Drowning In God’s Black Tea

It’s hard to describe where I am, though I’m really not sure I’d even care to anyhow. What are people going to refer to the years 2000 to 2019, I wonder, when they look back with fondness? Ahhh, when I was your age, sonny, back in the zeros… No, not quite right. Back in the twenty-ohs. Nope. Back in the ‘ohs. Possibly? Back in the teens we used to… That one works, easy enough, though it won’t even kick in for another year. Maybe people will just forget about 2000-2012. Not much worth remembering, far as I can tell, but everyone’s gotta transition from childhood to adulthood sometime, and I’m sure there’s someone out there who will be able to pop in a "Papa Roach" album and get misty eyed with nostalgia. Twerps…

The first damp of the spring rain is upon us here in the midwest– the land of willow trees, maple trees, and long drives between sleepy towns. It keeps tugging at my spiritual nature, threatening to dislodge me from the pragmatic harshness of the summer and winter. A little flutter of transition, and suddenly my memory is throwing old wounds at me– and old glories along with it. Not sure which is worse, or if I even mind at all, but when they flare up I’m always itchy to log them….at least for a little while. Hours later apathy succeeds in replacing wonder, and before I know it I’ve already forgotten whatever glimpse was granted of that space between the lines.

I need some more man’s work. Byron, down at the factory, had me bring my car into the maintenance garage, and sat on a stool smoking a cigarette, dictating the steps to me in changing one’s own brakes. By the end of the hour my hands and knees were as black as midnight, and my palms were bruised from pushing too hard on the wrench,…but I had succeeded in the task, and turned a 400 dollar repair into a 60 dollar one. The limitations of my hack-job abilities know no bounds, it seems. Perhaps they should? Nah…though if Byron hadn’t caught the fact that I forgot to close the cap on my brake fluid right before I closed the hood, there’s a good chance I’d have been wrapped around a tree by now. One of those minor oversights might get me someday– indeed, all of us. No?