Science fiction, fantasy, mystery and what-not
A patch to wake up
A patch to fall sleep
A patch to help you pay attention
A patch to take a drink.
A patch to kill your dreams
A patch to keep you sane
A patch to make you eat
A patch to dull your brain.
A patch to calm your nerves
A patch to stay alive
A patch to keep you breathing
And then a patch to die.
The organized chaos of commercial air travel reminded him of several things. Number one, always read the fine print. When he bought his ticket, he also bought a seat for a few extra dollars, reasoning, he’d never seen anyone standing up for an entire flight. What he didn’t see anywhere in the seat description was that the seat he selected didn’t recline. He found that out the day before, when he reviewed his flight details.
Naturally, he entertained getting a seat for the five plus hour flight. Several were available for an extra $130. Being one that often spites himself to prove a point, he refused to buy one.
He was sure, though, someday the airlines would figure out a way to start charging for air.
Sunshine skirts the trees and licks the sky into fresh blue shades. Familiars remind me that I’m home. People say, oh, you made it, as though the standing in lines and sitting in seats that frame commercial air travel in this era was a slog. The slog is behind the scenes, where they’re building and maintaining the machines and coordinating the actions. I’m just a passenger on that plane, just as I’m a passenger on starship Earth.
Sunrise in Ashland today came over us at 7:20 AM. Cool mountain air, measured at 54 F, put a shiver in my body. Gonna be 88 F, the weather wizards say. Smoky haze covered the valley from the Cedar Creek fire further west in the state. Not heavy smoke but enough for you to see it’s there, a reminder of the fire’s existence. Sunset, they tell me, will be 6:34 PM.
Being home is a comfort. Having my wife chatting about all she’s done and is doing and is to do brought me into the groove. Tucker and Papi did their feline duties, purring welcomes, permitting me to show my affections through liberal scratches of their ears, heads, and backs.
Traveling was the mix of fun, weariness, anticipation, and frustration that I’ve come to expect. Being in flight, taking off before sunrise and then having the sun chase us down over the Rocky Mountains delivered plenty of thought fodder. As you know, many sings exist about traveling, aircraft, flight, and sunrise. Plenty for The Neurons to say, oh, there’s a theme song and stick it in my mental music stream. But I found myself watching people, splitting time between clothes, shoes, body language, and faces. Out of watching faces, The Neurons pulled up “Elderly Woman Behind the Counter in a Small Town” by Pearl Jam. A song released six million years ago or more, it tells of a woman struggling to remember another’s name, wishing to say hello, and failing. The Neurons were right to pick it up off of the organic reflections generated from my visit home, to places that were and now aren’t, and faces filling with aging’s shifts.
So here we are. Cats are fed, breakfast is eaten, coffee was brewed, its scent inhaled, its pleasant bitterness introduced to my tongue as another fresh experience. Stay pos and test neg, and do the vaccines needed to overcome and move on. I’m with you there.
Here’s the tune. Hope you can enjoy your Wednesday and build on it. Cheers
Early dark thirty. Far before the sun’s scheduled arrival after seven. I’m waiting for my sister to pick me up and convey me to the airport. I’m always depending on my family and their kindness. She is one of the best.
It’s Tuesday, October, 11, 2022, exactly, without planning, one month since my arrival in Pittsburgh. Mom was in the hospital when I arrived, fighting COVID as it attacked her heart, lungs, and everything else it could lash out at. Nurses told my sisters it was very possible that Mom may not survive. It was one of the worst COVID cases they’d seen since the pandemic’s start for that hospital staff. Besides COVID and fluid in her heart and lungs, her appendix had a perforation and was pouring poisonous material into her body. Her pacemaker was only functioning at 20%. Things looked ugly.
She fought back and came out of it. Now she’s home, recovering, rehabbing, and I’m going home. She is struggling with bouncing blood pressure with a diastolic dropping below 100 too often. She’s on meds to promote good blood flow, keep her blood pressure at a healthy level by lowering it because of what she endured in the hospital, when it was skyrocketing. Now they’re backing those meds off, readjusting them, but her blood pressure is erratic. That’s a concern.
