I don’t know what issues you’re grappling with today, but I’m having a time of it with Slurpee.  He’s petulant.   There was a three-day stupor, and we got past it, but now he’s rounding the same piece of the pool again and again.  He won’t come out of the deep end. 

So yes, the deep end brilliantly gleams, but here’s the problem with that — people don’t touch bottom in deep ends, it’s the shallow end I need smoothed.  Shallow! 

In the shallow end’s a layer of bugs, they’re the ones that curl up, they call them “potato.”  There was some sort of kool-aid drinking suicide while I was gone, because on return hundreds of potato bugs were flattened out dead.  In the shallow end.  On the bottom.

I set Slurpee loose where he was this morning, then watched.  I tried to let him make his way there on his own.  There was no rhyme nor reason to his movement — zig-zags, circles, squares — none at all.  I climbed into the pool and tried to coax him.  “Here, Slurpee,” I said.  “Nice and easy, atta boy.”  But then as soon as I let go there was a beeline to the deep.

I’m at wit’s end.  Slurpee needs tough love and I’m at a place in my life where I can’t give it.  If you think you can help, bring margaritas and come by. 

It takes a village.

Jose is cutting the bushes, or maybe they’re shrubs.  Shrubs sounds shorter than bush, though, these are tall — very tall shrubs, they start with an A.  The snow made them stoop, I think we covered that once, and now Jose is cutting them down.  Not all the way, but certainly too far.  The neighbors will be able to hurl things at the driveway, and glare when I’d rather they not.  My privacy’s shrunk.  

M-IIIs lovely wife needs to come for gin and tonics, and the filter needs to work in the pool.   The water, in degrees, is 82. 

Yes, Mr. Hamina, I agree, I should cling to my sulk.  I’ve little to say when I’m happy.  If you can make me sad today, please call.   I’m dangerously low on inspiration. 

The sun came out and I’m much more superficial now, thank goodness.  You see?  It’s the light.  Because it’s quiet here, still, but it’s light.  I need light. 

So anyway … yeah, light. 

The year the Jenks’ moved to the suburbs, Howard bought a piano and Ellen begn, again, to play.

I’m waking at 3:00 now, it’s fairly regular.  And sometimes I read, or even work, and sometimes I resume sleep but it’s a terrible way to go about it.  For one, the worst thoughts come at 3:00.  Why is that?  It’s not the quiet.   Because in the day, sometimes, it’s quiet and the thoughts not nearly so bad.  So I suppose it’s the dark, though I turn lights on, but maybe it’s because they’re articifial.

It was heartbreaking to see A.’s apartment, that’s all.  That’s a silly thing to say, I know.  A wordsman with my skill should not fall back on “heartbreak.”  For one, you can’t break it, my heart.  Not now.  It’s lost the spring the bounce, the strength required of something to break.  You can kick it, I suppose, or squash it with your heel, but break, well the poor thing … If you could see it, you’d know.  My heart has cowered, it’s aim is to lie low.  It’s been beaten so badly it’s just waiting it out, hoping no one will notice it, hoping at best for small pleasures; a cookie in the afternoon perhaps, with tea. 

My heart sits on an old plastic-covered chair by a window, in a kitchen with cheap linoleum and smokes cigarettes back to back.  My heart tries not to think.  It drinks coffee and chews its nails and focuses on meaningless rituals like the paper and putting the cup in the sink.  My heart now takes sugar in its coffee for the comfort of swirling the spoon.  My heart’s great aspiration is just to be left alone. 

It was heartbreaking though, yes, the apartment.  My poor heart when it starts to relax a bit, I grab it violently by the neck and bash it up.  Like an old man passed out in an alley, that’s how I treat my heart.  I’m a no-good delinquent schoolboy, kicking and laughing cruelly. 

I grabbed my heart by it’s frayed yellowed collar and made it see A.’s apartment and my poor little heart summoned the strength, once more, to collapse.

