Outside in the courtyard at Shrine with my dad. Brad had a mask on but no-one said anything to me about any new Covid restrictions. Within ten seconds of my clapping his shoulder to announce my arrival, Dad asked me to take him outside.
The lawn crew is edging walkways and borders.
”Where are we, the Shrine?” he asks.
”Where do you think we are?” I say.
“I think we’re there. I’m just guessing.”
The edger drones on, throttling up and down, back and forth, in and out, left to right. My dad’s eyes are blue, red, and watery.
”You want to go out there even with that lawn equipment going?”
A rhetorical question he does not answer.
It’s cooler. Way cooler. The two-cycle engine quiets for a moment, just a moment. And the rest of the soundscape steps slowly out from wherever it was hiding. The whir of crickets. Voices from inside.
”You’re not gonna see much in the sky,” he says, “ A few birds, that’s it.”
There’s the song sparrow, reeling off its spell. Nothing happens. They’ll be back to mow, and then again to blow. Maybe we’ll be at lunch by then.
The sky is cloudy. It might not even be eighty degrees, a stunning turn of events. Church bells. I’d go to that mass sometime. There are people in there who know me. Maybe they don’t know my name but they know my face and they know I’m here for my dad. That’s all I know to feel welcome. That is enough. Knowing more would break the spell. Question me, question them. See ya in another life, brutha.
”You want anything to read?”
”No, I just like to enjoy it out here,” he says, “I got papers in there I read.”
Remember back when my parents said they saw a panther, from the St Francis entrance? They said they saw a panther go through some grass, at the edge of the back parking lot, and into the woods. I thought it must have been a dog, or possibly a bobcat…
Last day of February and a beauty. Warm and windy, blend me some of that balm.
He's taking a shower. Or getting a bath. Per Karin. She saw me coming and intercepted. Not just to tell me about the shower but to tell me that, "He's more confused than usual today." She wanted to let me know so I wasn't blindsided.
Many of the days he's been here he's been confused so this should be interesting. Not a surprise to hear, per a text from my mom, and another a couple of days before that.
I haven't seen him in six days. I went to Farm this week. Two nights and a whole lot of bliss. Last time I saw him I wrote nothing. This writing, I fear, has gotten redundant.
I hear him moaning...
Farm, 2.24.25
They wheel him in.
"They got me, John," he tells me in a high-pitched voice. "They're gonna put me down. I been up too much."
"You know where you are?" I ask him.
"Dammert."
"You lookin out the window," I ask him.
He nods.
"Birds," he says. Rubbing his index fingers together, hands clasped, lying in bed now. Karin and another nurse laid him down, with the Hoyer. I could see his red and purple bottom. The other nurse put some cream on him. I'm not sure what her name is. She's not new but newer. Hell of a nurse. Dresses nice sometimes. My dad seems content but he is looking past me, out into the beyond.
"Anything new?" I ask him. "Anything going on?"
But he doesn't answer; just taps his fingers together. Is it Morse Code? Tap tap tap, tap tap dash.
"You hungry?"
No answer. Then he says I already asked him that, which maybe I did.
Now I hear the hairdresser reaming out the nurse for giving someone a shower. The hairdresser is upset because she just did this lady's hair and her family is coming to see her. Cringe. Bless these nurses. They work on behalf of God. Who could ever fault them for keeping the residents clean? Who cares about what their hair looks like.
I turn on the TV. My dad says something about me watching the stock market channel but they don't have it here. A shame. I find PBS Create, for a cooking show, which is what I watched here one recent Saturday for three hours, my dad in bed the whole time. It's peaceful with the sound off. A beeping somewhere in the background on this hall, not insistent, a slow pulse.
I had him up in the solarium 2.14.25, the only time we've ever been up there.
I know he wants me to stop asking questions but I don't know how else to talk to him, and this is all of him I have left. I ask him if he remembers his career, what he used to do.
