BIRTDAY MONTH 2o16 WK o3

Sunday, May 15, 2o16
Sundays. A lazy day traditionally for the Woods clan. A very sad day as I remember it, it's like your whole life ends with the end of the weekend. I don't know if that's grammatically correct or poetic that last phrase,   . . . your whole life ends as the weekend ends.  Any better? Maybe not. I'll keep it anyway. Yes, Sundays seemed like graveyard time to me as a kid. Still does. You know that feeling you get sometimes when you feel as if all eternity, all existence is slowing down, that if it stops (and sometimes it feels like it will) all life will also stop. Sundays. A mourners' parade to the gloomy days of Mundane Monday . . . Tortuous Tuesday . . . Wistful Wednesday . . . Theoretical Thursday . . . but resurrection on Freedom Friday . . . I wrote a poem about my family that tries to capture that dreary existence we all call Sunday:

My Mother’s Day

Sundays were always lazy days

around our house. Dad would lie
on the couch drinking beer, watching
the Figure Eight races on TV, nodding
off every now and then. A single snort
from his open mouth would wake
him with a start. He’d take another
sip of beer, wipe his eyes and fall
right back into whatever dream he was dreaming
without even noticing that car 56 had just been
rammed into oblivion by a Plymouth Fury.

Mom busied herself in the kitchen. Doing what?

I don't know, motherly things, I suppose.
She'd scurry about all daylong from the kitchen sink
to the  refrigerator. Always looking for something
but never finding whatever it was she kept looking for.

Me and Brother Dennis would sit on

the back-porch listening to Mother
banging around in the kitchen
and mumbling to herself.

We never talked my brother and me.

We just sat on the back porch steps
digging at the dirt with the heels
of our tennis shoes quietly dreading
school on Monday. We hated school
almost as much as we hated each other.

And my sister? She moved out ‘long ago

to our Aunt Ella and Uncle Ace's ranch  
in the high desert. I never knew exactly
what she was doing up there so far away
from her family, her real family. I never
understood my sister or her moods.

Come to think of it, I never understood

any of the women in my life. That’s
probably the reason why I live alone.

Anyways,

it’s Sunday, Mother’s Day. As I write
this poem, I wonder what my mother’s doing . . .
probably walking to the refrigerator, to the kitchen sink,
stopping to fold and refold the dish towels, the cloth napkins
her mother had willed to her two years before I was born.
She still searches for that something she could never find.
Woodie o5-13-12 (rewrites o5-11-14)

Thursday, May 19, 2016

So, I've had this idea of creating a comic strip based on my friend Michael. Michael is a recent graduate of OU! Yes, he is now one of Dylan's "Twenty years of schooling and they put you on the day shift" generation. An interesting kid living in one of the most interesting towns I've ever known. I know, I can hear the eyebrows raising and the skeptical voices shouting out, "What about Paris, New York, London?!" Well, I am sure that they are very lovely, creative and absolutely cool places to live . . . but when you look at them in the cold, hard light . . . Brother, they ain't nothing but glitter dust compared to good ol' Norman-town.

Went to dinner with David and his family. Got invited to go with Brendan to go see a movie this weekend! Highly honored. Brendan's a interesting guy. Don't know his whole story but a very creative guy, smart. He has a movie review blog, The Norman Nerd. He writes really "beautiful," very creative reviews. He's a hell of a lot better writer than I am. I'm jealous.

A few entries back, I talked about love, about how I missed being in love. I may have misspoke a bit. To be as honest, as it is possible to be honest when writing a public blog . . . I'm not sure I've ever been in love. Does that sound odd, maybe callus? Probably. Look, I've been told my whole life that "love is the answer." Never mind what the question is because nothing matters other than, "love is the answer." , I mean to say, people have demanded that I love other people, and I'm not all sure I ever have. Damn it. Am I just too self-centered? Too much a loner? Maybe I'm sociopathic. Nah! I'm not all Silence of the lLmbs. I'm crazy but not QUAZY!  YET! I need to think more about this . . . I'm guessing. But let me leave on this bit of thought. Maybe love is an illusion, a shadow within a ghost or a shadow within a shadow of a ghost.

2:17 p.m.

I am having an alien moment . . . day. It's true. I've never quite felt at home here on this planet, this plane of existence. I could never get my physical balance quite right. Oh, I tried but put me in a crowd of you  . . . you Earth Thingies and all the instructions given to me by . . . those in charge . . . just escape my body and computer chip brain leaving me a stumbling, mumbling mess of  . . . flesh . . . well, simulated flesh. I rather admire you . . . you Earth Thingies. How you are capable of keeping your balance on only two legs! And seeing with only two eyes? How do you manage to see anything at all. No wonder the other . . . beings . . . from other . . . worlds consider your species to be nearsighted . . . if not totally blind.  No wonder we can run around among you with you barely realizing that we . . . are . . .  here!

Friday, May 2o, 2o16, {2:06 a.m.}

I can't force it. There are no magic words, there's not a lullaby with a soothing enough melody that can lull me to sleep. My fantasies, my stories that I always visualize when I close my eyes for the night . . . I mean, the morning . . . work like counting sheep  . . . but not tonight . . . I mean, this early morning. I'm hoping that by three my body and mind will have had enough consciousness. My poetic-self is waiting to stroll the shadows, speak to the many fantastical creatures that live there. Perhaps I'll dream but it's not necessary. This "waking life" is dream enough for me. I prefer the darkness, the empty void of a dreamless sleep. It always makes opening my eyes into another day a BIG surprise! like rising from the grave, waking every morning is small miracle of resurrection. Jesus must of smiled when he rose and strolled out of his tomb. I bet he appreciated life even more than before.

4:42 a.m.
My eyes have betrayed me once again selling me to the deaf darkness morning brings. Night has become my master and no amount of pleading seems to move her highness to show me any pity. I am doomed to an eternity of sleep depravation. Unconsciousness is nothing more than fairytale, an empty equation that proves only that science is a myth and all the heroes that Ancient Greece produced were nothing more than smoke caught in the wheels of the ceiling fan above my head. Might as well make the coffee, slap in a CD (Blind Faith is playing on the laptop) and await the inevitable dawn to tap at the window blinds.

Saturday, May 21, 2o16

I'm surprised that I made it through all of Friday with only 2 hours of sleep in my gas tank. But I did. No nap, no closing the eyes for a minute. Went to OKC with David. He had an eye exam thing at one of those BIG ass buildings downtown. I was a little freaked out with the number of old people patients there in the eye doctor's waiting room sitting in uncomfortable chairs, sitting there watching the huge flat screen TV (some kind of gardening show playing) just waiting for one of the security locked doors to open and for one of the extremely young receptionists to callout a name. "Jenny!" I watched Jenny slowly rise from her chair. She used a cane as she waddled over to secured door #1, her right hand gently covering her right eye as if she was afraid it would fall out and roll around on the floor. Door #2 opened. "David?" I watched my friend disappear into the other unseen room. I heard the security on the door click into place. All of a sudden, I got a chill. This place was so creepy with its security doors and overly pleasant employees. It must be a trap. A trap for old people. They weren't doing eye exams. They were engaged in the harvesting old people organs for . . . for . . . okay, it was a silly idea. What would they want with old people organs? But I couldn't shake the eerie feeling that there was something wrong with this place. It finally dawned on me. This wasn't an optometrist's office! I was a top secret government lab where they test teleportation devises. Yeah, that made sense. They would use old people for that sort of thing. Old people are expendable.  Damn it! How am suppose to get home? David does all the driving! This is bullshit, man!