Continuing daily with one accord

Someone just referred to the year 2007 and i thought, that's YEARS from now. First mention of 2007 I've ever heard. In my entire life.

It's a year lost in rumpled bed sheets, or down the couch cushions.

Maybe a piece of candy someone put in their mouth, didn't like, and just now put back in the box.

2007 sounds benign. We'll just have to wait and see. 2007.

Today I'm all the more aware of having no energy or ambition, no dreams or hopes. It's a Dry Alcoholic malady, I'm sure, no reason to worry. Everyday is not the same thing.

I was shopping in a pawn shop, one of those doubly offensive for putting on a family-friendly appearance. I have never shopped hock, and I felt the presence of guns and ammo but none were to be seen. I was looking for a Tv and a microwave and found some reasonably priced---well, Walmart priced, I should go there of course.

The clocks will fall back sometime. Since I never know when that's going to happen, I make it worse for myself, and besides the sun is going down too soon as it is, and there is that slant of afternoon light that for some reason makes me hate my parents, brothers and sisters. (I think it turns me into a misogynist too. Yes, women get the worst of it, the ones I loved.)

Good Lord! Am I the guy who hates Autumn, yes I am, that's me all right.

So usually after work it bothers me even if I have to stop on my way home for a pack of ciggies. I want home, to go into what my teen age friends called my room/womb/tomb, a hundred years ago.

But today I'm looking for what I need to establish a second getaway. The sprite, Miss Vanderbilt-Royce, has a nice house but I "never" go over there, she says. She doesn't have cable tv or a microwave, though, don't you know.

And I'm thinking this fall, at last, here may be a dream. We will microwave popcorn and sit on the very nice deep cushy soft couches and begin to watch movie classics from the 30's to the 50's.

For months. Until April. Break for work.

First up: Life With Father. Then she'll have my world view, and I sure hope she likes it because it's too late now, 'gate. Next, some Nick and Nora Charles, I imagine.

Now my mind starts to go like it should in a daydream. (I will always want it to be nighttime during the Fall, btw.) Her favorite TV Dad is Fred MacMurray, so we will venture into Disney Color, with all his movies and son of movies. Maybe go off into Dean Jones and Sandy Duncan, the Million Dollar Duck, yaaaaaaay! Are my hopes up now!

They say the alcoholic/addict is determined to run the show, be the play director, set designer, all that. Perhaps this aspect of my personality is being given too much room. Maybe there's too much love! as Louis Even-Stevens once exclaimed.

But what ought to concern me is that this is my dream, not hers. (And it's such a damned modest dream it's shameful.)

Anonydoc says to go outside and face the sun for a few minutes. It will help. I believe her, but there's something about me that wants to be sad this time of year. And I think there's something about the Alcoholic, where he wants to be an invalid so bad he'll shoot off his foot if he has to. Not to be nursed, but to stay home alone. A sick, desperate individual convinced that life is meant to be appreciated in solitude. Right now I can't think of a more backwards idea. Not off the top of my hat.

Solitude is for prayer. You whisper the truth, "well really what's happening is this" and then go back into the fun games that make life what it is.
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I'm reading Acts.

It's early, right after Jesus, and Peter says repent. The holy spirit enters everyone who hears and then... Then! --- (I want to see if this grabs you as it grabbed me) :

...fear came upon every soul: and many wonders and signs were done by the apostles. And all that believed were together, and had all things common; and sold their possessions and goods, and parted them to all men, as every man had need.

And they, continuing daily with one accord in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, did eat their meat with gladness and singleness of heart,
praising God, and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to the church daily such as should be saved.

Whenever I "get it" while reading the Bible, the experience is similar to deja vue, and then suddenly I don't get it anymore. I recollect having my understanding, only it's gone.

But one notion remains. Somehow, I understand why they were suddenly fearful. Not because they would be persecuted as a group, no. Not because they had doubts or reservations still.

For a moment, reading this, I understood their fear (which came after the good news of their salvation.)

I understand why they clung to one another so. That's natural.

Here is how I figure it:

They for once and all understood there was a God, and in a way that's deeply frightening.

"I AM", as Paul explains well, is the end of the argument. There will be trouble. Seeming caprice. "Why" is for children, philosophers and poets.

Me, I'm none of those. I'm like a dim flicker of myself after doing so much to escape through drugs and alcohol and time traveling old movies--- escaping alone, for heavens sake, how wrong, how selfish.

Now I'm in a pawn shop, sober, plotting a very thin future with a woman I can't even fully acknowlege is real. TV, DVD player, gas heat, telephone in sick after staying up til three.

Like I say, it's a dry drunk, not to over worry about it.

by his truth i will be upright
by his strenth i will endure
by his power i've been lifted
in his love i am secure
-Saved (Dylan)

We're both patient, Florrie and me. Six weeks go by, and nothing. Then, a computer. Then a couch she can sleep on. I picked up an encyclopedia set, a Monet, a little end table at a defunct garage sale on a Wednesday, this summer, a few months ago. She decorates and paints and goes to work 57 hours a week.

Yesterday she finally got a bed delivered, she'd bargained for last June. A kitchen table and four chairs, too.
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These aren't knots, they're cables that keep a ship docked.

I'm homesick. Maybe Memorial Day I'll go home. But for now I stay within the city limits.