"I used to, I used to...." he says.
I ask him if he remembers using his phone. He used to use it a lot. He doesn't remember doing that. Printing articles, I tell him, sending them out to people through the postal service, sending out lots of emails. He claims he never really sent out much.
He watches the cooking show intently, left index finger to his lips, rubbing slowly back and forth.
"You know how long you been here, in Dammert?"
"A couple weeks, " I think.
Which might be correct, if dating back only to his trip to the hospital on February 2nd, Groundhog Day, my sister's birthday, a day I was headed to Farm when my mom texted to say he was in the hospital with an illness.
I ask him if he's been having any dreams or premonitions. It's not the first time I've asked him about dreams. I've been having some strange ones. Strong and vivid. Odd. One last night that didn't feel like mine. About a kid worried about his gambling debt. I thought about it and told this kid that he might not have to pay the debt because he was a minor and never should have been allowed to place the bet anyway. Unclean hands on the other side, laches; other party estopped from collecting. I don't know who this kid was. And, no, I don't think he was me. B mentioned crazy dreams the same morning I woke up after some doozies Monday night at Farm. After feeling like it had been a while since I remembered any dreams at all. Stopped writing them down. This is as close as I'll get.
Footprints of a dream
The TV transfixes him. I don't know what else to do. I'll go out and get my salad out of the car whenever his food arrives. Could be half an hour, easy.
I listed to voices from the hall. Evelyn's daughter. Or granddaughter, who knows. I only had one interaction with Evelyn. Her chair was at a chokepoint in the hall. I wanted to move her. Asked nicely then just tried to wheel her a few feet but she put her foot down, literally.
"No," she said, "I don't think so. I'll stay right here."
Another time she didn't want CNAs to take her out of the lunch room. I look back and my dad has fallen asleep, his left index finger still trying to stay awake, to stay up, still pointing.
Evelyn played basketball in college. My dad snaps back, left hand back up to his face. It's her granddaughter that's visiting her, pretty sure. How am I the age of so many grand-kids here?
Earlier I asked him how he felt, overall.
"I feel good," he said.
It might be Evelyn who'd had her hair done—yesterday!—and then got the shower today. A whole $28 down the drain. The shower my dad got seemed to have revived him, definitely worth $28 to me.
Evelyn still has some lucidity. She still talks. I mean, I'd take pure gibberish from my dad. I'd take nonsense, non sequitur, monolog. Anything not hateful, anything not ugly. He said something to the nurses when they wheeled him in after his shower but I couldn't hear it.
But Meg said, but Greg said. Camp host reading Stephen King. Spooky. The Cardinals lost, the Nationals lost. Padres at Rockies now, from Coors. There was a brawl in this game. Rox lead 5-0.
I turn down the sound of a commercial. It felt especially out of place here. In Denver you go to Applejack Wine & Spirits. In Chicago it’s Binny’s Beverage Depot. Heck, these days you don’t even have to go to the Binny’s store, they’ll bring it right to your door. Joe Maddon told me that.
I went to Binny’s a couple of times when I lived a summer in Chicago. That was back when beer was blowing up, craft beer—or microbrews, as they were then known. I heard the Tampa Rays announcer yesterday talking about how he used to live in Chicago. He was doing a Rays game against the White Sox. It struck me that a lot of people have once lived in Chicago, midwesterners at least. My brother and sister both live there now.
