cold spring

A moth throws itself repeatedly against my widescreen. Nothing for you there, no warmth or life. Live on light alone?

I awoke cold and coughing, alone on the couch in near-darkness. One smoke later: sick to the stomach too. I know better.

Browsing the news: Arizona and Wall Street. Oil and war. Entertainment and outrage...yet I am not entertained, not outraged. I am not buying the product; I have no need that it can satisfy.

Nausea passing, head now slightly tight. The flu is in its last days; no more lovely crisis and necessary selfishness, no more time off, just leftover phlegm coating everything with a gauzy filter of passing disease.

Dis-ease.

Billie Jean's body is out there somewhere, rotting in coyote country. The invitation: "considering the time elapsed, this will likely be a find and recover rather than a rescue."

I should help look but I won't. What if I found her? Don't I have enough death in my head already? Can't a working man sleep in on a Saturday? I don't even know her. I don't even really know the guy who forwarded the story to me. I just know it's the right thing to do, a new right thing to add to the many that I'm not doing already.

[edit - apparently her body wasn't even "out there" at all...but rotting in her home, hidden to her husband and even the police dogs by what must be insane amounts of clutter. It took until the end of August to discover this? Worse even than what I was expecting...]

Mom is depressed. She has reason to be, not to mention our wonderful family biochemistry. I'm all she has left (why don't you count Dad? Your remaining siblings? You have more than I have, and I'm still sorry for you).

My wife gets weird when I talk to my mother. Impatient, silent. Enduring. I think I understand...but I could be wrong. It makes me angry to see pettiness, and sad to recognize futile struggles to suppress it. Empathy is not automatically a cure for loneliness, especially as it is never certain.

The sun will come up soon. The moth is gone. It was a big one.