Home again. I woke up today not feeling nearly as bad I had yesterday morning. One must be careful of ingesting too much of any liquid that is flammable. There should be a warning on the bottle, there probably is. It seems an obvious truth that nothing good will come of it, even if you follow it up with beer in the hopes of neutralizing its potential hazards, there is still much danger. I'm no expert, but my anecdotal experience brings me this simple homespun wisdom.
I have the day off today, then another one just like it tomorrow. The two days stretch out in front of me like a cliff-less plateau. Today I will lie around the apartment reading (Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov), tomorrow perhaps the shores south of SF or Lake Berryessa, north of Sonoma.
Today is a friend's birthday. She just unexpectedly sent me a gift, a cd of poetry, for the long rides to and from work. As this is one of her favorite poems by that author I will leave it here for any who care.
The Tragedy of the Leaves
I awakened to dryness and the ferns were dead,
the potted plants yellow as corn;
my woman was gone
and the empty bottles like bled corpses
surrounded me with their uselessness;
the sun was still good, though,
and my landlady's note cracked in fine and
undemanding yellowness; what was needed now
was a good comedian, ancient style, a jester
with jokes upon absurd pain; pain is absurd
because it exists, nothing more;
I shaved carefully with an old razor
the man who had once been young and
said to have genius; but
that's the tragedy of the leaves,
the dead ferns, the dead plants;
and I walked into a dark hall
where the landlady stood
execrating and final,
sending me to hell,
waving her fat, sweaty arms
and screaming
screaming for rent
because the world had failed us
both.
-Charles Bukowski