I’ve only ever once been to New York City. The Big Apple was the setting for a book I just read. It made me want to visit again; or, it made me wish I’d been born there, had a chance to spend more than a few days of my life there. I don’t think I could move to NYC now. Not as a dog owner. Not even as a married man. I would’ve had to have lived there young. If I were living in NYC I’d have to be able to float around. I could have a job but no attachments outside of that. Otherwise I think the City would crush me, wring me out, drive me mad.
i venture into something, it's a mind-blower, but i gotta keep it under wraps for j-rand. see: i had envisioned a wry conversation/transcription that was intertwined. red-vines and mr. pibb; chronicles.
adjacent antecedent (i.e. addendum): the spatial discrepencies had been a problem, but the chronological shifting was downright vexing. first it was 2004, then 2007, then 2003, the years and specific dream ramblings resemble a rorschach test; it's another brick in the wall.
the wood desired chasing, and the family desired spaghetti. sorry, but my thoughts get confused, like waves in the midnight surf. german balloon aka led zeppelin: it parks its dreams @ ground zer0. eros may have called, but failed to identify himself, leading me to this shell of thoughts. it could be an atkins of fiction.
outra-verted, a word i wordlessly think when i encounter 'yar.' i consider the rivulet to my s(l)ide, but conclude she's w/ the tall man. i'm obviously hallucinating. the police have arrived and i've simply said the word 'plant.'
realizing i had entered a house of mirrors and drugs, i texted j. still and nick s. they were part of my cleaning crew in the mid 90's. i suddenly understand that i'm alone and sweating, in a basement, no shaman. the disorientation slowly dissipates and my carb-stricken mind intuits the next phase may require an umbrella, inverted.
The beginning of the end of The last history. This side Of a black hole, a big bang, the Epicenter, the mother lode, the lode star. A star that leads, especially the Polestar, the North Star of the Universe, What is always in the center, 'lode' meaning 'The way,' the journey, the journey star. From here to there, back from Where we used to exist, via intergalactic canal, Rowing upstream, rowing home, Going back in time, into the place we Go when we dream, time there Suspended, fact there garbled and twisted. It is all very real but also Very far away, as if It never even happened.
I had a dream that we took a field trip in my biopsych class and rode a bus to Yasser Arafat's compound somewhere in the USA, I think Boston although it wasn't really Boston of course and it only took maybe an hour and a half to get there. We never came under attack although … Continue reading Yasser USA
My dream was about a girl who was having psychological problems and ended up killing herself. I don't know my relationship to the girl. We didn't know one another. In the dream she was played by Maria F., a respondent in the club drugs study. It was a tragic story. I feel like I, with … Continue reading Laughing
EmFamm was in an early thread. That's all I remember of it.
Somewhere along the way I was doing a crossword and "impatientism" was an answer. I was pretty amazed that anyone knew what it was.
I was walking through St. Louis with my sister. She was walking through some strange areas and I was wondering where the heck she was going. But then we stumble onto some sort of Pool District. A couple of big public swimming pools. She wants to go swimming. I follow along. She goes up this enormous tiered high dive. Several boards and you could jump from what seemed like hundreds of feet. A bit too high for me. I walked back down.
Last thread. I discover that I can drive from St. Louis to Portland in ten minutes. It was just down Hanley (or Delmar?). You just drive along and bang!, there's Portland. Wow. It did look like I remembered. I parked this truck I was driving.
I walked away for a couple minutes. I come back and some guys are taking the stuff out 'the back of my truck. I was like, "What the fuck are you doing?"
There was a scuffle. I yelled out at this parked cop car that I saw. They come running. But before they get there one of the guys tries to stab me by reaching behind my back. I grabbed his wrist and stopped him. I think I then stabbed him.
The cops said they had been tailing these guys for awhile.
3:35a
Have had two calea caps, half a calea mix pipe. Am going to bed soon. I am going to dream tonight. Yes, John, you are going to dream tonight.
Keep this by your side while you are sleeping...
9:52a
No recollection yet.
afternoon
Three hawks in a tree.
Adam Edell.
[12.13.2001]
see the cbw response here
Was assigned to cover a golf tournament. Lots of players. I actually got out on the course. But then they were throwing frisbees not hitting golf balls. One of the frisbees hit me and I was embarassed. On the third hole, I lost them. Fell asleep or something. Phil Williams was around. I was gonna … Continue reading Frisbee Golf
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