Papers
One of my neurological oddities is the delay factor in conditions of heat/cold. Hot day outside? Take me into an air-conditioned room to cool me down, and you'll have a long wait. If I was at the panting stage of overheating, and being deprived of normal perspiration I reach that stage easily, well check on me two hours later...and I will still be panting. Maybe not quite as quickly, but the effects of heat will still be with me. I don't know why this is. The opposite is just as curious. A bad chill settles in for a long run. There's no warming me up. It will be a two-hour chill out. All of which I remember as I sit in my morning armchair staring at the blank television screen like an alien from Invasion of the Body Snatchers. I'm staring at nothing and waiting for a change. It will be a long wait. Much longer than normal. What constitutes 'a change?' A shift in the barometric pressure? The arrival of the Royal Messenger? It's hard to say in Menlo Park. The town seems more resistant to change than I am.
Where was I? In the armchair, of course, 45 minutes having passed without incident. Oh, there was a hummingbird at the feeder. And damned if that wasn't a blue jay hopping down from the roof. Thus, avian life. There is a such a thing as daytime television. But to see it, one has to turn the television on. And there is simply no precedent for this. I have not had the television on in the daytime since Saudi freelancers had a go at flying airplanes into midtown Manhattan. Since then, the telly has been off in the daylight hours, that being its natural state. True, the departed wife and I had a disagreement on this matter. She was a believer in the afternoon use of televised entertainment. Perhaps if she had stuck around, I would've become a convert. You never know what mutual exposure will do to people over time.
And speaking of overtime, surely I have reached a sedentary limit. No human being should be ensconced in an armchair all morning. Yet that is what appears to be happening. Long Day's Journey into Morning. Which is what this is reputed to be, mourning, a time of loss and readjustment and personal reassessment. It's also a time of 10:45 AM, evidence of which I can see on my watch face. Big hands and little hands being what they are. And what are they? Pointers on the great circle of life. Or of death. The phone rings. A message from my lawyer. The answering machine booms out his morning greeting. He is on his way.
Very important to let people know 'my lawyer' is doing this or doing that. The presence of a lawyer in one's routine life denotes a certain level of prosperity and complexity. There is a suggestion that personal affairs are demanding. I have to talk to my attorney. My attorney has to talk to you. In reality, I can't remember why my attorney is talking to anyone. But I vaguely recall he made an appointment to come by, and this kicks me into high gear. I am up and rolling about, gathering papers together the way one rakes autumn leaves in Vermont.
Like leaves, piles of paper are not pure. This particular pile, the one on my lap currently on its way to the dining room table, preferred site of paper sorting, mail opening and other life-enhancing tasks, is riddled with foreign objects. I pull the crap out, the way you pull twigs out of a nice autumn leaf display. Adverts, demands that Marlou report for jury duty, unwanted magazines, a massive and glossy report from a company supposedly specializing in investments. I tilt my lap forward like a dump truck, and the pile slides serenely into a wastebasket.
I place the remaining matter on the dining room table. Weeks of post have been winnowed down. What's left should be like golden specks in the pan of a Sierra prospector. Bills. Several of these have unfortunately dived to the bottom of the mail pond. They include outrageous demands from the local electrical power company. Something from the Palo Alto Medical Foundation. Five hundred fucking dollars for a dermatology appointment? Yes. There it is, and there it is also, an envelope into which I'm supposed to insert my check. For $500. Fuck these people. Nevermind about the lawyer. Yes, he's like a walking taxi meter, the numbers spinning around whether he's parked or driving. But I don't care.
I am now in the phone tree, well out on a limb, of these medical provider assholes in Palo Alto. Your call is very important to us.... I'm now in such a state that when, and if, a live, non-formaldehyded human being answers the phone, I'm going to give them a taste of their own recorded medicine. Hello, clinic business office? Your call is very important to me. That's why I've been holding. Is my holding very important to you? What were you doing while I was holding? Would you like to know what I was holding while on hold? Yes. It's a body part. You think it's bigger than a bread box? Who knows? Really, bread and its attendant boxes, can come in any size. Could be a breadstick box, couldn't it?
Oh, hello. Are you aware that I have medical insurance? Yes? Oh.
So much for that. Marlou had various retirement accounts, and one of them is a trust, and inexplicably I have been entrusted with the trust. Is this trust misplaced? Which trust are you referring to? The personal or the Charles Schwab? It can't be both, can it? Because I don't understand any of this, and haven't made any particular effort in that direction, all I can do is empty the contents of a drawer. Various papers from financial institutions reside there. I add them to the pile of mail and other crap on my dining room table. The lawyer. I prepare for his arrival, imminent, for he can be heard parking his car at this very moment, by shuffling them into one neat pile, right angles aligned on the upper left. Don't say I can't handle paperwork.
