No Firewood In Fruit Baskets

I believe it has been seven years. I’ve gone to roulette, sang, ran, danced and hardly ever touched myself. I don’t touch others either. And nothing. All for not, all for the greater good.

I’ve grown a bit fat too. My obtuse angles are endearing to older women. In my car I feel like a tiny nugget in space. I once saw how fat people eat, the truly fat at heart. They inhale their meals; their mouths are churning blenders of intestine – they swarm the food. It made me sick to my stomach. But here I was! Holding my own, shaking in fits.

Today, I went for a walk. An October morning, cool and sunny. Not many were outside and the streets were pierced seldom by sudden gusts of exhaust, shudder or sneeze. I went into the café and ordered a coffee. No one was seated in the café! How lovely. The young girl handling the coffee grinds looked as sad as ever. She looked as if her father had only ever loved his wife.

“Good morning!” I said, cheerily.

Nothing! She looked up, back down. The coffee came out black and strong. I poured some cream in and sat curiously, watching homeless bicker in cold winds.

I looked about my bag for my notebook. It was a small pad, covered in black leather with notes sticking out. I had titled it ‘For Good Health’ and the purpose was exactly that. A therapist of mine had told me it would help. “Write down your thoughts Henry! That way you know exactly what you’re dealing with, and can set goals to overcome them!” But my therapist was mistaken.

I knew now what I was dealing with and it made it a pinch. It was conscience personified; it screamed and scolded. You cannot lie to the page. On a computer you get away with it – those who type quickly. But with the page you take a pen and write slowly and carefully and on the line and your thoughts move at pace with your hand that gives one’s honest leanings time to catch up.

But still I wrote, sobbing uncontrollably in the café while that little girl watched on. I wrote how my mother used to hit my father, and scar his face, and tear at the scabs from nights prior. She grew him carefully as a plant, then stomped on the roots and leaves, and let them blossom again, water and sunshine, then dug them from their roots and ate alive. He died from heart failure at sixty. She died five years after him, cold and alone in a cabin with my Alzheimer’s ridden grandmother. None of this particularly bothered me until I wrote it down. I preferred these sessions in public with something to drink. Me and the document in front of me, changing together, building fires on fires of ink.

I will insist that I’m thirty something, I tend to forget. It’s embarrassing when anyone asks. I always feel like there should be something more to me – a fishing rod without bait. I’m here by chance and not with necessity, sucking up oxygen, hoarding it, occasionally eating steaks and mashed potatoes.

But if you asked anyone who knows me, they’d say what a kind, agreeable person I am. A friendly giant, or someone who they wish their son to be, or who their daughter to marry. These are all very nice words and on good moods they make my life go round; it feels jolly and profound and kind. I spend these episodes on swings in playgrounds, or walking through parks and eating sprinkled donuts. I’ll cook myself meals at night, and listen to contemporary jazz and watch videos of dogs and not smoke nor drink. I’ll have a bath and soap myself and light incense and stretch. But then I remember the page and the angels fall back to earth. I am myself again, and the fat on my stomach stretches and bloats with earth.

I remember my grandmother who forgot seventy years of life. What would the great psychologists, yogis and philosophers say to her? How had she come into herself, and learned the way, and decided what is good and bad and meaningful, and became content in her individualism? How, the disease stole the greatest of life’s ecstasies from her. She cannot reflect, and perhaps will not know when it is she is dying. Or when it was. I cannot be entirely sure. She had forgotten her own mortality, and in that lost what it meant to be human. There was nothing there, but worse, nothing she could take with her.

Now I know that coffee pairs well with cream, but I’ve taken it black with sugar my entire life. Even as a young child and when I turned into a man I did not add cream. It looks pleasant with milk frothed and a small heart dancing atop sprinkles of brown sugar, but coffee – the truth is, is a serious game.

When I was fifteen I would enter into many fights at school. The smallest thing would set me off. One off look, one touch of my girlfriend (of which I had many), was all it took. BANG! “There he goes again! It’s Henry! No, not Lincock, the other Henry!” and the teachers would come running and I would have bloody hands and yet even if they were clean they always knew it was me. My chest would have opened up, hair risen – I was free from the hunch, if only for a moment. There were many times I would blackout and go until someone pulled me off. Other times I would wake up staring at my mother, or the under pipes of a sink. I had this happen so much that it stopped scaring me and when the Japanese flew themselves into the Harbour I felt a deep appreciation and relatedness to their strong wills and culture.