You can scrub one from your life.  You wouldn’t think you can, not starting out anyway.  But you can scrub a person from your life, it appears to be quite simple.  If you walked into A.’s apartment, you’d see I was never there, in his life, not even casually passing by.  You could come into my house, here, and say the same of A.  Nothing.  None of it ever happened, not even a dream good or bad.  Nothing. 

There are children and people will insist they are threads, but I’ll tell you, because I’m here with them and in all of this, that strangely they’re not.  They’re acquaintenances passed back and forth.  “Oh, you know A.?  Yes, I knew him too, once.  But that was long ago.” 

Really, that’s all.  I look at them some days and forget where they came from.  Think for a moment how odd that they’re here, who brought them?

I’m giving the apartment more significance, I suppose, because it’s early in the morning and that was recent and the dark and the quiet are parading it in my mind.  And the mind, weighing the evidence, just asked — “if you can scrub one from your life, then what was the point?”

And then the ducts heard someone call, and freed up tears. 

This is the problem with 3:00am.

The girl at Cornerstone told me to have a nice day.  And while I enjoy her double non-fat cappucinos — she’s good with the foam — I find it increasingly annoying this bossy dictate of hers.  She says it every time and every time it ruins my day.  I think she should have a good day and keep her nose out of everyone else’s.  It just so happens I’d planned a perfectly terrible day and now I’ll feel guilty all the while because it’s not good.

My neck hurts so I might be a monk.  The monks are stooped over, I saw them last week, and I think my neck would fit right in.  The bushes, too for that matter, they’re also stooped.  There are big tall bushes so the neighbors won’t see me and when it snowed last winter they all bent.  They never stood up again.  It’s a day to stoop and be monks, then.

Scruffy’s developed a worrisome gum habit.  The troubling part is I don’t know where he’s getting it.  He shows up with bright-colored gum in his hair and it’s in colors I would never buy.  Then he smacks it in my ear, he has no manners. 

I’ve got to get Jr. to a track meet somehow without physically being there, I have to magically transport him.  Unless you have a car and you can do it.  If you do have a car and very few felonies, please pick him up and drop him at the track, you’d be a big help.

I didn’t go to Rogersville, Anna, because I drove East on 84 instead.  To a place far away where everyone mows their yards at exactly 2:00pm on Sundays.  It had loads of charm.  Talk to me soon, I mean it. 

A. stopped by my house the other day, and I asked of him a favor — to first pick up milk.  He did that and I was tempted to think it sweet, until I looked at the milk.  It’s expired by two weeks.  Very subtle, A.  Nice one.   

I might go to Rogersville this weekend.  I’m craving chickens, I want to see chickens.  I’m also out of eggs.  If you’re out there and your name’s Anna and you have a sprawling estate full of goats and bees and asparagus, then I’d like you to invite me over.

Other than milk that’s expired, and chickens that are not … I have very little else to say.   

Yesterday I unraveled approximately 23 times.  Seems like a lot for one day, I suppose, but I was up early.  I unraveled once in front of a stranger, the stranger’s name was Tim and it was terribly generous of Tim to indulge me, I owe him.  My novel, I realize now, is much too dull.  I should have chronicled the goings on at Bills St. for one calendar year, just dotted down the high points and that, my friends, would be a book.  We’d all call it “action-packed.”

Scruffy is too needy and I’m going to keep the three hamplets.  Yes, only three.  We don’t talk about it anymore, the children and I.  We don’t talk anymore in terms of numbers, we’re happy they’re plural.  Yesterday Junior took them out in the yard and I watched them crawl through the grass and felt attached.  I can’t let them go.  If you’ve signed up for one, I’m very sorry.  You’ll have to wait for them to mate. 

I wanted to do nothing today after the ridiculous things of yesterday, but on days you want to do nothing there’s a dentist appointment.  Have you noticed that?  Every single time.  Pick a day, just any day at all to allow yourself to do nothing and I’ll bet you some licorice there will be a dentist appointment you’ve forgotten.  My dentist gives me RockStar energy drinks when I’m done so that’s the good thing about him.

