A letter to Rod

Rod:

Starlight tells me you are mitten-bound. That’s good to hear, Rod. My friend called me yesterday while driving through Nebraska. Said he was bored, so I told him to think of it as the “quintessential American Journey.” You are Odysseus, said I, and this is your deeply taxing but ultimately golden voyage. But that was a lot of horseshit, Rod.

Really, there were only stained gasmen and vegetables, and I was just asking him politely to fool himself with a certain degree of self-aggrandizement. For what is he but a man? And what are we but ribs and stacked mud? Don’t spend too much time thinking about that. Me, it makes my eyes hurt. Me, who writes this letter while seated stiffly in a folding chair and smells only my own knees.

These past few months feel like cave-drawings. Crudely sketched and faded almost beyond recognition. I hope someone finds them fascinating someday. My hair samples and my gel pens and bones too. My artifacts. I bet they’ll wonder why there are pieces of shopping cart in my stool. There is a man in France who ate a whole one. Again, I come in second place.

There’s no stopping it, Rod. I can drag my obsidian against the wall, but that’s all I can do at this speed, as the wraiths pull me by my ankles on to God knows where. So I’ll leave behind one long line, unstraight and jagged. Follow it and find me there. With my lemonade. With my lap cat and my TV Guide. With my resolve and my peace and my box of Kleenex. Find me there. Say hi in a non-threatening way so as not to wake the lap cat. Say there’s too much to say. Have a seat and watch the Pistons. Listen to me talk about the ladies. Witness me squeeze the bridge of my nose.

Summer is upon me with its wetness and its odor of hot trash. I’m sure it will be upon you soon, too, if not already so. Tomorrow it’s 88, and I’ll get in the elevator and say to whomever is there, “Gonna be a hot one.” And they’ll nod in agreement, praying that I won’t speak again. And I won’t, but I’ll smile and fan myself as if it were making a difference.

Dave