One writer's day. An attempt to paint a fresh look at some of what happens when we practice our craft.
Somehow between the pressing reality of daily life we must find our way to our writing spaces and write!
The rooster crowed out in the yard. A somewhat fitful night of trying to sleep, I might call this: non- sleeping, sleeping. I’m sure you can identify. Seems as though ninety percent of those I speak to on this topic agree with this outlook. That being, sleep after say sixty can and has become an elusive thing. As time goes by this seems to only worsen. Add to this is my wife’s refusal to allow me to deal with my nightly slumber or lacking there-of, in my manner, she has added this as another part of her ‘area of influence’. No, I cannot rise from bed say at midnight to walk, silently, a walking meditation, obviously the idea is to knock sleep into my head, to wear myself down, hello? But no, I can’t. No, I can’t go to my office on sleepless nights to putter, to write… No, I can’t and perhaps this could be an issue for a future piece; not now.
‘Lights out’ is officially the moment that the last one up, say, for example, watching a laptop movie (with earphones), the other one has already said good night. The fly in the soup here is, let’s say one of us is having trouble falling asleep. Now, this is after everyone has said goodnight and the last one with a light on, in my case a tiny reading lamp, in her case a movie on her Notebook. So the sleepless one finds the need to continue with some kind of activity. The sleepless one, based on our unwritten rule, cannot now turn on an apparatus after having said goodnight. Think of the upheaval if this were allowed. You would never enjoy the sleep-inducing knowledge that once lights go out that they shall remain off.
Exceptions to this rule is a minor difference. If at bedtime there was some sort of disagreement, could be anything: ‘you failed to take out the garbage, again’, or, ‘I can’t believe you forgot the coffee…’, or, ‘you spoke of this with the boys before asking me about it…’ This kind of ripple could in fact cause one of the two to suffer sleeplessness. The one unable to sleep, generally the one who feels they got the short end of the stick in the disagreement, may feel the need to turn their light back on, say to read, or to listen to a talk on the cell or watch a movie on the Notebook.
You can see how when the light gets switched on this could add to the unsettled atmosphere. A way around this and a technique that can even provide fodder to repair the misunderstanding is to voice gently the desire to turn lights back on, ‘if that’s okay’. See what I mean? However, if one of us just flips on the sleep destroying light without warning or consideration then all bets are off, there will be trouble.
So to backtrack to the start: I can’t? Right! No, I can’t just do a walking meditation. It causes her stress, put simply. How about stirring ever so gently, hardly a ripple, I swear, to sit in a cross leg posture to meditate? No, can’t do this either. Just can’t. I tell you I can’t because she refuses me permission to do so. I know putting it like that sounds bad. This causes her stress, is a duress upon her plain of peace. I want to be very careful here and not slip into a zone of ridicule; which could happen, but I will not allow it. Otherwise, it simply becomes another, silly, catfight. I put my mind into her head, try my best to capture what it is about my sitting up, ever so slowly, to sit utterly without motion or sound, (in fact, snore-free!), that may be a source of grief for her. No, not being whatever here, other than sincere; what is it that bothers?
I confess that I might find it a bit unnerving if after lights out she were to sit up and start flipping through her massive Pinterest files. How do I know she’s not slinking off to the kitchen… to get the kitchen knife… hahaha, kidding. Don’t think she’s capable of that, but we all can snap.
Whatever the answers may be, I’ll leave that to shrinks and sleep experts to provide explanations; the fact remains that I can’t do these. I for the life of me can’t see it. Yes some have advised me, ’hey, just say you’re gonna do this and not explain or worse, don’t ask for permission, just do it,’ I wonder what kind of world these people live in, what movie world they think they inhabit. These have no idea what sort of hell this would unleash, pain lasting at least for four days.
We move on. No, this is not a treatise on an ongoing struggle with my wife, though so much of what I will say almost inevitably involves her for the clear reason that we live together, alone. Both of us fiercely independent humans. In fact, I would venture to say the fact we have carried on now for over twenty-five years is a clear testament to our ability and willingness to carry on as a couple.
It’s been suggested that much has to do with the fact that my wife is a Virgo and I a rather sloppy and hard-headed Aries…
Finally, at around 5.30 am, this hour can vary from 4:45 up to 6:00, Max our Beagle is standing at my bedside, whining and itching. The poor bastard has a skin condition which he inherited in the Panamanian tropics, he carries about him the distinct aroma of carrion. And like with all seemingly impossible things, yes you get accustomed.
