Good Mothering

It makes all the difference. In Draeger's, grocer to the haute bourgeoisie, racing up and down the empty aisles on the day after the Fourth of July, I sailed past those ever alluring chocolate cookies, the square ones with the square of chocolate atop the square of butter biscuit, the redoubtable petit ecolier, France's finest. And, of course, I kept right on sailing. I mean, haven't I done the chocolate thing to death? Haven't I just been clutched to the bosom of Mother Italia for a long, nurturing stretch? And speaking of stretching, isn't that what's happening in the trouser department? I mean, do we really need chocolate cookies, right now?

Having bought sensible sushi, picked up a wise hambone for the manufacture of soup and provisioned us with a quart of whole milk, damned if my supermarket course wasn't beginning to look orbital. Concentric, flying around and around that core spot on aisle four, the chocolate cookie spot. Which is when it came to me, or it returned to me, the knowledge that the pathway to knowledge leads directly through bakery exports. Think Spartacus. The slaves rebel. And then you're fucked. So, by the chocolate cookies already, and try not to eat all of them. That's the life message.

I feel that my life, what remains of it, is being squeezed somewhere between my lower back and my neck. Musculoskeletal achiness, coupled with bad circulation, has been rising like flood waters. The process has been slow, almost imperceptible. But there's a point when the wild, dark waters frothing over what used to be your front lawn, then ascending your front steps...and if you're really hardy, maybe even working their way up the stairway to your second story, to which you have retreated with the keys to your safety deposit box, your computer backup memory stick in one box of French chocolate cookies...in any case, when you have fallen back as far as you can and the flood is still mounting, you can see a limit to things. This is it.

This afternoon, Marlou set me up with a laptop computer while I sat, feet up, in my recliner. There is a confining sense about this posture. Bladder control, never among my proudest achievements, seems destined to interfere with my recliner chair writing session. More important, this seems perilously close to accounts of invalid poets. Poor Smyth, propped up in his sick bed, went about his pathetic tasks...while, unnoticed, the world went about its business...a business that no longer had anything to do with Smyth...or he with it. Confinement. Sickliness. I have spent my working life at a desk.

Plenty of people write with a laptop. This is hardly a matter of shame. But I'm uncomfortable with comfort. And when I think about it, comfort seems to be everywhere. I have the life of a pasha. My armchair electrically lifts me to my feet. And when I sit down, it lifts my feet to me, raising a footrest. My bed does the same, hospital-style, and it even vibrates Motel-Six-style. TV? A wall of my living room is now under the direct management of Panavision. Travel? Why not jet over to the Cardinal's palace in Tuscany?

Do I deserve this? How long will it last? These are the questions that haunt me.