Winter Comes

I couldn't be coherent today. My third son left home yesterday. He's 17. And he's not ready. But he doesn't know that, as if anyone could tell him, because, remember, he's 17.

I haven't had any Prozac in the house for two years now. But winter's coming.

The trees are shedding, stripping down outside this window.

I need coffee. I need mountains. I need the ocean. I need a world where English is not the primary language.

It is dawn, but it doesn't seem rosy. I should drink coffee and watch a movie by Tsai Ming-Liang. Something impossible to figure out.

I know people without children. They think they know what it is like to have children. They do not, but they cannot be told this. They do not like to be told this. Having children is beyond one's ability to imagine, like the afterlife I suppose, but what it feels like, what it does to your body and brain, cannot be conveyed or passed on.

By the time most people have raised children, they forget how they originally imagined it would be.

However I imagined it would be, how I thought I could continue to be the same person, was wrong. It is hard to remember.

I could take the cold coffee from the other room and put it in the microwave. I am not yet wearing socks and don't want to move. The cats were here to sniff my toes, but they left.

Eduardo and I had a drink last night after the movie. I ordered Maker's Mark. We were at Outback Steakhouse. The bartender had a huge tattoo on his arm, the name of his daughter, Hailey Somethingorother. The whisky was delicious. I nursed my wounds.

I will go back to working on the crossword puzzle I am constructing. Will Shortz finally wrote back about three of the four crosswords I submitted. He actually read them, closely, and commented on clues and themes, before rejecting them. It was the best rejection letter I ever received. I am still hopeful about the fourth puzzle.

I couldn't bear to read the letters in yesterday's News-Gazette. It seems praising the defunct Chief Illiniwek has come back into fashion. It was that damn homecoming parade. Then, there was also praise for Rush Limbaugh. I just get tired of all the ignorance. It wears me down more than children.

Bare feet or not, it is time for coffee. I hope no one reads this. If I included the names of people who troll the Internet for comments about themselves -- people like David Eisenman or John Otto or Mark Roberts -- at least I'd have those three readers, I suppose.

But I continue to aspire to go unnoticed, something else people may think they understand but do not.

Maybe I'll read Ed Sanders' book today, Tales of Beatnik Glory.