Other than that, she’s recovering her strength and balance, eating well, and so on.
My work here isn’t done but life dictates other needs, so, here I go, back across the country, back home.
It’s a travel day, in the car for thirty minutes, airport for two hours, aircraft for five plus, another hour in another airport, another two hours in a second aircraft, then in a car to reach home, an eleven-hour trip. That’s much better than the pioneers, and not as hazardous.
I feel like a little bit of a basketcase dealing with Mom as I hear her tell me one thing and bend her words so it doesn’t seem as bad when she’s dealing with her medicos and my sisters. Irritating as hell to be honest; makes me feel like an unreliable witness. But alas, these things are not within my control, so I let them go like the air from my lungs.
However, The Neurons jumped all over those feelings, dumping “Basketcase” by Green Day into the morning mental music stream (trademark pending – not really, but it feels like it should be added). So here we go.
My ride is here. Stay pos and test neg. I’ll try to do the same. Here we go. I’ll have coffee at the airport, thanks. Cheers
He recalled the mother of his youth. She was always reading. Michner, Robbins, Jong, paperbacks purchased at drugstores. Movies fascinated her. She always recommended actors, directors, movies.
Now, she doesn’t have time to read. Hasn’t in years. She’d moved from fiction to true crime to nothing. She doesn’t like movies, she says. She wants drama and none of them provide it. Time is spent watching MSNBC, or shows like Doctor Pimple Popper, My Feet Are Killing Me, and Dateline.
It’s not surprising. Everyone changes. He thinks about the episodes, powers, and energies that shaped and reshaped her, rising to a comparison with the planet, and how unseen events work together to reshape the world.
Another friend has passed away. He beat cancer four years ago. Earlier this year, he said it had returned. Last time I saw him, he looked wan, gaunt, tired. He had beautiful brown eyes which glint with humor, mischief, and intelligence. All were absent that last time that I saw him. He didn’t speak much. He told us he was going to a family reunion in Europe. On his return two months ago, he told us that he was withdrawing from our weekly beer group meetup. I had a bad feeling.
But I’m not here to grieve. Grieving has worn me down. Death, sickness, and illness are all regular segments in the great cycle of life. Better instead to celebrate the friendships and love of these people who complete the circle and go on. We don’t know what they go on to. I just know what he’s left behind. I’m pleased that he took time to be a friend and join me to tip back a beer once a week and talk politics, philosophy, science, art, pop culture, music, and literature. He’d tell me about his life and his travels, how much he loved his father and sisters, what he and his daughter do as traditions, how proud he was of her.
I cherish those days and will as long as I can. And I will celebrate that such a person lived. My face still hurts with feelings of loss and tears sully my vision, but that’s me wallowing in self-pity that I lost such a friend. No more, no more. I will celebrate the human I knew and how he made me laugh, think, and wonder. And sometimes I’ll raise a beer and have a drink, and smile, as if he’s still there.
She would have been called a troubled teenager. Drinking too much, dropping out of school, becoming pregnant, marrying before she was seventeen, her life had taken turns that we didn’t expect from such an intelligent and charming person.
Two divorces, two children, and forty-five years later, she acquired her GED, graduated college with a B.S., runs a family business, is a grandmother of three, and is also a professional. She’s the one we turn to for help. She’s strong, stable, and reliable, the person we thought she would be before she became a troubled teen.
He comes in.
Looking up, she sees him and asks, “You’re already here?”
Clearly, it’s a verbal tic. As an expression, it puzzles him. They’re looking at him and asking if he’s already there, when he clearly is. But that’s the nature of those things, something employed to buy some thinking time.
It’s one of two tics which dominate the family. He’s been away so much, he doesn’t have them, so he notices. The other comes up as he says, “I’ve already put the garbage out,” or, “I already ate lunch.”