I imagine if buzzards flying aloft ever spotted him running happily around the yard they might be mildly surprised at such a spectacle, living death. The word redolent comes to mind, a delectable, chubby morsel for the big black carrion-eating birds. Who knows, maybe a new menu choice, a moving steak Tartare. I finally give in and not entirely willingly scrub his sore skin, which is what he wants, needs. His plastic cone over his head to protect him from himself catches on the wood edge of my bed table, putting out a horrendous and shattering racket. My wife rolls over and groans displeasure, saying in essence: ‘get out of bed to deal with Max’. Up I go. On one level I am grateful Max has restored my life long ability to rise before the sun. I’d lost the ability to rise before the sun as one of the handfuls of results of getting cancer. No, I don’t recommend it.
The steps in a day turn out are far more complicated than what you might imagine, incredibly complicated. As I am human, I have an ongoing attempt at simplifying my daily routines, those already established of course. How am I going to try to simplify something if I’m doing it for the first time? Say like preparing Chateaubriand for ten. That’s nor routine. Anyway. I roll, no I don’t roll, that’s bullshit and I wonder how that has become part of the lexicon. Hate that word. Lexicon.
I slowly sit, head, and back bend way forward, remembering that this gravity-induced pull can eventually cause serious neck or back issues. Though I remind myself that I’m going on seventy and it still hasn’t messed up my posture. Still, I hear parental voices somewhere: sit up. I sit, will myself back to the dream world, which I can actually do. I have fallen back into sleep and have dreamt that I was crashing forward through a prickly bush in a hot dessert only to jerk awake in time to catch a delicious, slow-motion fall I had entered into before actually hitting the bedroom floor.
Now awake. Reaching down and scrubbing my little fat Max. Why do I do it? Because I love him and I’m a human, I’m a lot smarter than he is. Or so I think. So I scrub. A massage for one not long in this world, the rash only worsens and unless a miracle happens he will die, hopefully not miserably, not if I can help it. Where is my mind now? No, I won’t brush my teeth first. I did this for all my life, brush first. This is another cancer thing. Cancer has affected a number of things in my daily life, brought changes. One of those: stopped brushing my teeth first thing as I awaken and enter the bathroom.
Strange, you might say, truly a strange bird here. Nope. Again, something happened to certain priorities when one of this worlds’ worst illnesses came a-knockin'. Just that simple. Think about it. Events in your life can influence your daily actions. Perfectly normal damn it! Of course, the shrinks could explain it a hundred ways from Sunday, oh hell so can I, but why bore living hell out of you? You know, beginning with fresh perspectives on life and on and on… But we’ll leave it there.
I get around to brushing my teeth, without fail at around 10.30 am. My older sister commented a month or so ago when this fact came to life over coffee with old friends from Louisiana, speaking of our daily rituals, ‘no wonder you have such perfect teeth’, this in reference to that I brushed before anything else. Now then a new issue. Maybe I should return to this lifelong routine?
In my mind, I tell Max I love him and wish him well. He looks deeply into my eyes, as though deciphering my heartfelt feelings towards him. His sad eyes are of course typical Beagle eyes, now compound that with having to deal with a skin itch that enters his ears too, a cone wrapped about his head so he can’t get at the irritation. He literally rolls on the floor. At first, we thought how cute then quickly saw that he was in excruciating discomfort, doing what nature directed him to do, the twisting and turning an effort to get at the source. Without his cone, the toothy creature would bite, lick, and eat open his body, bleed, infect and die. Nothing funny there. I stand and head to the bathroom, but not before going to my window and drawing the curtains so the morning sun doesn’t disturb my wife. If once in a blue moon she rises before I do, as a result of a sleepless night, she will likewise draw the curtains.
If the moon is there, I greet it with the usual reverence. I may try to remember part of a Buddhist prayer…
En route to the window Max has his cushion bed in the path and countless times in my drunk like sleepy mind have almost tripped and wound up on the hard floor. It's amazing and somewhat surprising just how clumsy the up-right human frame can be. Makes me question the wisdom of getting us up on just two rather than the four.
Lift the seat, the right thing to do continues to take me this lifetime to learn this seemingly simple lesson. Not simple. As it flows, here is another fall asleep opportunity, almost do every morning, literally start dreaming and falling, awakened by the bodily balances alert system that keeps me upright. Is the bathroom window open? If so close it as she will claim that I am destroying her privacy by not closing it, this despite that the window starts at her chin up, and our room is on the second floor. Oh well, who is one to wonder about these things? Might have more to do with the wonderful, cool mountain air here in Antigua, Guatemala; too cold. Just out the window is volcano Agua in its majesty, reason enough, I say, to better rip out the whole damn wall.
