Spring

The boys are home from college and they and their stuff have prompted the first leg of my spring cleaning. Lordy, those boys were living like pigs. The night before their last final I rented a U-haul van and loaded the thing up with those big multi-gallon Rubbermaid plastic containers and drove the 2.5 hours to their dorm in Kalamazoo. It was 11pm when I got there and worked with them to scoop their stuff up out of the filth and into the plastic bins and haul all that into the van. And it was nearly 3am when I got home. The next morning -- a work day -- I hauled the bins into the kitchen. Finals over, this weekend they carried it all down to the basement and I washed about 10 loads of their laundry. I also sorted and organized and popped some unused or outgrown stuff into bags for transport to poor people. I'm only now starting. Lots more to do. I look at the basement shelves with pride for they are now rid of the crazy clutter from before. Man, too much stuff is a burden.
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Love mania

I come from a family of crazies and married into another so I know a lot about mania. It's where the manic one energetically humiliates and exhausts his or her loved ones with one form of silly insanity followed by another. In northern climates like Detroit the relief of spring after months of dreary winter brings with it widespread mania in many forms, this from sane people, however. The worst is the love mania. It's where two people find each other and then rub our faces in it like we care. (Shut up, I did it with the girl friend, I know, so shut it, but we are talking about them and not about me.) I live downtown in my little city and the street and sidewalk in front of my house is crawling with them. They are holding hands and groping one another energetically chatting as they burn off excess energy walking and roller balding in front of my house as if to say, Look At Us! We're the Only Manic Assholes on the Planet! Well you're not. Spring makes manic assholes out of all of us and now I'm gonna go bang my girlfriend in some inappropriately public place.
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Dole

I was eating lunch at my desk when I took a look at the sticker on my banana. It said I should visit their farm and gave me the web link to do so. So I went there and here is where I went: http://www.doleorganic.com/farms/759/759.html.

Genius.
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If you don't like the weather

They say if you don't like the weather, just wait. So it is with moods: if you're in a bad one just tuck in and pause 'cause it'll pass. But there are some moods that are different than such bright forcasts suggest. I write of the ones brought on by depression, that wet, dark creep that sucks it all out and hauls it straight down. I've had it bad, where I've looked in the mirror working to smile and walked off amazed that the face just wouldn't take it try as I might. That's depression, man. No amount of will or self help or exercise or Jesus can fix it. Over the summer the shrink observed that it had come back and it's a testament to what a furtive creep the misery is that I was shocked. Really? I said. Yeah, she said, and put me on a low dose of Lexapro. Two weeks later and paint me amazed, shocked at the difference -- no laying on the couch unable to move, for starters. How lucky was I, and every day I thanked the gods that I was fine again. So when that stiff-legged mongrel stalked me out from the forest edge this December I was genuinely hurt. No, no, no, don't give me this I said but Mr Lexapro just threw up his hands and said, can't help ya no more. I went a month like that, black, immobile, and doubly depress 'cause I thought I'd licked it once and for all. Then when I finally got in to the shrink and described my despair she said get off that Chantix, the drug I'd taken to get of the nicotine, I'll bet that's it. I stopped right off, figuring she was wrong or that it'd take a week, but in hours -- hours! -- the black funk had lifted and I was looking in the mirror at a face that smiled with ease and on its own. I will not be cocky about this 'cause it's a fragile brew those pharmaguys have bubbling in this head.
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Holy crap

Holy crap I love you. I can't say why with precision. Of course it's the stuff I've already told you, that we get along so well and relate so well and all that. But lord I want to fuck you. I feel it in me so strongly that I want to jump, to hop to it, and knock you down and take you hard. That deep red scar of a pussy where you're on my desk gets me deep in my gut. It's mine, fucking mine, and I want it and want to take it now.
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Thursday

Thursday morning I'll talk to her about how they turned off the color, how gray the skies, how black the rest. How I want to close the door to my office, heave up my feet, and fall back in my chair, letting the ships pass on the river below as my jaw hangs slack and I dead-eye the world. Let my days slip by like that, don't make me move, just fix it. She'll say it's quitting the patch, or a battle between the chantix and the lexapro, but she won't know for sure and whatever she concludes will require movement on my part. I don't want to move.
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The boys in the band in the basement

The boys and their band are in the basement practicing for a job later this month. I'm glad that I've always loved having them here doing that. I'm glad because it won't last long. Soon they'll be separated and off doing very different things and all those nights like tonight will be faint memories. That's life. That's the way it is. Now gets more lost with every tomorrow.
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