Woke to hearing my wife say ‘Happy birthday.’ Made me smile until I remembered how horribly I treated her the day before, having gotten angry over something trivia; the removal and exchange of a blind from one bedroom to the next.

I can be a very thoughtless man at times.

Sadly, no birthday cards in the mail for me. I believe that time, the time of the personal touch that a card makes, is passed. Such is water under a bridge.

Not only is today my birthday, it is also the 25-year anniversary of my father’s passing. He had a stroke and was brain dead within minutes of the event.

My wife has been and remains busy. She got up at 0500 hours, took her usual walk, returned home, had breakfast, showered, re-dressed and is gone to the grocery store.

Got up less than ten minutes ago and have only gotten as far as a kitchen chair as I wait for the coffee to finish brewing. She set it up for me, so all I need do is toss the switch. Come on, Mr. Coffee!

Made the mistake of taking my cellphone to bed with me last night. I couldn’t sleep, so instead listened to a few podcasts, which somehow add themselves to my already strange battery of dreams and make for some cockeyed visions.

How it is that my subconscious mind can concoct a scenario whereas I am naked, running through a light drizzle, locked inside a cemetery and awaiting rescue by Robert Stack only to have Minnie Pearl find me, is beyond my ability to understand. I cannot think of one thing in this dream that isn’t somehow frightening – especially a pudgy, pale thing like me, nekked.

It is smoky once again this morning. It is from the Hog and Badger Fires, burning in Siskiyou and Lassen Counties, California with the smoke being blown in during the morning hours and clearing by noon or so.

My son jus’ called to wish me a happy birthday. My day is complete. He and his wife are on their way to Lake Tahoe, with her childhood girlfriend and the girlfriend’s two daughters.

All of the new locks are on, along with door handles and such. Still have some hinges to put on. Not looking forward to those damn spring hinges. Never seem to get them set properly and have to adjust them over-and-over till they are.

We also went to lunch at Red Robin. Had a free birthday burger. Got the Royal Robin, some fries and a Guinness.

“Living large in the land of the free and the home of the brave,” as my old friend Max Volume says.

While there, one of wait-staff and I were clowning around after I misheard what he asked. I thought he asked for a drink of my beer I said yes, trying to hand it to him.

“No, no, no,” he said, “I want you to take a sip of your beer and tell me if it tastes right.”

I did and it did.

“I had one the other night and it tasted like soy sauce to me,” he explained.

“Nope,” I said, “Tastes like beer to me.”

Told him how I misunderstood him and we laughed about the fact that I was willing to give him a drink. That’s the way I am, shirt off my back if need be.

After he left, another of the wait-staff, a woman came over and in hushed tones asked, “Did he take a drink of your beer?”

“No!” I said, “We were jus’ kidding around.”

Now we know who the brown-noser of the outfit is now. I pulled our male waiter aside and warned him that he needs watch out for her.

“She’s looking to make her stripes by being a tattle-tale, and she’s got you in her target,” I said.

Offering me a fist-bump, he let me know he appreciated this. Told you I could be an effing a-hole!

Had to go to Home Depot after lunch for some bondo and a door stopper. Would have gotten two strikers for the doors, but they’re are out of stock. Even with the air on in the building, my glasses remained fogged up and I was sucking hot wind back in from my face mask.

As we were walking up to the front doors, my wife asked, “Remember the good old days when there was a line?”

I answered, “I remember the good old days when we didn’t have to wear these fucking masks.”

Since all I could see of her face by this time were here eyes and eyebrows, I could tell she was serious when she told me not to ‘talk like that.’

“Or what, you’ll wash my mouth out with hand sanitizer?” I thought, but didn’t say.

Then I saw the bottles of sanitizer they had on a table in front of the door for the convenience of their customers. It was a close one.

As is my wife’s nature, she searched around until she found the strikers that she wanted. That means I had to drive back into town to pick them up. I think her drive to finish some projects is more of an overdrive and I end up looking like I’m utterly lazy because I don’t have that same drive.

