Far away across the field
The tolling of the iron bell
Calls the faithful to their knees
To hear the softly spoken magic spells --- Pink Floyd
With your head down in the pig bin
Saying “keep on digging”
Pig stain on your fat chin --- Pink Floyd
I have a mouse and he hasn’t got a house
I don’t know why. I call him Gerald
He’s getting rather old but he’s a good mouse --- Pink Floyd
Sometimes you wake up with silly lyrics in your head like “I’ve got a brand new pair of roller skates” and sometimes it’s pink Floyd. I woke up during an earthquake in Anchorage once, the clock radio was playing that part from Dark Side of the moon where the ladies voice is just making Ahhh sounds and the telephone was ringing. I answered the phone the way one does in a dream. It was my friend, the one whose house I was staying at, calling from work.
“Did you feel that?” He asked
“Oh thank god you felt it too” I asked.
In 1976, before my beautiful maroon mustang was wrapped around a tree, two other friends and I drove to Chicago to catch Pink Floyd at Soldier Field. Along I-94 we ran across a blue and white mustang 73 fast back, we rode side by side in the three lanes. It was the bi-centennial year and both revolution and patriotism was high.
At the concert, for part of the show, they floated a living room of balloons in the air, a father in an armchair, a TV, a kid on a rug, a mother on a loveseat knitting. There were of course other props and other balloons, like, for instance, a pig on the wing. That was the album they were touring; Pigs on the wing; (part 2) But you know that I care for you/and I know that care for me too/so we won’t feel alone/or the weight of the stone/any fool knows a dog needs a home/ a shelter from pigs on the wing.
I could go into the things I did in the mid-seventies to get away from boredom. It seems somehow less wholesome on the Box. I mean the yearning masses are the same ones as the last place, it’s just it’s not very shocking to you lot. Not that I’m trying to be shocking, but the tales deserve at least a little outrage.
I’m dealing with dementia a lot lately. If my dad were the poster child for dementia it would seem almost pleasant, imagine not being able to remember the things you don’t want to remember, seems like trading the things you do want to remember or the things of five minutes ago is a pretty fair trade. Buried somewhere in a Tom Waits song (he was never a member of pink Floyd) is the lyric --- and the things can’t remember tell the things you can’t forget that history puts a saint in every dream.
I have a busy week. It starts in a few hours. There’s grandwhelping, transition meetings, closure meetings, furniture outfitting for dads new studio, eye exams for mom pending cataract surgery on her other eye, and, something I’m forgetting but am sure to be reminded. It doesn’t sound like much, but there is a fresh six inches on the ground, I rarely do much of anything, and it’s all high stress and second guessing, second guessing for no apparent reason. I’m being praised for this arrangement, mostly by people who are either glad they aren’t doing it or people who will profit from it.
I haven’t felt this fucking old and feeble and not up to the task since I was twenty-four. At twenty four I was the father of two, had to decide to leave school and eke out some sort of living to support my family, purchase a house, be an adult. Yes, I know, nobody is ever up for that task, yes, I know, you would have sure I was going to do just fine. I almost hate to say this but every parent is going to fuck up and that self-doubt never goes away and it’s part of what will make you good at it; the fear of not doing good at it. There are a lot of similarities with old folks. Like making life altering decisions because they aren’t capable of doing it themselves. You aren’t allowed to scream “yeah, me either!” Some people will be very kind to you when you fuck up, I assume some won’t, and some will wonder what on earth you mean by fucking up.
The irony of sitting for the grandwhelp then sitting for my father the next day isn’t lost on me. Irony. You ask? Yes, both will insist they don’t need a sitter, well, in some form or the other.
I quit watching the show I’m not watching and am now watching a very compelling show called The Bridge. The Bridge they are referring to is the bridge between El Paso and Juarez. For your basic cop drama it’s pretty well done, I’m watching the most recent season, the first one. I hope it gets a second. I use these things to distract me from being inside my own head too much. Perhaps it’s not healthy, perhaps it’s the only thing that is healthy --- neither opinion would sway me. For someone who is leading a relatively simple life things sure do get complicated.
I had to read Eliot’s Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock again the other day. It’s probably applicable; I would prefer it were not applicable. It’s a well-written poem; it’s difficult to believe, however, here in the jaded future, that a mere century ago one could become famous for writing a poem, especially one like that. The relative fame of a work of art is almost not relevant except that if it is a piece that genuinely affects the human heart it should be seen, read, felt with the fingers and not rotting in an attic somewhere.
Ok, like old TV shows, the Box is a distraction, not exclusively, but enough of one that I need to go now and do things or get ready to do things. And I’m spent.
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