The reply comes back, “Really?”
He mostly bites back the response, “No, I’m making these things up.”
Mostly.
Slow and ponderous, daybreak took over the sky’s voluminous gray matter at 7:16 AM. This, I learn from the baffle net, is ten minutes earlier than they’ll see in Ashland, Oregon later today. 52 and 56, respectively, degrees in F, are the current and high temperatures. 7:03 sees the world turn that brings us another night.
Welcome to October 1, 2022.
It’s Saturday. Leaves are just turning in our neighborhood, with one mighty perennial going dark red. While the trees are heralding fall, animals and the weather are muttering, “Winter is coming.” Ned would be concerned, although meteorologists tell us they’re we’re seeing Ian’s stuff in our weather pattern. Overcast, they call this sky.
The Neurons dropped “Barely Breathing” into the morning mental music stream. Had to look it up to learn it’s by Duncan Sheik from 1996. I think the song employs many clever phrases. One set in mind this dawn was, “And everyone keeps asking, what’s it all about? I used to be so certain, and I can’t figure out.
What is this attraction, I can only feel the pain. There’s nothing left to reason and only you to blame.
Will it ever change?”
Why those words today, I queried The Neurons. Is it part of a memory set? Could well be, something of the air, imbued in the house, makes me think of other times and years, of course. Photos on the walls and shelves document the family’s expansion, and there we are as the young, when now we’re the old. It could be the chilly wet weather, and the dance of leaves falling off trees as they flirt with new colors. Maybe it’s just a natural echo of the mind set delivered when you realize, oh, I have aged. I used to be so certain. Now I wonder about more, and entertain reflections on paths taken and results found.
Think I need coffee.
Stay positive, test negative, and so on. Stay safe as you travel the roads and skies, stealing glances at weather, people, news. Where the heck is that coffee?
Here’s some music. Cheers
Inspiring sunshine scored the morning clouds, lighting the valley and the house’s eastern face. I put my face to it and breathed in cold, fresh air, admiring birds, squirrels, and chip monks as they took up business.
This was 7:30 AM, just after Tuesday’s sunrise at 7:12 on this 27th of September, 2022, in the Common Era. Umbrellas are called for this day as clouds have taken over and rain scents pepper the air. 55 F now, they tell us not to expect anything over 60 today. Yet I’m in shorts. Wear jeans, back to shorts today. Not like they’re glued or stapled to me. I can always swap my shorts for pants before sunset at 7:09 PM, if needed.
Mom had a rough morning. So did her partner, and my sisters, and me. That’s how it rolls. Diarrhea caused as a side effect of her antibiotics debilitated her. That all happened before 6 AM. She was to see her cardiologist but he went out sick. They still wanted Mom to come in and see the cardiologist’s nurse, but she convinced them that she was too weak, and the appointment was cancelled. They’ll reschedule after the cardiologist returns. A health care nurse is coming by at 2 to check on her, per a schedule set up yesterday.
My younger sisters vent a lot to me. This has impacted them, along with their children. All regularly visit Mom as they live in the area. I act psychologist to them, listening without giving advice. Seems to help.
Their thoughts about change and mortality prompted The Neurons to pull up a favorite song of mine. “Breathe (In the Air)” by Pink Floyd was part of the monumental album, “The Dark Side of the Moon”, released in 1972. I saw the group perform the album in concert. It felt like a transcendental experience. I’ve since seen them in concert several more times. I originally had the album on 8 track, then got it on cassette tape, vinyl, and finally, a digitally remastered CD. Yes, I like the album.
As the song says,
h/t to genuis.com
So life seems to be for so many, dig a hole, and then dig another, metaphors for work, work, work, work, work.
Hope you enjoy it. Stay positive, test negative, take care of yourselves and others. I’ve had coffee, thanks. I am ready for lunch and will have leftover chicken tortellini soup which my sister made and brought over yesterday. There’s plenty, if you care to have some.
Cheers
Michael Seidel, writer 