I reach around for two of several pills for the day, stomach pills to fight Reflux, and something called stomach Gerd, I think. Gerd the name happens to be very similar to my first love, thus I remember her many times daily, this is one of those times… Pop one into my mouth. Careful to take the tiny capsule first as the second pill is almost football size and in my dry throat has caught and almost gagged me to death standing there next to the toilet, clutching my throat and my snoring wife in the next room, not daring to awaken her for the life-saving smack on the back.
I survey the face in the mirror looking back at me. The guy still smiles with me and at me, says suck it up. Looks carefully at the little face marks that look like new melanomas, not knowing what melanomas presumably look like. Often I forget my glass of water at my bedside, go back to get that, the water from the sink might kill you, this is not a town in the U.S. The capsule, unfortunately, has begun to melt in my mouth and the pills real, awful flavor beginning to invade my upper head. Swallowed! Water to wash it down just in time, the bad flavor remains. I am blessed, I at least have these pills, most in this country don’t, can’t pay for them. Now I take the big pill and today it goes down no sweat.
Very carefully separate my cell phone from the earplug cord, placing the cord back on my bed stand, being careful not to bang the earbuds against wood, and awaken her. I let myself out of the room, leaving the door a bit more than ajar so that Max can exit when he’s ready. He doesn’t leave the room with me for some very interesting Beagle reasons. Suffice it to say that he’s figured out that this early in my routine there is still nothing to eat. So he’ll stretch out on the cold bedroom floor, watch me leave, and wait until he hears me rustling around downstairs before he starts down.
As I leave the bedroom it occurs to me close the door, an experiment done perhaps once a month, sealing Max inside with mom. Many years ago as a young man and on different occasions the term devious was applied to me; I didn’t know the definition of the word then. As my hand is about to leave hold of the knob on the outside a sleepy voice calls: ‘the door, please leave the door open, you know that Max can’t get out then I have to get up to open for him’, uncanny and with a sufficient degree of reason I feel. ‘Sorry’ and leave the door open. A part of me almost smiles. Hm, some analysis called for here? Not today.
Into my sanctum, my office, silent as a slug, flip on three overheads, click, click, click, so loud! Remove sweat pants pajamas and put on fresh stuff, jeans, undershirt. My office is also my closet, been this way for probably ten years, so much easier and highly recommended. Took her several years for her to accept. ‘we’re separating, I don’t like this, you know what I mean…?’ And yes, I do know, but truly it’s no big deal; life goes on, man.
I pour a tiny bit of Johnsons’ baby powder into my Crocs, my feet immediately feel grateful and refreshed. It’s the powders coolness. Not overdo it though because too much and the powder will fly like a snowdrift out the sides through the tiny breather bilge holes Crocs has intelligently built into these shoes. I’m aware crocs are looked down as utterly void of style, this by much of the population, in the US that is, Latins could care less in most cases. I could care less, I love them and I’d do an ad for them, ‘ah yes, to hell with the issue of more plastic unleashed on Earth, they feel good, go for it!’
I pull on my Levis blue jean jacket, the cool one, as in groovy, Sagan my rocker son even said so, an amazing garment, brilliant in its design, perhaps worth mentioning its amazing historical element, badass at 5:45 AM! If it’s chilly even the badass collar goes up man, makes me want to write, makes me want to ride the wild ride! If it’s cold, I’ll drape one of several shawls around my neck, hangs low, badass. Badass in a good ass way… choosing the shawl will go on way too long. You are spared.
On my very cluttered work tables, three of them, I see my heart pills, calcium blocker for my SVT hyper heartbeat thing. Yep, been taking them for since about 06. Always a small stop or pause, to take it now or a little later remembering that pills, more pills, on a still empty stomach can equal hell very shortly. I opt to wait until something gets put into my stomach. These pills I very smartly manage them using a plastic pill programmer box, I’d have to be sort of stupid to mess up the schedule. Which I have done. Not sure which is worse, taking two in a day, or missing the day… Still no satisfactory theory on that despite all my google searches.
Sometimes, sometimes as this will conflict with what I said earlier about Maxs’ actions. Sometimes he will come into my office as I prepare to head down, as he did this morning, and begin his almost hysterical rolling around on top of my meditation cushion.
By this time I will have reviewed and deleted most of what came in on the Inet. Things I look forward to are messages from my sibs, their latest exploits. Some I respond to right away. My sister Brit is an early mover.
