Whereas I would heretofore have a headache...

There has, of course, been some legal rigmarole and financial configuring to do with regards to Jeff having retired from the hardware business several years ago. Among the interesting discoveries we stumbled upon following the tricky moves of the so-called “Great” Recession has been the one that nearly tanked the insurance policy that was contrived to enable my brother-in-law to retire his obligations to us.

The problem with insurance policies (and thank goodness I’m not in THAT business,) is that they might have been designed to float on the buoyancy of a good economy, as ours was. Sometimes, if your raft springs a leak, it doesn’t quite totally sink, but you know if you jump on it all bets are off. That’s where we were. We (as in said b-i-l and myself) refigured, cooked up a way to make higher payments (Jeff, after all, is not someone any right-minded life-insurer is going to take into consideration again,) and now have a somewhat smaller raft that floats.

Part of what this means is more stuff to sign, at the bottom of papers with words like “whereas” and “heretofore.” Usually if I squint and cock my head so that my left ear is higher I can come away from reading these documents with something akin to comprehension. If I were a lawyer though, I would get permanently stuck that way which would seem, eventually, to be an unfortunate condition.

Does Braco have a gazing ball in his garden?

Am I procrastinating? Oh yes, I am. It is Thursday, writing time, and I am in Whole Foods having a cup of Allegro Breakfast Blend. I have picked up a copy of Pathways, a large (twice the size of a typical journal—I know there’s a name for that...tabloid?) publication which promotes such things as “mind, body, spirit and environmental resources” in the Washington D.C. area.

I usually like minds, bodies, spirits and the environment, so I picked it up to see what I might find. Leading off is “The Herb Corner,” in which an herbalist names his ten most incredible herbal products. I am sold. I definitely need to get myself some triphala to ease digestion, and while I’m here I might look for a product called “I Sleep Soundly” which could be useful in the area of releasing tension before bed.

Now I am scanning the rear of the magazine, hoping to find an ad for “Grannies Who Love to Come to Your House and Stay With Your Husband While You Go To a Movie.” I don’t find it. Instead, I find a full-page advertisement for an appearance at a D.C. hotel by Braco. Who is Braco?

At first glance, Braco is a kindly looking 50-something with a really weird mullet. He is from Croatia. From what I can glean, one shows up and, for $8, experiences a “gazing session” with a ballroom of other gazees. Braco does not speak in public. Apparently, his gaze is sufficient. Actually, if you follow the fine print, his gaze is more than sufficient and is not recommended for visitors under 18 as “the energy could overburden children.” And pregnant women. But it is recommended that you bring their photo. I guess that if Braco gazes at a photo of your loved one, the photo assimilates his power, a la Harry Potter, and forwards it to the proper address.

Yoga is smart, and so is dog-walking.

What I did at 6 a.m. this morning, 30 minutes before my alarm went off, was stand up and do some chest-opening stretches. And I talked to myself a good bit. I’m probably better at channeling the wisdom of the cosmos at pre-dawn than I am at sunset, for sure.

I think what woke me up was a combination of inferior digestion, new-forming-scar pain, and the usual sort of stressy, nondescript ouchiness that hovers in my upper torso and is best released by doing something. Like stretches.

I would posit that a good percentage of even avowed atheists are not materialists, to the extent that they would never bother tapping into the under/over/through-current of intelligence that seems to pulse through the quantum soup. (If you’ve ever effed it...I mean, it is ineffable after all.)

I am not placing myself among atheists by so positing, but I do find that by default I am somewhat of an a-theist. That is, assuming you take theism to require a discrete other, usually at least partially definable by the guidelines offered in a particular religion. So, it is possible that by not being able to identify a discrete presence as opposed to a generalized connectivity, one is a-theistic.

I sort of agree with the theory that one of the reasons we humans got so heavily invested in religion is that, as critters go, we got a little more intelligent than is good for a fragile psyche. While cats indubitably cast themselves as the point-of-view character in their experience of life, they probably don’t wonder what happens when the story ends.

