Blood on the Keys

I've been sitting outside in the sun watching dinosaurs at the feeder. I really didn't want to come inside. It's 68 degrees (above zero!), all the screaming children are in school, all the solid citizens are at work, only deadbeats and dinosaurs left to enjoy god's globally-warmed-one-month-premature-spring creation. Except for sustaining a minor puncture wound to my hand compliments of the rusty needle-nose I used to pry apart a rusty wind chime, all's right with the world.

Well maybe not quite.

It's appropriate that our current unit down at the ol' preschool is the ever-popular DINOSAURS!, of which Yours Truly is officially one. Yes, Virginia, it's true, I'm celebrating (if that's the right word) a particularly gruesome birthday this week, and believe you me, I'm terrified. Scared shitless. Granted I'm also thrilled (actually I'm shocked) to be alive after all these years, but I never expected this milestone to arrive so...quickly. Where did the time go? What the fuck have I been doing for nine decades?

Obviously not pursuing any major career goals. Thus the sun on the deck at noon on a school day.

When people ask me what it is that I do, what line of work I'm in, I tell them with a nod to Mr. Keillor, "I'm an English Major." That should explain it. I was a wee lass at my mother's knee when first I wept over a poem, and I've been enslaved by the turn of a phrase ever since. As I recall, the poem in question was "The House With Nobody In It," which begins,

When e're I walk to Suffern
Along the Erie track,
I pass by a poor old farmhouse,
Its shingles all broken and black...

(Give me a moment to collect myself...)

It's a testament to the stranglehold words have always had on me that I didn't need to Google this. These lines are soldered permanently into some deep recess of my brain and will no doubt play a role in the last lucid moment I ever have. Which event may take place any day now.

Being an English Major releases you from a certain type of responsibility. You can't be expected to climb any proverbial ladders, corporate or otherwise, because the truth is you're motionally-challenged (as opposed to emotionally-challenged, the active state of most Math Majors). You're held captive by...well, by nothing a non-English Major would understand. You're simply held captive. By It All. Your natural instinct is not to take part in it, whatever it may be, rather, your instinct is to mull and observe and translate, using as few adverbs as possible.

Some people are called to English Majordom as surely as others are called to The Lord or The Law or California. It's in their blood.

I can see it now: the Movie of My Life, Part One, "I Was a Teenage English Major." And as such, I gave particular subjects wide berth. But now that I've broken a certain age barrier -- let's be honest, I've nuked it to kingdom come -- I find myself curious about some things which heretofore interested me nary a bit.

Like DINOSAURS!

The other day at preschool I learned that most dinosaurs were vegetarian! Like me! Not only that, they ruled the earth for -- get this! -- 150 million years!! Can you believe it? I'm blown away! I had no idea! What an ignorant sonofabitch I've been! And not only that (hold onto your hats!), did you know modern day birds evolved from dinosaurs? Isn't that a hoot? I can hear it now: "Look! Up in the air! It's a bird! It's a plane! It's a dinosaur!"

The preschool, you may recall, is annexed to a church, and I know for a fact that several staff members there have their doubts about the bird/dinosaur connection. How do I know? I eavesdropped at the ol' water fountain. I wouldn't be surprised if one or two also have their doubts about the dinosaurs themselves, seeing as how dinosaurs aren't mentioned in the bible. Neither are Republicans, but that hasn't stopped them.

It tickles me pink to realize some people are even more ignorant than I.

I suppose I've passed it a hundred times,
But I always stop for a minute,
And look at the house, the tragic house,
The house with nobody in it...

(This is starting to sound like a description of Yours Truly...)

Speaking of pink, there's blood all over these keys. Compliments of my puncture wound, which is leaking copiously through the Bandaid. I found some peroxide in the medicine cabinet, but it's waaay past the Expiration Date. Like me. I considered pouring wine onto a dishrag and using that to clean the wound, but it was only a momentary lapse. Pouring wine anywhere other than down my throat? What a hoot!

I'm losing my touch. At last count I came up with nine adverbs. Speaking of touch, everything I've touched is taking on a decidedly (ten) pinkish hue. Just call me the anti-Midas. An apt title, given my English Major status. Turning anything into gold has never been my strong suit.

Guess I'll take my pink coffee cup down to the kitchen and get myself a refill, then look around for a better bandage. I'll check on the dog while I'm at it, any excuse to step outside on such a day. I might get lucky and spot a new dinosaur for the ol' life list. It may turn out to be my last lucid moment, you never know.

Bergman Revisited

My husband claims he's never been depressed. That depresses me. At the very least he should be depressed because he's married to me. But no. He'll admit to occasional lapses of existential despair, as if that compares. Whatever. My husband comes from cheerful genes.

My mother was cheerful, it drove me to drink. Though I wasn't born a drunkard. I was born Finnish, like my father. I.E., congenitally angst-ridden. I can just picture it: My Birth. No sooner did I make it down the chute than I took one look around and stuck my thumb in my mouth. Later I replaced it with a bottle and other similarly-shaped objects.

How can anyone with half a brain live on this particular planet at this particular point in time and remain cheerful? It boggles the mind. Boggle. Isn't that a brand of wine? I wouldn't call my husband cheerful, that'd be a stretch. But he doesn't have an ounce of angst in his body. And he calls himself a Scandinavian, the nerve.

If it weren't for angst, I'd vaporize. Poof! Angst is what holds my very cells together. Sometimes when I first wake up at noon there's a nanosecond between sleep and wakefulness when I experience briefly what life must be like for normal people. It's as if I'm suspended in a gently drifting cloud of well-being. Like Charmin. Then it comes to me: I'm awake! I'm alive! On this particular planet! At this particular point in time! And another teeth-gnashing, hand-wringing, nail-biting day commences.

I've always believed that cheerful people are operating with half a brain. Sort of like drunkards, but without the booze. In which case, why bother. Except I'm not so sure anymore. Maybe it's a chemical thing. I.E., the aforementioned cheerfulness gene. Something you have no control over, like the weather or urinary incontinence. That smiling idiot one car over might be a Nobel Laureate for all I know, who, through an accident of genetics, just happened to be born smiling like an idiot. On second thought, there wouldn't be no Nobel Laureate in this here neck of the woods, so never mind.

Face it, getting born is a crapshoot. Or as we say in the preschool set, "You get what you get and you don't throw a fit!"

I wouldn't know normal if it bit me in the ass. I came into consciousness thinking everyone secretly ground their teeth into nubs and chewed their cuticles bloody. I considered my many and varied tics to be bodily functions, like breathing or masturbating. I mean, doesn't everyone count sidewalk squares on their way to school while silently chanting the alphabet backwards? And after taking Beginning Touch Typing in junior high, doesn't everyone automatically begin air-typing everything they hear? When my boyfriend wondered why I kept tap-tap-tapping on his back as we danced, it finally occurred to me I might be a wee bit different from other kids. Unbeknownst to him (and me), I'd been transcribing the lyrics to "Surfer Girl" on his madras button-down as it played over and over on the jukebox.

The song, not the shirt, played over and over. But you figured that out, right?

Speaking of figuring things out. I'll give my husband something to be depressed about. I'll tell him I've decided not to sign the divorce papers. If that doesn't do it, I'm throwing in the towel. Drenched from over a half century of tears, to be sure.

(uptheshore...

...backinawhile)