If you’re a stranger and you want to call me, please do and I’ll tell you a story.    If on the other hand, you know me well, then don’t call just drive over here laden with gifts.

Do good work.

I’d tell you I turned a certain Crane Flies in, to the people who do stuff with those things, but there’s the chance of rejection so I don’t think I’ll tell you.  They may toss it in a cauldron while crowds of odd-shaped people hunch around cackling.  And then when you ask me, “Hey, when does your book come out?” I’d be sad and have to punch you. 

So I won’t tell you that I sent it in, I’ll let you presume. 

I have books to read and review and strawberry plants to gaze at.  Will gazing make the strawberries come soon?  I have a huge fruit-crush on my strawberry plants, there are four wine barrels full of them.  They’re pretty and I want the little red strawberries to come so I can eat one. 

I’m watering the garden that Anna planted and drinking the coffee they made at Cornerstone.  Rosalinda is here and I wish I’d married her, but I didn’t.  Still she saves me once a week, I’m lucky for that.

I need soup desperately today for lunch because I’m coughing a lot, I think I’m sick.  I need Tom ka.  That’s not the real name I don’t think, but bet it’s close.  From Thai Country, I need the coconut soup and I want shrimp in mine.  Or maybe tofu, I don’t care really.  Surprise me. 

The hamplets who used to be six are now four.  Which is even more disturbing right now because of their size.  One would be quite filling.  Scruffy is bugging the hell out of me and I still need to get a cat.  

The human heart, The Economist says, is as mysterious as the sex organs once were.  All the jilting and angst, I’d have to agree.  They’re stupid things our hearts.  I’d rather have had a third arm. 

Remember to bring my soup.

The scene at Bills Street last night was grisly, I’ll spare you details.  Well actually I won’t, but first I implore – you mustn’t judge Custard.  I’ve read up a little bit and it seems these things are normal.  There were 11 when we started, we’re down now to six.  Last night … hmm.  Well last night’s casualty seemed more personal.  How, indeed, do I even say it to you and keep your nerves intact.   A drink would be good, make it stiff and come right back.

Last night Jr. said, “Mom, there’s six hamplets left.  And the one that died is twisted up really thin.”

It wasn’t so much that number 7 was twisted up thin, but more that the only thing left of number 7 was a very thin little strip of skin.  Curled around a bit, like a lemon peel, only it was the color of hamster fur, and skin.      

You have to allow it’s a tough world to raise 11 kids in.  Alone, no less — we’ve not heard word one from the father.  So, again, go easy on Custard.  I’ve read these things are normal.  In three days we’ll give them away, reserve yours here.

I’m too far away from ice water, I’m craving a big glass.  And I’m much too close to Scruffy, that’s how it’s going today so far.  I’ve resurrected an old manuscript — it’s got a missing finger, Woody Allen, and a hooker, how could it go wrong? — and am toying with sending it in … along with the one about flies.  And we’ll just see what comes of all that. 

If you want to pencil me in for lunch, do it now, slots are filling up fast.  Ba-dum ching.

Custard is a wily little thing.  She’s the Houdini of hamsters — hey, it’s raining.  I didn’t expect that.  Anyway, Custard gets out at night regardless how we’ve wired her shut.  She escapes, I impressively sense it, Scruffy sniffs her out and I put her away.  This usually goes on around 2:00.  (AM).

Custard has 7 children now, down from 11.  At least two of them died in her cheek, a third turned up stiff, and the body of the fourth one was never found at all.  The children are learning there’s a different slightly darker life outside the bowls of cherries.    

I’ll be working all day, too busy to write to you.  And I’ve got things to do right now, so this is short.  I’ll be here by the phone, however, waiting for your call if you’re into that kind of thing.