Changes

I did bring my uke to Jeff’s today. I’ve sort of been avoiding it because of any of the following reasons--I don’t play well. I don’t sing well. I play and sing worse when I’m aware that any other human ears might hear me. I didn’t want anyone to make even the tiniest of big deals out of it. And I didn’t know if Jeff would even register the sound. But I had to try it so that I wouldn’t end up having to admit that I never tried it.

When I walked in this afternoon, Jeff was stumbling in a circle in the now-normal forward list. It was a movement that suggested “bathroom” to me, so I led him immediately to do his business, thus scoring an opportunity to deploy the ukulele in the relative seclusion of Jeff’s room, with only his roommate Richard on the other side, sitting in Richard’s usual chair.

Jeff almost never sees me anymore, because he cannot look. I mean "look" as in a "Hail fellow human, I acknowledge thee," kind of way. There is virtually no “periscope up” function left. If he has a periscope at all, it’s locked in its shaft, turning aimlessly to perceive the plain walls which surround it.

But, in the auditory sphere, music worked for a while there. Lately, not so much. Yesterday, Olivia and I sang a few bars of Frère Jaques for him, and he nodded along briefly in recognition before retracting his receivers. So when I next tried Paul McCartney on the iPhone, it drew no acknowledgment.

But uke--that’s live music, maybe he’d notice. In a less bad than my worst performance, I plunked out Simon & Garfunkel’s Feelin’ Groovy, because anyone who’s capable should respond to that. I don’t think he noticed at all. I said, “do you know that song?” From the other side of the room, came Richard’s deep “No.”

So, the music appreciation patches in his brain appear to have largely been overgrown by tangles. These things do go. He is leaning forward too much, and I expect he will be falling on his face fairly frequently. Soon, I expect they will ask me to supply a wheelchair if getting him around for meals gets increasingly wobbly and time-intensive.

I’ve watched Linda. She is young like Jeff. When Jeff moved in, Linda was doing what Jeff does now--shuffling about speaking gibberish if not dozing in a chair. In a matter of a few months, she’s stopped being ambulatory, stopped babbling, stopped being responsive, and most recently has been so contracted into a bent over position that feeding her had become nearly impossible.

Today, as I left Jeff in his IKEA chair, and exited with my uke, I passed Linda’s door. Several relatives were coming out. It was not a good time to be nosy and inquisitive, but I am certain that Linda is either very far along in her hospice journey, if not finished with it. I will find out soon.

Well, he does leave a lot of dirty glasses around...

Today, I randomly decided to have a tarot reading while I was at the Maryland Renaissance Festival. To be fair, let us not call it entirely random. I went to the RennFest thinking I might do that very thing, but with no specific plan for implementation.

The Festival operates, each year on the cusp of Summer/Fall, in a nicely wooded bit of acreage surrounded by fields of parking, near Annapolis. In a typical casual strategy, you wander shady (and today, muddy,) thoroughfares with names like Tiltyard Path and Stub Toe Lane, lined with more or less permanent structures which house, in season, shops purveying jewelry, pottery, art, clothing, and oddments beyond category. And food. Much food and drink. None of which you’d call gourmet, but certainly there is at least variety enough that even veg-eaters will find falafel, sweet potato fries, or veggie wraps.

So, at a certain straw-strewn turn, wedged between the Royal Stage and the Wine Pavilion, I stumbled (only partially literally,) upon The Tarot Guild. It was shortly after rope-drop, or morning fanfare, or whatever they call the opening bell, so the four resident turners-over of cards were sitting casually outside, awaiting people of my ilk.

I zeroed in on the lady with unnaturally red hair. Her name was...(lemme check the card...) Carrie. And she travels each weekend from the northerly town of Havre de Grace to ply her weekend trade.

Carrie ushered me into a small stall with chairs, pillows, a table and cards, and proceeded to do her thing. The thing, of course, has to do with shuffling, cutting the deck, laying out a certain array of cards, sussing out a few things from the patron, and giving an interpretation.

Ok, so I’m not 100% sensible, and sometimes I like to do weird things, but here’s what I think about tarot readings in general (this being maybe my 4th or 5th or so.) Tarot isn’t magical or more mystical than anything else in the world--it’s just a fun way to get a sort of a walk-in mini counseling session, where imagery on the cards offers ways to think about themes that occur in all lives.

My array suggested, not surprisingly, a new volume in a two (or so) part life, where I’ve got feelers out ready to see what areas of creative endeavor this segment might be about.

Interesting, also, was Carrie’s attention to The Page of Cups, which appeared in my layout. She immediately identified him as Gabe, and was rather insightful into the nature of the kid, and my role in his development. In some ways, this was as much about the uniqueness and potential of Gabe as it was about me. I sort of get that a lot. Not in tarot, per se, but in impressions from people, in general.

Jeff got kind of annoyed at me once, a long time ago, when I was saying that while I might not bring much to the world as an individual, I am offering it some interesting children. He thought I was selling myself short. I don’t know. Maybe, maybe not. At least there were plenty of wands (for creativity) in the part about me. But keep your eye on the Page of Cups.

Filling holes with various materials

Today, in addition to spackling up a messy patch on the family room wall, I’ll be continuing to try to shake a person out of my head.

The messy patch is where someone (Jeff or an electrician...it’s lost at this point) sawed a thin rectangular gorge into the stucco where an electrical box was meant to be installed. My brother-in-law Wade finished the associated lighting installation just last month, but needed only the space for a single switch there, so the stucco is in the midst of a 3-step repair by me which, with luck, will disguise the mess. The person is an actual, existing human whom my disobliging imagination has elected to insert into any daydreamed vignette, where Jeff’s decline has left a different kind of gorge.

My next step with the blemished wall is squeeze spackle, from a tube. I’ve chiseled the leftover chunks of stucco, which Wade had to remove from inside the rectangle, into pieces I could glue back in, puzzle style. Then I managed to make one of two cans of spray foam which have been sitting in the basement for x years function well enough to fill in some of the more gaping gaps. (note: Neither Touch-n-Foam® nor Great Stuff® lasts forever unopened.) Today I will hack off the foamy overgrowth (spray foam always over-expands,) then squeeze spackle into the remaining crevices and hope to putty knife the whole thing into something resembling the rest of the wall.

You can come see the finished result if you want. I will not reveal the identity of the unfortunate person who keeps appearing, without having agreed to do so, in my mental movie reels. Don’t worry, you would never guess, so don’t try. It’s that random. Even though this is a person I have spoken to on rare occasions, I actually don’t even know whether the feller is attached or not, so that should rule out any notions you might have.

So, despite the absurd refusal of my psyche to stop doing that, it’s a little comforting to know that he has no way of knowing how much time he gets to spend with me in that alternate universe. I think it’s just one of those things like mental Tourette’s...it will just have to go away regardless of my conscious bidding. In the meantime I have Bruce (see pic) to hang out with,

and a wall to patch. Busyness is the key to keeping stupidity at bay.