I pick up the laundry basket outside of our bedroom and take it downstairs so that she doesn’t have to do it. Her knees years ago along with her arches began giving out after a knee operation. She’ll be walking along, not necessarily unmindfully, and as she describes it her step just disappears!
Some years ago after my wife had knee surgery in New Orleans we did Bourbon Street to celebrate, late afternoon sun, she in crutches, the summer heat was stifling. Cheering caught our attention and above on a second-floor balcony a large group of women were cheering and calling down, to us! I thought that perhaps for some reason I’d caught their eye, laughable and sad at the same time. The cheering was for her. On the black, filigreed metal railing a large banner read Santa Monica Lesbian Annual Celebration. My wife, statuesque Latina, wild, black curly hair, sweat pouring down her face, and her partly exposed breasts, beamed and blew kisses. An undeniably erotic picture in the way she hung from her crutches, her bandaged knee with skirt jacked-up mid-thigh just so for freshness…
Also, sub-optimal have become her elbows and shoulders, her wrists. A spooky pain behind her left rib cage. There are others. Lately, her eyes have begun to dry out, drops; at night the hot flashes commensurate with the beginnings of menopause, no doubt there. Anyway, it’s age.
Down she goes with a crash! One time she was taking the last two steps down and lost it. She was lucky it was the last two stairs and not the top; she twisted her ankle, could’ve been far worse. Yeah, so she washes the laundry in the machine, dries it then folds it all and will often bring it all back upstairs at the end of the day.
Lately, more than usual is her penchant for slicing into her fingers with big freshly sharpened kitchen blades. While in hotel school working under an Austrian chef, a true tyrant, I learned well how to use the steel, the sharpener.
Just as I reach the ground floor I’ll reach under the night lamp to switch it off. We leave it on nights as an emergency measure for when it shakes, Guatemala is constantly shaking, so in case we have to get out fast, this allows us to see where we’re walking in the middle of the night. This especially important considering her thing about suddenly falling. In the kitchen, I begin to gather my things needed for getting my breakfast and coffee.
But first, there is Max. I get his dog chow from the laundry room and put some into his empty bowl, fill the other with water. On a platter near the counter are Maxs medicines. In the AM I get a pill for the itch and another for his Thyroid. Neither seems to have any effect. The only way he’ll swallow them is if I mix them in a morsel of some kind, like cheese, or bread. If my wife has sliced ham, I’ll grab a slice which works wonderfully, down go the pills! I need to be very care full here because if she sees that I’ve grabbed a slice she voices high discontent. Not entirely without reason, she asks me. ‘Did you wash your hands before handling the ham?’ One of my personal endeavors now is to speak the truth; they say things go better for you. ‘Why didn’t you wrap the ham up nicely like I had it, I mean it’s all broken up…’ Yeah, I get that, I mean no one wants a sandwich of ham if it’s made from ham that has come into contact, sort of, with the dog. Makes sense if you observe where Max puts his nose throughout the day! It can be pretty funny.
The ham however makes getting Max to swallow bitter pills almost like a beef sandwich at a picnic, so easy. So now lately I’ve successfully and very carefully re-wrapped the ham after getting a slice, she being none the wiser. As for there being contact between Max and the ham, and people, not really, negligible.
In the kitchen, I can now concentrate on my nutritional needs. The night before, if, if, I repeat purposefully here, I am last to go upstairs, I will have filled my coffee cup with milk for the morning’s first coffee. Will have also left a glass with about an inch of milk for my Ensure, older person’s power drink. In the morning I now remove these from the fridge, put the coffee into the mug along with two Splendas, into the micro for 67 seconds. My pre-poured glass with milk I add six scoops of Ensure. This too begun after cancer killed my appetite and my weight loss was too fast. My wife’s new mantra for my benefit and audial consumption had to do with dying from not eating enough. Into the Ensure mix I’ll add a smidge of cinnamon and honey, delicious, goes down with gusto.
Max now content and me with my coffee will head to the lower living room. There I open the door, three locks, to the yard where Max immediately heads to relieve himself. I step out into the cool, predawn sereno, wet morning dew, hangs refreshingly in the air and settles on the grass, look towards the west and see the two volcanos on that side, their tops awash in the first sun, gold. I flip on the news.
If it’s Wednesday or Saturday, I’ll take the garbage out to the drums, and place them outside the gate for the pickup later on.
