. Spinning .

"Can’t remember if we said goodbye…"

"Crossing Jordan" tonight, Woody getting shot, Dr. Macy getting caught in a lie, and in the background, Emmylou with her incredible soulful voice.  A song I’ve heard her sing in my shop a hundred times and always loved, but the tears didn’t come until tonight, used to dramatize the visual.

We take the past with us, stoppered up in a old canteen slung on the saddle as we ride off into the sunset. 

Thoughts of future sometimes (this past week in particular) mean more than just change, but complete difference in paths of choice that leave the past enclosed in that vessel, only brought out when thirsty.

With the pc that I’ve used for years down, I wonder if all on the hard drive is lost.  First reaction is to be upset; the second, so what?  It may be a sign to start over.  The only thing saved is on the laptop since December.  What if I lost that too? 

So what.  There’s water up ahead too, I’m sure.

Lest you think I be a bitch and in the wrong profession, I have been in here since seven a.m., it is now 4:30 p.m., and I have had one bathroom break and nothing to eat.  I finished all the work needed for "I must absolutely pick up on Saturday" — sixteen pieces, nine people. 

Four people came in today:  Two brought in approximately twenty-five more pieces to frame, one came in because his wife told him that the work has been sitting here ready for weeks (they just brought it in two weeks ago), and one of the nine came in to pick up the one piece she brought in to pick up today.

This can make one decidedly cranky.

New mood blue mood.  Should have worked a few hours later last night kind of stress.  Need the money need to save my reputation need to squish twenty frames into two hours self accomplished stress and guess which customer is bound to walk in first.

I’ll never learn.

I turn to Willie here to help me.  Blast him up to keep me hopping.  Sing along to keep from thinking…and from writing now.

There are customers who make my day, become friends.  Then there are those that I’d like to murder with my bare hands.  One the other day, she hadn’t been in for a while so she must have forgotten her training.  Called to find out my hours, when I said 10 to 5, she said she’d be in that day.  Of course first asking if  I worked Sunday, or if she could come in Monday when I’m closed.  She showed up at 4:55 p.m. with five pieces to frame.  Took her own blessed time choosing frames and deciding between three shades of cream for each mat.  She left close to an hour later.  She insists on preferential treatment (all of my customers get excellent service, equally).  I don’t charge overtime, I simply add in a PITA (pain-in-the-ass) surcharge for cases like this.   Since of course, I can’t simply kill her like I’m tempted to do.

And while I teeter totter between conservative and liberal, I am angry that the state of Connecticut murdered a man on death row today.  If I can’t kill someone, then neither can they. 

(Yes, of course I realize that his murdering eight women twenty years ago was horrendous–especially in view of my customer’s minor flaws, but the point is simply that killing is wrong.  This, versus my pro-pull-the-plug on Shiavo stand, where they did not kill her, but rather nature was allowed to happen on its own. I’m against government having the right to do something that is considered criminal for an individual.)

Has always been my lucky day.  Maybe Willie will walk through my door.  Although at 71, perhaps he is best left to my daydreams.

I’m beginning to think that my shop, being rural and single focused, is both my opportunity and nemesis.  I’m left alone too much; given too much time to think.  Create, yes, and ride up and down moods like broncobusting a horse.

I do worry, though, that losing the discipline of structured classroom and homework will too easily appeal to my naturally lazy nature and there won’t be much production of real story put out.  I can tell myself that I’ll do it–and the writing here in a weblog is not justifiable as story–but I’m too tolerant of my own procrastinating ways and too easily led astray.

Maybe I can pretend I have a deadline. 

Seesawing someplace in space
and just getting used to the rhythm
when the others hop off
and you crash to the ground
and the board hits your butt
and you’re left staring wide-eyed
trying to figure what happened.

A hobo, I sit by night’s campfire cooking beans I have earned by odd jobbing my days.  Catch the right boxcar to be off on adventure, but the tracks travel backward as forward and I always follow them home. Watching the Amtrack whooshing on by, again and again, but my mind is too slow and my arm is too short and I wait for the next one to come whooshing by.  My dreams follow the downdraft till they drift back to me in a wreath of grey smoke from my beans.

Driving home from the Litchfield hills last night on music-induced memories.  "Color My World" brings the scent of a man, the feel of him as we danced.  He was a drummer.  Would leave the stage to come down and dance this Chicago song with me.  He had those Willie Nelson-Charlie Manson eyes that saw inside me.  So no words were spoken as we sat in his old clawfoot bathtub pretending that the fire whistle going off at noon was an alarm. Then laughing at the could-have-been it wasn’t. He was almost a decade older, yet our minds as well as bodies touched for a time that hangs in space, readily retrievable, called into another place by sound.

Flowers from another man lay on the seat beside me.  And another follows me home in his own car.  Gus had shown me a picture of a lady on the internet he said looked just like me.  She’s lovely, ten years younger; I don’t see any resemblance.  At home, Jim tells me I’m prettier.

I don’t believe them, still, I wonder at their perception of me.  Or at their lies.  And thank my luck for all the men I’ve known.

Some how, some way, I need to let them know I’m planning not to go to graduation.  I’m willing to dress up and they can take a picture now.

In my mind, I’ve already gone. The damned final course can still be taken from six miles away.