I’m not sure the concept of mortality is a healthy thing to meta-analyze. By which I mean this: While most of us objectively recognize that we will, in fact, die, it’s comforting to hold oneself as the sort of person [that]* doesn’t happen to, until the time it actually happens. *[neurodegeneration, skin cancer, any cancer, traumatic bone-crushing injuries, etc.]

I do know for certain, and can vouch for this by dint of much personal experience, that doing something (stretches, bricklaying, walking, composing readerless books,) is a vastly more therapeutic coping strategy than lying in bed at 6 a.m. noticing how it can be painful to somaticize your existential uncertainty.

Scars...nothing wrong with looking badazzz.

As of Monday afternoon’s visit with the dermatological surgeon, I appear to have had a three inch piece of clothesline whip-stitched to my bicep. Only it’s not rope, it’s my skin. This, I am told, is to ensure a better long-term cosmetic result when the scar contracts.

This morning, pre-shower, I removed the original bandage, (which was giving me roughly the arm configuration of Pop-eye,) for the first time. Two extra-wide band-aids seem to provide adequate coverage I discovered, as the ditty “I am stuck on Band-Aids, ‘cause Band-Aid’s stuck on me!” jangled merrily in that part of my brain that just likes to behave that way. The jury’s still out on whether Band-Aid is, in this case, actually stuck on me.

Well, with that patch of traitorous epidermis gone to what is probably a redundant degree, we’ll see whether we carry on with a “chop early and often” approach at my regularly scheduled appointments.

Here, Otis and I are comparing arms. His is, at this point, unscathed.

Should find a fritter shop, really...

The Baltimore Tea & Coffee Company is not actually in Baltimore. It’s in Annapolis. Right across from the Annapolis Mall (whose real name, which nobody uses, is “Westfield Shopping Towne.” Nobody uses it because Westfield, in this case, isn’t even a place. It’s a Corporation.)

So, if you’re sitting at the counter facing the front window at BT&CC, you enjoy a stunning view of (in this order) parked cars, small trees trying gamely but unsuccessfully to evoke a parklike setting, moderate traffic on Bestgate Road, and the stick-up atrium of the mall parking garage outside Nordstrom. Plus the corner of a red dumpster. Oh wait. Please insert the old guys at a patio table club at the beginning of the list.

BT&CC is #2 in the series of places I’m auditioning for the part of “good place to write.” The first place was the public library. It performed well, except in that you cannot buy a veggie wrap and tea there. It is also possibly true that one is ever so slightly more alluring writing in a coffee shop than in a library. But probably not in my case since the moment the idea of allure even occurs to me I usually spill something.

Jeff is home with Kimberly, who was an hour late this morning due, ostensibly, to an accident and/or gas spill a few miles down the road in Crofton. This morning she wanted to talk about how we might get Jeff to focus. “Focus on what?” I wondered. But it’s something to do with the way he wanders aimlessly around the house moving from his books, to his hand weights, to the bathroom, to nothing in particular. She’s worried that he’ll go outside and take off. (I put some jingle bells on the door to make it more evident if it’s being opened.)

”He doesn’t really focus on anything,” I submitted, not quite clear what sort of response Kimberly was hoping to evoke. “That’s just what he does, and you check with him every so often to see if he’s lost the bathroom or something.” I don’t think that’s what she had in mind, but it occurs to me now she could always show him her shiny black motorcycle, which is parked in the driveway. He’d just like to stare at it for a while, I think. I’m still kind of wishing we were doing daycare instead of home care, but we’ll try this for now. This is the second day of this experiment, and the second day I’ve left the house half-inclined to turn around and say “Nevermind, I’ve got this.”

Guess I won’t do that, for now. Requiring myself to indulge in 12 hours a week of alone time is not harsh treatment, for anyone, and I’ll either a)get used to it with an eventual eye to expanding the time, or b)never get used to it but possibly accomplish a minor thing or two.

And now, it is probably time for me to crack open my well-traveled but too-neglected, page-crumpled notebook which is supposed to remind me of where I left off in writing that book I’m supposed to (by my own supposing, and no one else’s) be writing.