But this is my problem as this is how I see me and not how she sees me.

Here’s one of the big differences between she and me: she wants activity, me wants adventure. It’s also one of the reasons that she doesn’t enjoy shopping with me.

I tend to find it.

Got to the store, stood in line to pick up the strikers and discovered the guy behind the customer service counter, like me could not hear or understand what I was saying to him, or visa-versa. Then we got to laughing so hard that neither one of us could speak and as we were each wearing glass, we began to steaming up our peepers. This made everything even more funny.

Finally, sides aching, I had to pull down my mask. He did the same.

“I swear the more I have to wear a mask, that harder it is for me to hear,” I said.

“Like turning down the radio in your car helps you read addresses better,” he returned.

Then we got to laughing again and both had to be reminded my the other service tech to pull our masks back up or risk his getting written up and me getting ‘86’d.’

And as I get ready to close out my day, I have plans to do some painting tomorrow. I did go to Walmart and buy a couple of inexpensive canvasses. What I’ll paint, I have no idea. And that’s exactly how I like it.

With all the unrest in the US, Canadian’s must feel like they’re living above a meth lab.

True story…
“Look at what I found in my book,” Mary said.

Half asleep, I rolled over and looked. It was a photograph of our son Kyle, sitting next to Chuck E. Cheese.

“Cool,” I said, smiling, as I turned over with the idea of falling back asleep.

As I drifted off, my brain suddenly kicked into gear. I spiraled back and asked to see it again.

“Where did you find that?” I asked.

“In this book, a marker, I guess,” my wife answered.

“Isn’t that one the paperbacks we bought at the Sally-Anne?” I asked, referring to the Salvation Army.

“Yes.”

“And you found a picture of Kyle in it?”

“Yes.”

“Were you using the photo as a book mark or something?”

“No.”

“So how did it get into the book?”

“I don’t know.”

There was a length of silence between us before she offered, “I read this book a long time ago.”

“When was it published?”

“Nineteen-ninety-eight…you don’t think?” she asked.

“Yeah, I do think. I believe you bought the same book you read years ago and had at one time used that particular photo as a book mark,” I answered, “And you know how I don’t believe in coincidences.”

1843 hours — Soon the sunshine will be removed from the sky and replaced by a multifaceted star shine. That is how most days close when there are no clouds in the sky. And I was honored to sit, looking up, seeing the first twinkle from the vast and coming darkness, so my day is complete.

Never did get my planned shower in, instead spending my time writing. Besides, my wife likes it when I skip a shower because it saves a few cents. During the high heat of the summer months, watering the grass, along with doing the dishes and laundry really plays havoc on the financials.

And speaking of laundry, I must remember to spray my tee-shirt tonight before bed. As terrible as it may sound, I have not changed my clothes since the start of the weekend and it shows by the various stains of sloppy joe from Friday night, Saturday evening’s spaghetti meal and tonight’s chicken wings.

Another thing I will do prior to bedtime is check my various social media statuses. I always end the night as I begin my morning, checking Twitter, where I am participating in a year-long writing exercise. This is all that I use the platform for as it is filled with snatches of news and other snatches busy, trying to take down what’s left of my Americana.

Everything that I have written today, I have also posted. This comes after having been told a couple of days ago that I post too much and that this is the reason that people stop following me or simply disconnect from my social media. I find that a good thing to know, because they’d really be upset with me today.

Finally, my friend Rick McNamara sent me the Ernest Hemingway poem, ‘The Age Demanded.’ He said, and I must absolutely agree, that it describes the culture in 2020:

The age demanded that we sing
And cut away our tongue.
The age demanded that we flow
And hammered in the bung.
The age demanded that we dance
And jammed us into iron pants.
And in the end the age was handed
The sort of shit that it demanded.

I’ve taken the liberty to add my own verse:

The age demanded we go in silence
And with battle axes ready.

