OUT OF IT

Too many days off from a job we other wise claim is killing us by the inch is not good for us, which is to say that it's not good for me, white, single, late fifties in age, without a car, a person who lives alone. Sans the work regime, it is up to my own ingenuity to endeavor to be happy and usefully whole; after a period of writing, playing music and reading the required number of pages in whatever books I have going at the time, I run out of things. As I heard someone remark years ago on the subject of having too much spare time, he felt compelled to "go upstairs and visit his problems, his issues, his collected constant worries." Likewise, I go from being eager to being anxious, the apartment I live in seems smaller than it actually is, a palpable paranoia surrounds me like a bad aroma . And so I turn off the computer and head out to accomplish newly appointed tasks. Fresh air, a conversation is what this fevered brow requires: there must be a music other than the static that plays on between my ears.     It's all you can do to stay in the moment as the slices of salmon catch flies on the cutting board, someone is smoking a cigar is what you're thinking and what they're drinking is a foul aroma of fun every turn of the head is an anxiety you ignored and now that you're bored with the dust of your confessions, new lessons arise and this makes you twitch like some useless appendage that sticks out of the end of a thick wrap of bandages, unbound and defenseless for all that freedom means on the fourth of July, all that you can stand because nothing fills your days the way the events of your life used to, every word and slap on the back falls with a thud, something dropped on old pillows, the world smells of sickening sweet medicine and windows that haven't been open for weeks, take this shit to the streets, you think, give me some air and socks to wear before me find my jacket and shoes every car that passes and every house you paint has something of the vibe going on inside you can't seem to grasp or get next to there are days when there are only empty swimming pools in rich neighborhoods, disc jockeys ignore all your phone calls, even the fish in the bowl swim upside down pretending to be asleep until you walk from the room, there is something you just missed, some card hand or punch line that gets swallowed just before you get there, just before you get in step with the dance and the thread of the carpet that gets walked upon.