Blister

A tiny blister has appeared on my index finger of my left hand. It’s not on the bottom but on top, just behind the base of my fingernail. It wasn’t caused by work or playing “Helter-Skelter” on an electric guitar. Nor do I see or sense a sliver. It just appeared. If I press on it, it hurts. I try not to press on it, but it’s irresistible. Wounds are like that. We feel compelled to touch them. The blister is tiny, but very pronounced. And remarkably translucid. If I hold it just right in the light, I can see inside. I wish I had a magnifying lens. I wouldn’t be surprised to see a fish swim by.

It’s all just part of the aging process. Each day there’s a new problem. The trick is to avoid seeing a doctor. My doctor is good. He’s skilled and caring. The problem is the system. The medical system has become a criminal enterprise of extortion and overbilling. Sometimes our insurance will cover something and sometimes they won’t. But even that isn’t clear-cut. There’s always confusion. Headaches and stress. It’s easier to avoid the doctor altogether and hope that the malady resolves itself on its own or doesn’t get more serious. It’s better to live like a mountain man. Be self-reliant. If Hugh Glass was able to survive a mauling by grizzly bear in the wilderness, I should be able to live with a tiny blister on my finger.

Today is the summer solstice. And yet, at eleven in the morning our apartment is as dark as it is in the winter. The temperature is 58℉. It should be at least 70℉, our apartment ablaze with summer heat and light. I feel strangely detached and cosmic. Not so much detached as resigned, not so much cosmic as reflective. I’d like to be cosmic. Let’s make that our goal. I want to be circular. It’s better to be round than square. Round people roll. Square people get stuck. I don’t want to be geometric at all. I want to be dazzling and romantic, like Lord Buttercup.

Lord Buttercup is an imaginary man I inhabit from time to time. He’s dressed in Regency era clothes and dawdles around like a melancholy aristocrat.

Opposites mingle. It’s that type of day. I want the truth, but I need my illusions. People squirm whenever you bring up the truth. It’s always assumed that the truth is painful. Why is that? Maybe it’s preferable to depend on those who quibble over the truth, who endlessly argue whether the truth is a reality or just an abstract concept trumpeted by narrow-minded grumps. Whoever has spent time walking on the shoulder of a busy highway knows what it feels like to be outside the matrix, to be exposed and vulnerable, but also a little wild and crazy.

One’s habiliments are critical to the writing process, although I recommend nudity for the most stunning results. Words like it when I’m nude. Are words nude? Good question. I believe words light up whenever there’s a mind around.

Can language get any thicker than mahogany? Mahogany is just a word, and yet the feeling it produces is breezy and theoretical, like Brazil in the evening, the phenomenology in a moment of luscious opacity. It’s all signals and codes. Opacity is like that. Opacity is a few minutes of black genius making records in an electrifying wig, a pink sexuality maniacal as science. It’s the specter of our future selves banging away on a piano, hidden fires looking over our shoulders.

There’s a feeling that muscles its way into expression like a cement truck and just sits there, idling, the big barrel turning. This is why I like the idea of a hole. I can sprint toward it and then jump. And there I go. Into the hole. A feeling greets me on the other side. It’s the same feeling that I had before, only shinier. Now it’s a globule of pronouns. Clearly, this is a time for reflection. The mosquitos are hollow. Give them sugar. Give them shoes. But give them something. Give them substance. Give them experience. Give them a place to do their jobs. The sparkle of camaraderie. How about a garage. This is where we all crash into ourselves, expecting a kiss and getting a pair of work gloves instead. That’s pretty much the story right there.

I’m telling you, Aerosmith is June. Turntable diamonds. The suitcase on my hip is full of bees, a whirling, sullen sea of eyes. Sit down, I think I love you. Pessimism is my reciprocal sponge, but my grammar is fat.

I walk down to the Pot Shop on Dexter to get a blister pack of Deeper Sleep gel caps. More blisters, but the good kind. This product helps me sleep better than a diazepam. It contains Indica terpenes such as Myrcene and Linalool, THC, CBD and Peony root extract.

On the way back I notice a few small shards of pottery and some broken glass in the driveway. I get a whisk broom and a dustpan and sweep it up. I return the whisk broom and dustpan to its hook in the laundry room and grab a pair of hedge clippers and go into the switchback trail in Bhy Kracke park to trim some of the thorny vines sticking out over the walkway. It gets me in my way when I go for my run and I don’t want to wait for the park department to get around to doing it. They appear to have cut back on their services. It figures. Property tax keeps escalating while city services keep declining.

Desire is the best way to come to know reality. Illusion is its sad consolation prize. Utopias generally lead to disaster. Avoid isms. Isms are prisons.

The way to what is most near to us is the longest and the most difficult.

Said Heidegger.

The margin constrains the circle.

Said Anne-Marie Albiach.

Our heads are round so our thoughts can change direction.

Said Francis Picabia.

Life is that which, undertaken, oscillates between wakefulness and dream. The kiwis come later, with fecundation and sunglasses. That's why I often feel the urge to introduce you to a coconut. I feel luminous, like a peach. And there’s a door in my head. I'll open it and let you in if you meet me here at the end of the sentence. Can you hear it? It’s the tinkling of chandeliers. The buttermilk is wearing alpine. The king rides by on a horse made of lightning. This is what writing is, what it’s been along. A crustacean on the ceiling, a squid swimming out of my head.