost killed us all but in overcoming his mistakes we all became better people.”
The man who was in charge of the demonstration though, he was very, very angry, he shouted and was half crazed when it happened. Then he was calmed. He came at me later, a visiting dignitary and not exactly in the company, but with the company. He apologized and I apologized and we had a handshake and all seemed well, we’d got off to a bad start but it turned out we could have a common ground and would, in the end, value one another’s contributions to humanity – that kind of thing.
Well last week comes the news, after the meeting, the hotel rooms, the late nights drinking and the early morning panics, presentations and the endless decent meals, it came about that upon returning home, the man, that poor man, who I’d scared and who was angry, who was worried afterward that I’d not forgive him his anger – the poor guy died, like, suddenly, upon returning home.
This is the year that I found out I do not accept death well. I haven’t known people to die, not much, but this year it’s happened more than once and this second time – well I was… I didn’t know that man, we had an experience together and I liked him, briefly, and then he died. So I was pretty sad about that, and cast about probably foolishly, looking for comforts and ended up among girls I should not have called, but called anyway out of sorrow and the lonesome feeling that comes from death. Anyway that went… weirdly. And then back to work. This last week of the month – the salesmen all know my name, they all know to ask me for everything, and I have done what I can or could do, I have made a strong effort and learned basically everything. I’ve learned whole new applications which I now support as a profession – who saw that coming, but it’s been a heck of a month, and kind of arduous.
So, at the end, I go to see Agatha home from her new school, far away and big and hard to walk around, get lost a little, get confused a bit, wander, wander – find her, meet the teacher- just a sub! Dammit, and I really, like, struggled, to get there to meet her and make an impression and nope. Just a sub. But in the end I have money in my pocket and the long weekend ahead of me. I treat myself to restaurant supper – which ordinarily I only do once every other month or so - from being penniless – but now I am not, I’m hard working and an earner, so restaurant supper! And some beer and then home and there’s my roommate and his lady and I lure them out into the neighborhood for a while, pitchers of beer and conversation on the patio – I’m good at that and cheered!
At the dumb bar (it’s in my neighborhood or I’d not go there) the bouncer (and they don’t need a bouncer as such) is this kid, who, years ago I’d worked with, before I got laid off and set into the drifting spiral I’ve only just come out of. We talk for a moment about our mutual hard time straightening up after that fall – he’d been laid off the same week as me – I didn’t know, I was surprised to learn it, but there it was, we wished each other the best and I felt a strong sense of having come full circle. So that’s the month. August 2012 – when I returned to a recognizable shape.