One lives in the hope of becoming a memory. – Antonio Porchia
Pardon me if I ramble a bit. Even more than usual, I mean.
All my life, people have been asking me, what the hell do you do all day?
Happened again and as bad as my memory might be, I thought, I’ve been here before and sure enough, I must have a half-dozen records stretched across decades.
A Day In The Life Of A Gentleman Farmer tells the story of a cowboy with a higher testosterone count than I can testify to today. https://www.jackdogwelch.com/?p=444
Twenty years later, TGIF (A Day In The Life) https://www.jackdogwelch.com/?p=187
Followed up down the line with the worst photo maybe of me ever. https://www.jackdogwelch.com/?p=4936. Grey is not my color nor am I fluffy. A Day In The Life Of Barker Ajax, Literary Celebrity.
Researching myself, I came across a draft from 2016. I don’t remember 2016, do you?
Who’s on first. I have a young friend, good friend, let’s call him Dawg, who kept a minute-by-minute report going – more often than that it seems to me – at HowdyRowdy.com. [Currently defunct.]
Every damn thing – imagine all six-volumes of Karl Ove Knausgård. Very little white space. Every damn thing. Really, who can keep track of all that stuff. Dawg can.
Read like a novel sometimes. So, I asked him if he had anything handy I might use. He sent me something.
Practically an outline when you study it.
I’ll look for my old backups. I got them somewhere.I can give you the beats for a fictionalized account.At the time there was so much I didn’t know.I had many traumatic things happen to me in Central America.I haven’t talked about most of them with people.I’ll tell you whatever you want.You can start it off with a kid hot off the Asian Poker Tour flush with cash and clueless.Mom is sick. American medical bills rack up constantly.Falls for girl who is full of life.That doesn’t work out.He has all his money seized by the feds.He drinks himself half to death in the mountains of Guatemala where he has rented a shack.It’s at that point he decides to give it one more go, even though this is the second time he’s been robbed.Central America is film noir. That’s all you need to know.The streetlights were weak always and a darker purple hue. Everything was humid and cramped.All the concrete was cracked.Unsolved rate for homicides was 80%. Mafioso got asylum in the country and continued to operate.I played cards with guys on the FBI’s Most Wanted List.I was battling bipolar disorder at the time but I didn’t know what it was.I self medicated with alcohol.
Thinking I could steal a lot of this.
Maybe move the location. Probably not. Story wouldn’t work in America. They have freedoms in Central America we don’t have in the United States. Ain’t that ironic, my eight-year-old grandson, Mr. Skippy, might ask.
The names for sure. Hell, I don’t even know the names, so there’s that.
From 2016. What I did today. In truth, I am only about halfway done. Who knows what the future holds.
Got up at oh-six-thirty-eight. Sat for a second. Waited moments for the head fog to dissipate. Headed to the john. Gargled with a vanilla-mint breath-cleanser and kissed my wife, who was watching the end of another episode of House.
Together we stared at Your World In Ninety Seconds, which is about all the news I can endure these days.
I remember being at the old Madison Square Garden in the Fifties, a three-ring circus, and elephants and a sideshow which was scary. Lions and tigers and people in shiny tights flying through the air and whips cracking and a guy getting shot out of a cannon. I don’t remember much from that day but I remember this.
Asked my mother, Mom, do think a clown will ever get elected President?
Oh, no, honey, that’s not possible. Couldn’t happen.
She was a teacher and she was my mom. Believed her all my life until just lately.
Take three medications, even though doctor says she can’t fix anything.
Love when they use the word “prophylactic” to describe my meds.
Ignoring the more serious issues, I have what’s called the Viking-American disease.
Sure that sounds sexy enough, but what it means both palms in large gnarled hands have been filleted and the knuckles are rusty and the fingers broad. What I am trying to get to right here is those three fucking tiny pills are so damn hard to pick up first thing in the day, especially without my glasses, it pisses me off some mornings.
Which is why I kiss my wife first. Remind myself – life is good.
Have a system, it’s secret, how I tell myself I have already taken my pills.
Have many systems and they are all secrets.
Which is why I stop here. You cannot make me talk.
Okay, here’s one, drag it out of me. State legislature has proposed a bill – computer coding, whatever that is, fulfills a student’s foreign language requirement. I am not making that up.
So here’s the secret. Don’t read the local section of the paper first thing in the morning.
Can we make poetry a foreign language, ’cause you know it is. Welding maybe.
Flavored coffee helps.
Then there’s the Oh, My God Crime Report.
Apopka: MACHETE DRAWN IN PARKING SPAT. Police say a man threatened to kill his neighbor with a machete after an argument over a parking space.
Palm Coast: CHEESY GARLIC KNOTS LEAD TO FIGHT. A brawl broke out at a pizzeria after an order of garlic knots arrived with cheese on top. Turns out the twenty-five-old woman wanted a refund and didn’t appreciate how the clerk put her money on the counter. And then things just went all to hell.
Most surprising thing in Florida, nobody pulled a gun and started shooting.
Get the paper when I walk my wife to her car. She has a job.
She leans over, picks up my paper, so I don’t have to bend down.
Kiss.
Tell her I love her and mean it and wait for her the rest of the day to come back.
Try to stay out of trouble and keep busy in between.
Just walkin’ the dog, as we used to say.
There I go, divulging more secrets.
Update. Wife retired and we traveled a little bit. Saw some friends.
Then Covid and here we are.