The Wall

Yeah so I'm sitting in this quiet room talking to the wall. The wall and I are pals, buds, long time acquaintances. Like a bad marriage I use to hit it all the time, sometimes flailing out of control, arms akimbo like a ice skater on acid, just lost. Other times I'd smack it with with intent, with malice, with forethought.

Hitting the wall.

I use to do it all the time but I seem to have gotten bored with it. Maybe I'm in touch with my inner control freak but the bigger rush is turning out to be missing the wall. To fire up whatever sensors you have installed, doing a deep scan and missing that bad boy.

I'm probably just getting old(er), more brittle.

So I wander upstairs, pour two fingers of single malt something and sit on the back patio listening to night sounds and the vengeful ghost whispers of poisoned chipmunks. Immediately I jones for a cigarette but manage to beat that back through sheer desire not to do that again. There are some places BillyBear can't go, he doesn't have the right stuff to smoke just one or two cigs a month when drinking. So be it.

The ice clinks in my glass as I examine my fiefdom, my chipmunk Auschwitz. Yes, chipmunks are not welcome here and they're starting to get the message. One had the temerity to scamper across my yard and leap into this little fountain of mine for some cool, cool water. Fine by me since I saw he made his run from under the neighbor's deck. If I see a burrow though, well, open season.

If it would rain here I'd have a problem with mosquitoes but not at the moment. The lawn has gone completely dormant, all brown and I don't have to mow it. I have mixed emotions about that - it kinda annoys to walk across it barefoot but running around with the sprinkler in some pattern every twenty minutes is beyond me at the moment. I just don't care. Crickets are chirping and on this Wednesday night, mid August, I seem to be the only one out here. I consider testing that hypothesis by masturbating but honestly, I'm not into it at the moment. Maybe after a few months of serious cabin fever when winter hits. Right now I'm just enjoying a summer night type, type typing on my little laptop here.

I haven't been posting much of late but I have been writing, mostly letters to those left behind when death's stillness steals a loved one. They need it I think, that touch when a week or so after the funeral they come home to an empty house and it hits them, the quiet. That's when it's time to cowboy up, they don't need another flower arrangement, they need contact, distraction, something to do until new patterns take hold.

Hmmm, the moon is mostly full and my battery indicator is past the halfway mark. Time is running out before I once again enter the fray of work and its unrelenting pressure.

I can't wait to retire.

I've started riding my bike into work. I'm a far cry from some tree huggers I know and the price of gas isn't going to kill me. I have no agenda to push I guess is what I'm saying. I think I do it simply because I can and the endorphins, I'm too tired to get dangerously excited at work. I hope I keep it up because it is sorta good for me but at 5:30am it's just me and the bike. At that time in the morning I look like a demented disco ball, covered in blinkies and reflective tape. If I get smacked by a car well they can't say they didn't see me, they'll have to work for an answer.

I have to hit the sack, big day tomorrow, riding my bike into work again, all that jazz. Maybe I'll work up enough will to hit the local pool tomorrow or Friday. Labor Day is nigh upon and time is running out.

I love these summer evenings and thought I'd look up from the Olympics and say to those of you that I miss and love,

Hello out there, how are you?

Well I hope.