1233 hours — Sitting in direct sunshine, dry heat of middle day on my freckled back, I find myself quickly exhausted, a sign, perhaps from God Himself, telling me I’m getting old or am already there. I need to be moving, not seated, not at rest, if I’m to remain outside in this summer’s blast, but I also like to think of myself, bare foot in the freshly mown grass, recharging my astral batteries.

Hardly a sound can be heard, the buzzing bug, a singing bird, and even the raucous laughter of playing children are absent. Seems all have found a place to avoid this heat and the sun’s rays.

And now I return from my daydreaming, learning that I am not paying attention, as looking about, finding myself alone. Even my dogs are smarter than me, the superior being, having escaped to the air conditioned interior of our home, where I can picture each in my mind’s eye, them lay on the brown leather couch, tongues lolling limply from their toothy grins, panting, cooling.

But me, I’ll sit here until I begin to feel that subtle quake, the one that comes from somewhere deep inside me. I’ll pay attention to it, knowing it will grow into a stronger tremble that will tell me I need, that I must, go inside before I grow sick to my stomach and I begin to taste that bile-gas that slowly grows and rises in one’s throat, burning at my esophagus and touching my epiglottis without warning.

Maybe this is something peculiar only to my body, my non-astral body…

Such is a Sunday afternoon of sitting thinking, reciting unwritten prose to myself with the hope of remembering even a fragment of what is mentally stated later as I sit before my notebook. And there’s my quake.

Try as you might, you can’t Febreze all the odor out of bullshit.

we are all human
a shard pot, dropped, cracked
red is our life glue

0927 hours – Been up over an hour, drinking coffee, trying to clear my head of the ragged dreams from the dark. Listening to my wife’s music selection, from Al Green’s “Let’s Stay Together,” to “Ventura,” by America, and then something by Dave Gates and Bread, followed up with a show tune from ‘Jesus Christ Superstar,’ where the singer is defending Mary Mag’s virtue.

She’s busy painting the outside of the garage door leading from our front room and into the garage. Tried to help her, by removing the deadbolt from it. This thing is like no deadbolt I’ve ever seen before. Sucker is stuck in there, but good. She told me to forget it. She’ll paint around it.

Had to rework my haiku poem from last night: “In Kerouac’s Fire.” It was part of one of my many weird dreams that included attending a British War Memorial, bagpipes and all. Frightening faces of dead soldiers pulling up in coal train carriages for the services is a tad bit disconcerting.

Haven’t even taken a shower yet and probably won’t till much later. My hair stands at attention, saluting in all sorts of directions. Funny actually. And I gotta find my glasses again.

A motorized para-sail is buzzing above our neighborhood and there is the smell of wildfire in the morning air. I’m thinking it is to the west of us, beyond Hungry Valley.

Gonna have another cup of coffee and enjoy, Michael Martin Murphy’s ‘Wildfire,’ a song I used to close out my nighttime broadcasts with back before the corporations took over programming all the damned radio stations in the universe.  People still debate the meaning behind the lyrics — I love that.

“Yes the cross-sawed redwood log turns into a coal and looks like a City of the Gandharvas or like a western butte at sunset.” Jack Kerouac, Big Sur

the city burning
resin redwood log aglow
fire bombing past

Been picking at the idea like one picks at a week old scab, that I should give up writing stories. I don’t drink enough to call myself an alcoholic, through you shake my family tree and several or more would fall out, never spilling a drop, nor am I an addict either to pill or to needle.

Therefore, I’ve come to realize that I will never be a giant in the field of writing, because I haven’t a truly singular voice. Nope, mine is a conglomeration of those who’ve written what I’ve read, my grand-folks, parents and the little kid next door.

Taking my rightful place at the back of the line, I should simply journal, make a record of my days, nights, things in between. After all, I’m not writing to live, rejection notices abound on this fact, but rather living to write, where the words are free and the view is stressless.

Besides, who needs another writer, we’re a dime a dozen and each of us has a tale to tell and oft times it is the same tale, only using different words. So, whadda ya say, shall I go forth with the Diary of a Mad Writer?