OK. I’m Beat.

The New Year has not lent itself to getting back on track and resuming the smooth operation I fancy my life to be.

Sloth, depression, arthritis, and then the Great Water Saga. On the plus side, I am writing. I am completely burned out on the major American spectator sports (baseball, football). I rediscovered opera.

I have not been swimming yet this year. I have been medicating feelings with food.

So the plain truth is that our expectations always exceed our capabilities at any given point. What is important is to NOT QUIT.

End of Post.

No Water.

When the main breaks, what can one do? How much water should be stored? I remember, from my childhood, fallout shelters.

Families would have a fallout shelter in a basement or outside of the house, where the, uh, nuclear family would sit and chill in true fifties and sixties style, until the radiation levels dropped sufficiently enough to offer some modicum of safety.

We never really learned how well they would work. But having a lot of stored water on hand seems like a good idea, be it for post-apocalyptic hygiene, cooking and drinking, or merely enduring water main breaks that happen with at least annual frequency around my particular county.

Henrico County was an original shire, formed in 1611. It is one of the first political subdivisions of the Virginia colony. So our water system could be 409 years old. I wouldn’t rule it out.

New York Scheduled

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I got on the computer to the Amtrak Reservation System. I encountered some generally frustrating experience with the system, which I shall attribute to my overall ineptitude with websites of this type rather than with any shortcomings in the Amtrak Reservation System proper. Once I was in contact with a real human, the process went very smoothly and I received a reasonably good deal.

We will arrive on Wednesday 25 March, and leave on Saturday 28 March. We plan to do museums, shopping (?), tourist-y things like walking across the Brooklyn Bridge and going to the top of the Empire State Building. Maybe go to Radio City Music Hall. It is before baseball season, I think. And I don’t know if the horses are running at either Belmont Park or Aqueduct.

So there we have it. So far. I’m happy we got this far. I am impressing upon J the importance of advanced booking in hotels, lest we find ourselves in some sort of snake pit.

In matters around the neighbourhood, We ain’t got no water!!!!! This happened this morning. I hope the people working in the hole in the street know what they’re doing, because we would like to flush the toilets some time tonight.

Movie Night

I’ve been watching movies, most of the night, fof the stories, tbe acting, tbe cinematography.

Fados, a film about fado. And Portugal.

Now Dona Flor And Her Two Husbands. Yes Brasil. It is a great story. It features food, beautiful food. It addition to some nudity, it is an epic food porn movie. Food porn to rival Babette’s Feast, the all time best food porn movie of all.

Tonight I am watching the other actors besides Sonia Braga, who is a great actress, but her beauty is almost a distraction. The actor, José Wilker,   who plays Vadinho, the first husband, plays the a**hole that perfectly. I believe he is a real person. This is one of those movies where I think the camera is recording real life.

Since my sleep schedule is all askew, I thought giving up all plans for going to bed early might help. Right now it is 11:15 PM. Eastern Time, North America.  I might watch another movie.

Unspoken Answers

No I am not crazy.

I will not get a tattoo.

No, I won’t go to New York by myself,

I love you.

Even though I want to feel the prick of the needle as the bluebird, the azulao, takes form on my pectoral.

And the heart on my bicep proclaims my love of Mom, even as I admit the times she didn’t deserve it.

And I don’t mean that I would run away, grown-ass man that I am, and let the diesel breath of Manhattan fill my nostrils alone.

Sometimes the Rebel simply plots.

Free Range Passion

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For Jade.

Fado.

As if Fado were just a word. We who love this music know it puts into notes what the heart cannot say. We know God’s tongue is Portuguese.

J: David!

Me: Yes.

J: Could you turn that down a little? (Why am I not surprised?)

Me: Yes.

Somewhere in these songs are the cries of ecstasy that all too often hide the breaking hearts.

Suddenly I am not white, I have no prick. But I listen and of these losses I care not a whit.

It’s what happens when music pours into an emptied heart.

Creepy

You know what’s creepy? Give up?

I’ll tell you then. Just how much of our culture, TV, movies, streaming, is given over to murder, homicude, rape, kidnapping. This is our entertainment.

And we wonder why we’re effed-up.

The Budding Author #2

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I wrote again tonight. I resisted, but I sat down and wrote. Long Hand. Cursive, they call it. I guess because you curse when your hand cramps and your fingers get ink-stained. And writing long hand gives me a chance to think and consider a term or a phrase or a word.

But I wrote. It is powerful, like there are these people in my head who do exactly what I tell them to do. And they can be whatever I want them to be. Almost like fucking, because I have brought these sods to life.

It is amazing what standing back and letting go can do.