some days

some days it’s just hard to do anything.  surprisingly enough it’s unstructured time that hits me the hardest.  if i have an alarm clock getting me out of bed at 5:00 a.m. every morning to trudge off to a shitty job that feels like someone’s hand holding my head underwater until i drown – that’s easy.  supposing i have an unplanned day off due to, i don’t know, let’s say for instance a holiday i forgot [that's another thing we do - forget holidays].  first, there’s nothing and no one telling you to get up.  you just have to get up.  eventually what gets you up is restlessness.

it doesn’t matter how hungry you are – you stare at the contents of the cupboard and the refrigerator, trying somehow to will edible food into existence.  you remember vaguely that last night you’d actually eaten soup straight out of the can, unheated.  somehow that just doesn’t work for breakfast.  it would be great if you had some breakfast cereal, but you forgot to buy some the last time you went to the store, which was – what?  two weeks ago?  you don’t have any bread to make toast with.  eggs, you’ve got some eggs, you could make some eggs.  you might even stare at the eggs for a while, sitting so comfortable and safe in their little compartments.  then you walk out of the kitchen, still hungry.

most of us have problems with our plumbing, either due to the sickness, the meds, or both.  you find yourself completely at the mercy of whatever is, or isn’t happening, in that department.  you might have severe constipation, you might have diarrhea, you might just have to keep going to the bathroom over and over again.  you feel a little bit sick just being in a physical body.  it’s about ten o’clock – how did it get to be ten already? – and you’re still in your underwear.  you finally manage to make some tea – coffee’s too hard – and you tell yourself you’re going to sit and watch some tv and relax [funny how what you think you need to do right now is relax] until you finish your tea, and then you’re really going to get off your ass.

everything on tv is, of course, stupid.  each succeeding choice seems dumber and dumber, until you wonder who these people who watch these shows are, and how they could be such idiots to provide ratings for such trash.  it actually gets to a point where the commercials are preferable to the shows.  they’re short, and their narrative is accessible.  you might even find yourself surfing the channels trying to find better commercials.  then you give up and turn off the tv.  you get up and walk away and try to fold some of the clean but unfolded laundry lying in heaps about the living room – you had congratulated yourself on doing some laundry several days ago, but after you’d managed to dry it and then haul it upstairs, the living room couches and floor is where it’s stayed.  the dog’s been sleeping on some of it.  you look at your dog and he looks back at you, with a “what the hell are YOU looking at?” expression on his face.  “you’re the one who’s supposed to be in charge here, not me!”

it’s about noon, and out of exasperation you manage to drag yourself into the shower.  it almost borders on a pleasurable experience, getting clean for the first time in several days, except it’s so goddamned overwhelming you can hardly stand it – just the sensations, the smells, the sounds.  when you get out you’re shaking as if you’re ninety years old.  you towel off, wrap the towel around you, and then spend about an hour wandering around the house trying to find your lucky shirt.  you finally find it at the bottom of the pile of dirty laundry that’s been in the basement for about a week.  you decide you’ll just dig an outfit out of the clothes lying around the living room.  you look at yourself in the mirror.  you look exactly like what you are – a crazy person.  then, you spend about a half hour trying to figure out which pair of half-ruined and uncomfortable shoes from your collection you’ll wear today.  you pick the same pair you always wear – the ones that hurt the least – and then spend about a half hour trying to find a matching pair of socks.  you have about twenty socks that came from one of those bargain packages of socks from the supermarket, but even though most people would find them indistinguishable, you spend what seems a lifetime trying to find two that are likely to have been an original pair.

eventually you settle on the closest match you can find, put on your shoes, and start looking for your pocket stuff – wallet, keys, change for the bus, etc.  you know you left your keys on the kitchen counter – you KNOW you did, you remember doing it, even thinking to yourself  “i will remember putting these here”.  eventually you find them underneath a pile of unmatched socks in the bathroom.  you go through the same madness looking for your sunglasses.  the idea of going outside without your sunglasses is frightening.  the same goes for your personal stereo device [iPod, Zune or whatever].  by the time you make it out the front door it’s 2:30.

then about ten blocks from your house you realize you forgot to take your pills.  you race back, gulp them down with some warm orange juice that’s been sitting on the counter for three days, put your afternoon dose in a sandwich baggie and stuff them in your pocket, and race back out.

it’s 3:00 and you’re finally at the shopping center that has the copy place, the post office, the starbucks, etc.  walking around with your sunglasses is cool and fun – it makes you feel like a spy or The Terminator or Neo from “The Matrix”.  you imagine soundtrack music playing [actually, you DO have soundtrack music playing on your headphones].  the walk was good for you, even though you’ve got a really messed up knee you just sort of woke up with one morning.  you think it’s because your job has you sitting around in front of a computer all day, that it’s done something to your whole musculoskeletal system.  you hope walking around will shake it out a little.  you can’t go to a doctor or a chiropractor because you got fired from the job that gave you health insurance.

you go into the copy store and spend about two hours assembling a couple dozen chapbooks, laboring over a task the simplest office administrator would find elementary but to you is like climbing everest or building an atomic bomb out of toothpicks.  you get nervous around the staff at the copy store.  they remind you of yourself, and to a man they look like ticking postal clerks waiting to explode.  you make as little eye contact as possible and leave with your precious cargo.

you go to the post office with your pre-addressed mailers – this is where you can be organized, with a project that you can get obsessed with at 2 or 3 a.m. – and send off all of the chapbooks that you had promised.  of the 24 chapbooks that required more psychic effort to create than most people produce in a lifetime, maybe two or three are going to paying customers.  the rest are to friends, relatives, fellow poets, a couple of small presses that you hope will actually read them.  as you watch the envelopes going into the drawer one by one, you think of how parents must feel sending their kids to school for the first time, or how the galapagos turtle feels watching her newly hatched young crawl into the sea.  from the 24 chapbooks you will receive two replies – one a generic unsigned rejection letter from a small press, the other one a returned mailer marked “not at this address”.  you will not attempt this again for two years.

having gotten over this particular hurdle, you treat yourself to an expensive coffee drink you could have done a better job of making for yourself at home, to have the excuse to sit in your sunglasses looking cool and untouchable and above it all and watch all the fucking losers go by.  surprisingly, some of the people going by actually don’t seem like losers, just regular people.  then you see a pretty girl, and your heart goes into the toilet.  you think, no one would ever want me, and you stare into your expensive yet mediocre coffee drink.  when you look up she is gone.  you imagine becoming soul mates with her, somehow having the money to buy her a huge glittering brand new diamond ring unlike the cheap used ring you bought your wife.

in order to stay out of trouble, you decide to pick up some groceries.  you stare at the breakfast cereal shelf for a long, long time.  finally, out of desperation, you grab the kind you know your partner likes.  you tell yourself you’re just going to get a few things. the next thing you know you have three bags of groceries you couldn’t afford.  carrying them up the hill back to your street.  nothing makes you feel older than staggering along with bags of groceries, having to stop and rest every half block.

you get home, put the groceries on the kitchen floor, and sit down in a chair.  you fall asleep in the chair and when you wake up it’s to the sound of keys in the door.  for a moment – a moment that makes you nauseated with guilt – you are afraid, and wish you had time to hide.