No Complicatedness.

Nov. 22

November is getting wiser. What else can it get? Colder, wetter, rawer. Clearer tomorrow, then milder. It takes these weather indices more seriously than most. The other months call it "Mr. Weatherbee," after the needle-nosed principal in Archie Comics. It has an owlish appearance, with the N suggesting owl horns, reinforced by the ov (see the eye and beak?). 

November would like to hang out with March, who understands its wild, cowboy ways. But its place is here, between October, old pumpkin puss, and December, the lucky month, stripped clean and wearing lit-up finery. So Nov contents itself with squinting at the bitter landscape, rolling a cigarette and expertly cupping its flame against a crosscutting wind. It hosts innumerable migrating birds, claiming to possess negative energy, conducting crows in "the classical canon."

I'm not sure what any of this means. But it doesn't hurt to keep writing, just the same.

It's 10:30. I'm falling asleep at the table with a carton of black raisins and a pain in my side from sitting sideways. I'm a vagabond in my own home, careening from one necessity to another—stretches to writing to crossword puzzle to dishes—and then it's time for bed.

I think I heard a mouse. Or maybe an aural hallucination. I sometimes dream that I and LBJ's younger daughter run the country. Our slogan: "It's a Hal/Luci Nation. You just live in it."

Not true. A little dream voice just spoke in my head: "No complicatedness."

Nov. 23

Back at Kickstand, waiting for a mug of chai, which finally arrived. Painfully slow myself, I am not very tolerant of slowness in others, or at least with service providers.

Ditto the screaming child.

Maybe it's my back, which has been very cranky this morning while doing chores.
I am at the long table. Pear ginger scone and chai nearly gone. I like the long table. People together but apart. Dark scratched wood. Mead-hall for bus passengers. 
There is a small scale-model bicycle on the window sill. Leaning on its kickstand. That angle and location must be pretty exact to support the bike. Kind of a keystone. Why is Pennsylvania the Keystone State?  How did the Keystone Cops get their name? These are bus passenger questions.

The window reveals a steady flow of furrowed clouds, driven by the wind, as in "Ghost Riders in the Sky," a stirring pop myth from 1948, sung by, among others, Vaughn Monroe, who (probably apocryphally) got into a fight with my dad. He was drunk...rude to my mom...not sure if punches were thrown...makes a good mead-hall story, anyway.

Haven't found the kernel of truth yet. What can we learn from the clouds? The inevitability of evaporation? The group journey—random but yoked together, like us at this long table?

Each day throwing a new configuration of energy and weather at us. How to use it? Just observe it? Build from it? Tune into it, as we are each radios?  Adios, muchachos.