This morning’s My Unsung Hero on the NPR website triggered in me a flood of memories and emotions. The piece told the story of a neighbor helping a woman facing growing obligations while dealing with her husband’s brain injury. One of those obligations—clearing leaves on the lawn in time for a looming city collection—found her crying and under stress as she began to undertake the task. Just as she began, a neighbor stepped in and advised her to go rest while he took over the task. Her neighbor’s kind gesture remains an emotional memory for her eight years later. A similar memory of mine causes emotions in me. Shortly after my late wife was diagnosed with breast cancer and advised to have a total mastectomy, I planned to go home from work one day to mow the lawn, which I had neglected for weeks. When I pushed my lawnmower out of the garage, I heard another gas-powered mower and saw one of my neighbors pushing his mower through my yard. He knew about my wife’s condition and wanted to do something to help alleviate some of the pressures facing me. I remember approaching him that afternoon to try to thank him, unable to articulate my appreciation through the tide of tears running down my cheeks. I wonder, this morning, how much longer NPR will be able to continue distributing My Unsung Hero and other moving programs. My emotions this morning comprise a mixture of gratitude for compassionate humanity and rage at cruelty for cruelty’s sake.
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Yesterday morning’s nap evolved into something else. Something resembling hibernation. Feeling fatigue and fighting a sense of general malaise, I decided to rest while mi novia went to church. I got back in bed about 9:40 a.m. I slept…soundly, for the most part…until 4:00 p.m. I have not slept so long—during the daytime—for quite some time. On one hand, I relish the serenity of largely uninterrupted sleep; on the other, the experience seems wasteful of precious and irretrievable conscious living.
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I might find life in Malmö, Sweden to my liking. I’ve already found an apartment there that I like. It’s in a high-rise (54-story) residential building called the Turning Torso. The only significant downside, I think, would involve living in a human-laden environment. People tend to create everlasting disturbing chaos wherever they go. We scatter broken glass like seeds and tend to the shards like professional gardeners, celebrating as each piece of sharp debris evolves into a million tiny glass knives that spread their destructive capabilities far and wide.
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Never. That word suggests a relationship with Time, but refuses to be explicit about the nature of any such relationship. The reason? The relationship…if there is one…is implied, but when confronted with demands for evidence, is denied. Never is the half-sister of Always. She is Eternal’s cousin, as well, but is related to her daughter’s incestuous grand-uncle, Occasional, solely on the basis of forged certificates of authenticity. None of them have even remotely similar parentage. Like Never, though, Always hints at a familial connection with Time. The closest they ever came to a blood relationship was during a custody battle between Before and After, when Never testified on behalf of Infrequent, who claimed to have been involved in an intimate relationship with Perpetual. Who knows enough about Long Shortcomings to be able to untangle her imperfect flaws? Does any of this sound remotely familiar…like the whining musical notes created by arrows as they pierce fully-inflated helium balloons…or the eerie spoonerisms that erupt from burping chirds as they neather their fests?
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Enough absurdity. I thought it might ease my entry into the work-week but, alas, I forgot I am unemployed. “Retired” sounds so much more civilized; but “unemployed” is so much more descriptive.
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