Soliloquy In E Minor Sharp

"I'd really like to be drunk", he thought to himself, "but I've gained a lot of weight lately and I can't afford to gain anymore". It wasn't vanity, he just couldn't afford new clothes and he was pretty close to the "breaking point", at least according to his pants. He'd never gotten into non-alcoholic drugs and didn't feel like starting now, but he'd sure love to be high.

"Fucking calories" he murmured to himself, then felt foolish when he had nothing more to add. "Jeez", he thought, "I'm even boring myself". That was dangerous, he was his own best friend, or at least the person he most frequently talked to. "Damn, I'm getting batty" he answered, feeling even more foolish. "Talking to yourself may be a sign of genius, but answering; well, that may be something else".

Outside his den window clouds appeared to be mating with nearby peaks, or perhaps, the nearby peaks were giving birth to clouds but since he couldn't hear the wails of laboring mothers or newborns he assumed it was the former. "What a weird way to describe such an incredibly beautiful sight" he thought; "true" he answered. Clouds were a bit more intimate when you lived above the seven thousand foot mark.

Cranberry sauce, it had been years since he'd had any and it reminded him of home, of a home, anyway. He only had a little left. He wondered why he hankered for it so, its taste wasn't all that much, but he'd always liked it. He ate a small forkful, then replaced the now treasured container in the refrigerator and returned to his exploration of Native American deities, crow style, at least according to Chris Moore. Then he thought about Fucking Bird Little Shit and wondered how he was doing. It'd been a long time since the sixties and he didn't think the scam could have lasted this long, but then, he hadn't heard otherwise either. He wished him well, hell, he envied him, at least for all the sex, but then, remembering that sex had changed a bit from the sixties, health-wise, he kind of had second thoughts, then third thoughts, etc., a virtual cacophony of alternating perspectives.

He looked over at his acoustic Spanish style guitar made in Japan sitting across from him in his bedroom, lonesome but for its ovation soul-mate, both unbothered with for way too long. He walked over to the twin guitar stands and picked it up, strummed a cord then made a sour face echoing the sour chord, and went to his night table, shuffling through the contents looking for his guitar tuner. Not for the first time he wondered what the hell had happened to his good pair of glasses, swearing to himself that they couldn't have just disappeared. He carefully tuned the guitar then tried to pick out a tune that had been flowing through his head. After he picked it, as he had every time he'd lain hands on his guitar lately, he quickly abandoned it; either out of respect for the guitar (he wasn't all that good at playing it) or respect for the feeling of depression that had recently come to play a dominant role in his life.

It was four years now since he'd left the States for the call of a long lost home, but rather than find Home (capital H intentional), he’d just been exposed to a cacophony of calls echoing from other places he’d called home, Miami, Charlotte, New York, Charleston, Fort Lauderdale and finally, in a penultimate sense, Ocala. Pieces of his soul scattered like drifts of snow all over that forlorn mindscape. He realized that wherever he was, someplace else would be clamoring for his attention, filled with memories, good bad and indifferent. He was coming to understand what Pablo Neruda felt when he’d decided on the title to his autobiography. Could one live too much and too little at the same time? Perhaps he’d been meant to be more than one person.

He missed his sons. He missed the long, long days of summer when sunsets slept late; here and now days tended to be the same length, and trees never turned, and beaches were just dreams, unless one considered the crest adjacent to the Sea of Mountains a beach of sorts. Damn, what a bitch!

He missed softball. He missed Central Park. He missed all the houses and apartments he’d called home. He missed a lot of things.

But most of all he missed his sons.

"I'd really like to be drunk", he thought to himself". “Fucking weight!”

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© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2011; all rights reserved