Life moved so fast in those days and yet screeched along. It was a derailing train of energy and I went crashing into every day indifferent if it was my last. I was easily excited and easily bored, and there seemed no in between.

Now it’s a dull conversation to discuss only with myself and inside my own mind, particularly with coffee present and a warm young girl nearby. She has grown older since I’ve arrived and I wonder what year she was born. She appears nearly thirty. Do I make her uncomfortable? I had been in the war and made many other men uncomfortable, I’m sure of it. I fought the good and the bad – it did not matter. The sergeants knew that I was highly competent, but sophisticated and weary of allegiances.

And yes, it has remained this way since the many medals and money. Twenty thousand dollars, lumped on my doorstep from two young correction officers – or were they social workers? No matter. They gleamed excitedly, and I remember having difficulty asking them what this was for.

“Your service, Henry! For your good nature, and good future ahead!” What was it all about?

I asked them to take it and purchase me two donuts, a walnut and ham sandwich, and two coca-colas immediately. I insisted on paying for their services and the goods. But they smiled and laughed, then walked away! Where is this money now? Why give to a man whose country nervously cleansed him of desires?

“Another coffee, please!” I called to the thirty-year-old girl.

She smiled. I smiled back! And the lady sitting across from me did as well. She’s been here as well, watching me write, and been watching since I entered. Perhaps I talk to her? Who is she? She says she works at the home. Which home? She insists to know me and is taking care of me. What if this woman took me as I am, and carried me through the motions that led to the other side? What if she likes rock and roll, and Monday evenings, and muddy socks?

There are beaches I dream about when I close my eyes, and most are empty – but those with people, is entirely other women, all completely nude, but none very good looking. They’re simply there, nothing to do with me. I feel no attraction and am neither threatened nor bothered. Surrounded by mediocre looking women on a beach is man’s paradise. He just does not know it.

News shows, game shows, and other soul sucking activities are commonplace for people nowadays. What could happen if each worldly person were to stop and write down their greatest fears. The following day was spent reading those from a hundred others, acquainting with the sacred vulnerabilities of fifty men, of fifty women. Perhaps a short biography was attached to help visualize. What a world afterwards we would live in! The truly evil would be so easily identifiable that they could not exist without reform, and thus heaven on earth. But we human are not cattle, and we eat lobster at weddings, and paint faces, and burn books.

So long café! What a treat it has been, but life is calling. The lady across has chosen a walk with me. I suggested the park, she suggested the road. There are not many dangers in the park, I told her. She nodded and smiled.

Parks are beautiful in any season, but the month of May is the most beautiful. And it is May year round if you have the mind for it. In May you are at birth, and at birth there is no cold winter, no warm summer, only calm. It builds and builds into the unexpected and then flowers bloom in red and fire, orange sunshine, melting canvases of sidewalks painted in candle wax alongside rosebushes and bomb shells, gun sounds vibrating history’s metallic chime.

I wanted to be an astronaut for fifty years. But at sixty, I knew it was unlikely. There is a chance that in some years before my death I will fly to space. The veterans of this country deserve its first visit. To see this earth as a child worth protecting. Or having had been worth.

I’m not so certain now. To have your own doctor tell you that you are dying and must be in pain, and that your own children visit you daily! My doctor tells me this! He goes on and on, he keeps yelling away! The nurses can’t calm him; he yells right at me! Doctor! Please! But then I must affirm to him that I do not have any children because I am still a child and not barely past thirty, well. If it is these people that are in charge of caring, then what will happen to us?

“Henry, it’s time for dinner – we have your favourite ready, everyone will be waiting for you – yes it’s 7pm! I know, jello, you’re a lucky man.”

I rise from my seat in the park and enter the large building behind me. Each day I sit here and insist on a walk, or to write, but they only want to feed me, and talk about my absent children.

I wonder when the next Bond movie is coming, but no one seems to know. As a child that was commonplace knowledge. The wine tastes like vinegar and the music here is stale and grey. Goodness' sake, I tell them, get that smacked ass off your face! What sort man shows up to a cocktail party with a yellow turtleneck on? Chin sagging, eyes black, pain to look at. I’m going for another walk with the lady from the café and she tells me that I’m the wisest man she’s ever met. What time is it, I ask her? Time for bed, she replies. Well, as good as time as ever, I suppose.

And then that’s that, cool blankets, dreams and dreams, memories of laughter.