A happy camper now, both of us in fact. From the fridge, along with my coffee, I will have brought with me a small, drinkable yogurt called ‘La-La’, I guess like: being happy in, yes, La-La land! I must admit, drinking this yogurt does in fact have this happy effect upon me. On further analysis, the fact that drinking La La almost makes me happy makes me wonder what they put in the stuff. Hm, like maybe a dash of Hydrocodone, hey it’s Guatemala. I’m Guatemalan so I can say those things; at least according to my Moms teachings, (which were on some levels wiser than the Buddhas, he would have agreed).
It also says something about that it takes basically very little to raise my bubble of joy. Of course, as a good Buddhist, I know this ‘up’ is temporary, not permanent, otherwise, I’d be letting myself in for a real let down! Everything changes…constantly, almost at the speed of light, everything that is, think of it. ‘Knowing’ this releases ‘stuff’, try it sometimes, is a source of peace!
This year again, as a strange result of the cancer phenomena, I have begun to put a fire into the chimney every morning. Could it be a: enjoy it while I still can? So often my order will be first set the fire before going into the kitchen, this so that by the time I do sit for the news the fire will have started heating up the space. As the cold weather is behind us now and that snappy chill is mostly gone I will often light my fire after I have gotten my coffee.
Needless to say, I have a very detailed approach to lighting the fire. Obviously, if there’s no wood, I get it from the pile outside. Using the wondrous fire starter, ocote, I first stack firewood just so. Not a teepee design, rather more of an off-set square construction. One match and up it goes, in no time a satisfying, crackling flame. Max enjoys getting close too. I imagine it wreaks havoc amongst the little bugs under his skin, burns them up! Satisfying picturing this, at least.
Incidentally just this morning, I intentionally allowed the firewood to be all used up. The wood is pricey and now that holy week approaches so does the warmer weather, I suspect I will stop this part of my routine, for now, that is. As my health seems to promise improvement, I feel great, I suspect my ‘older’ routines will retake, or so I think. Strange how it all sort of unfurls.
As the world news is given, the sun rises completely. My wife gets up and will frequently come downstairs, ‘good morning’. An offer of pancakes to which I will more than likely say no thank you. She does not appreciate this but seems to accept that my cancer impacted what had been one of our time-honored rituals, pancakes. She mumbles something in Spanish that includes the words: ‘strange, how rare, or I don’t understand you…’. I sort of understand this, but it is what it is. Neither am I going to stuff unwanted pancakes down my throat. Though I have done it! You know, for the team.
After say an hour and a half, the time since I got up I will finally head upstairs to my office. Sit at my laptop and start in with writing whatever wishes to present itself. Mostly nothing of note. Currently trying to get enough stories for a collection. Why? Who knows. I’ve never really published anything, I mean a minor article here and there, a couple of restaurant articles and a wood carving story in El Salvador, several social commentaries in the Honduran newspapers, one an informed commentary to the local populace as recently the Scientology people saw fit to install themselves in our city of San Pedro Sula. So like real minor stuff… So why? Just do, like the pancakes, it is the way it is. I will ‘work’ away for several hours.
Here it is about getting something down on paper. The hope is that a plot will emerge. Some time is dedicated to aligning my mind with the universe in such a way that perhaps a plot for a worthy novel might fall into my lap. Sounds fancier than what it is, essentially relaxing so the thoughts flow. Somehow I’m zigging when I might be zagging, resulting in missing that key pathway. It has to do with stumbling perhaps over those issues of interest that lead to a worthwhile turn of events, fiction or otherwise. Not sure I’m doing this right as it doesn’t happen!
That plot from heaven refuses to show itself. So I do what many writers do: write whatever comes, show enthusiasm in the telling. Lately, as I said, working on a group of gradually forming short stories, I call: ‘shorts’. Done well could provide me a second book for self-publishing in Amazon.
At some point will get my second cup of coffee, then as we near noon will get a cool diet Coke.
Go to around noon. During this time I’m also doing things house related, some office stuff like communicating with the lawyer who is working on some immigration documents for my family. Going over upcoming San Pedro Sula, Semana Santa week, holy week with my pastry company manager, ongoing effort to squeeze a profit out of my ten-year-old business. Make busy stuff.
An attempt at getting along with my spouse. Sounds worse than it is. One could say we are generally successful. No one promised a rose garden, none expected. The daily routine in my life anyway is of filling the day in such a way so that at day’s end I feel as though it was worth it.
To finish: I realize this account could have easily stretched to two hundred page book-length, we humans and our details, mind-boggling to put it mildly. Remember Solzhenitsyn’s’: One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, so much is packed in our daily routine…
And life goes on.
