Stasis

"drizzle the arugula with the oil"

I keep telling myself go to bed, but having ruined my dinner, I'm wrestling the demonic struggle of my next pithy citizen's review in my head, selling out, as always, toward anything triumphantly mine above standard. I always have John's voice in my head, having read his work above and beyond my studies with Jerry, and if John was a liberal, which I suppose he was, his anger is the common thread that sears his work like a phosphorous flesh wound, let alone the scars of Taggert Hodge's repulsive upper quadrant. Gardner and I share a profligate anger such as dims even the impetus of kindness. I introduced Robert to a local Bay area novelist who shall remain unnamed, anonymous because she visited my dowager account rather than my Examiner page and I believe, reading between the lines, my Blogger posts caused her a mild choking sensation, and then she mailed me her book, which I did not want her to do--please stop giving me books, for the love of Christ enough already, really, but I introduced her to Robert, and was not generous in doing so, but a bit terse actually, as if to say, "See, I am an alien even on the gracious tolerance of San Francisco creative writers and their spouses, so allow me to present you to each other in an undercurrent of snide write off." Wondering why I am so unkind to Caucasian affluence to which I once belonged, so briefly as all that, in a dago leather imitation, at any rate.

Gardner died in such a way as to freeze dry his novels beyond their relevance, not entirely sure what I mean, but close to the sense that he is tragically anachronistic, wielding the Vietnam War like a plug to stretch out the anatomical asshole, and as I've already conveyed, I should quietly close the Toshiba, take my half wrecked P-200 off the charger, make my haphazard transfer to my dirty bedspread with my horrid mattress, and try vainly to go back to sleep, allow my body to adjust to the coming fall, take a break from this account, spend the week finding a fucking lawyer and then take another week to convince the fucking lawyer to sue the fucking state of Pennsylvania to which I am domicile, and good luck with that.

Obviously, I will give compliance with mortality a run for its money, along with everything else. I hope my obstinate aunt expires in ICU, if you'd like the truth, which you do not, oh, the things my rage would make you wonder about whether you should fear me, but then again, testing Google, you know, after pouring my blood into this, if not always due diligence. Yes, Gardner's legacy informs my bitterness, perhaps predicts it; if you'd like me to sound almost like a former middle class Catholic under pressure, this latest family deathwatch has realigned my relations with my paternal, married cousins, and this is not necessarily bad. I am not entirely without alliance, of some sort, not that they can mitigate my invidious hatred of section 202 housing.