Without preamble, I shove the pile of receipts and investment notices and God knows what else toward the lawyer. He eyeballs the stuff and tells me he wants to take it all away and make copies. This is the supreme compliment for the bureaucratically challenged. I thank him. The papers are his. He tells me that profits from a trust are taxed at a very high rate. I'm not the least bit surprised, having never trusted the trust. I must, he tells me, take profits out of the trust and put them in my own bank account. There, they will be taxed at the special Quadriplegic Writer Rate. I understand this too. I tell him that the QWR is my friend. I have long relied upon it. That said, he says things are in order. He leaves. I cry only briefly, near the end, the accumulation of all these tangible pieces of death being what they are. Nevermind, for it's over now. And so is my lethargy. I have wandered about the apartment in pursuit of futile goals, gotten angry at Blue Shield of California and now things are in gear, the day has begun.
Where was I? In the armchair, of course, 45 minutes having passed without incident. Oh, there was a hummingbird at the feeder. And damned if that wasn't a blue jay hopping down from the roof. Thus, avian life. There is a such a thing as daytime television. But to see it, one has to turn the television on. And there is simply no precedent for this. I have not had the television on in the daytime since Saudi freelancers had a go at flying airplanes into midtown Manhattan. Since then, the telly has been off in the daylight hours, that being its natural state. True, the departed wife and I had a disagreement on this matter. She was a believer in the afternoon use of televised entertainment. Perhaps if she had stuck around, I would've become a convert. You never know what mutual exposure will do to people over time.
And speaking of overtime, surely I have reached a sedentary limit. No human being should be ensconced in an armchair all morning. Yet that is what appears to be happening. Long Day's Journey into Morning. Which is what this is reputed to be, mourning, a time of loss and readjustment and personal reassessment. It's also a time of 10:45 AM, evidence of which I can see on my watch face. Big hands and little hands being what they are. And what are they? Pointers on the great circle of life. Or of death. The phone rings. A message from my lawyer. The answering machine booms out his morning greeting. He is on his way.
Very important to let people know 'my lawyer' is doing this or doing that. The presence of a lawyer in one's routine life denotes a certain level of prosperity and complexity. There is a suggestion that personal affairs are demanding. I have to talk to my attorney. My attorney has to talk to you. In reality, I can't remember why my attorney is talking to anyone. But I vaguely recall he made an appointment to come by, and this kicks me into high gear. I am up and rolling about, gathering papers together the way one rakes autumn leaves in Vermont.
Like leaves, piles of paper are not pure. This particular pile, the one on my lap currently on its way to the dining room table, preferred site of paper sorting, mail opening and other life-enhancing tasks, is riddled with foreign objects. I pull the crap out, the way you pull twigs out of a nice autumn leaf display. Adverts, demands that Marlou report for jury duty, unwanted magazines, a massive and glossy report from a company supposedly specializing in investments. I tilt my lap forward like a dump truck, and the pile slides serenely into a wastebasket.
I place the remaining matter on the dining room table. Weeks of post have been winnowed down. What's left should be like golden specks in the pan of a Sierra prospector. Bills. Several of these have unfortunately dived to the bottom of the mail pond. They include outrageous demands from the local electrical power company. Something from the Palo Alto Medical Foundation. Five hundred fucking dollars for a dermatology appointment? Yes. There it is, and there it is also, an envelope into which I'm supposed to insert my check. For $500. Fuck these people. Nevermind about the lawyer. Yes, he's like a walking taxi meter, the numbers spinning around whether he's parked or driving. But I don't care.
I am now in the phone tree, well out on a limb, of these medical provider assholes in Palo Alto. Your call is very important to us.... I'm now in such a state that when, and if, a live, non-formaldehyded human being answers the phone, I'm going to give them a taste of their own recorded medicine. Hello, clinic business office? Your call is very important to me. That's why I've been holding. Is my holding very important to you? What were you doing while I was holding? Would you like to know what I was holding while on hold? Yes. It's a body part. You think it's bigger than a bread box? Who knows? Really, bread and its attendant boxes, can come in any size. Could be a breadstick box, couldn't it?
Oh, hello. Are you aware that I have medical insurance? Yes? Oh.
So much for that. Marlou had various retirement accounts, and one of them is a trust, and inexplicably I have been entrusted with the trust. Is this trust misplaced? Which trust are you referring to? The personal or the Charles Schwab? It can't be both, can it? Because I don't understand any of this, and haven't made any particular effort in that direction, all I can do is empty the contents of a drawer. Various papers from financial institutions reside there. I add them to the pile of mail and other crap on my dining room table. The lawyer. I prepare for his arrival, imminent, for he can be heard parking his car at this very moment, by shuffling them into one neat pile, right angles aligned on the upper left. Don't say I can't handle paperwork.
Without preamble, I shove the pile of receipts and investment notices and God knows what else toward the lawyer. He eyeballs the stuff and tells me he wants to take it all away and make copies. This is the supreme compliment for the bureaucratically challenged. I thank him. The papers are his. He tells me that profits from a trust are taxed at a very high rate. I'm not the least bit surprised, having never trusted the trust. I must, he tells me, take profits out of the trust and put them in my own bank account. There, they will be taxed at the special Quadriplegic Writer Rate. I understand this too. I tell him that the QWR is my friend. I have long relied upon it. That said, he says things are in order. He leaves. I cry only briefly, near the end, the accumulation of all these tangible pieces of death being what they are. Nevermind, for it's over now. And so is my lethargy. I have wandered about the apartment in pursuit of futile goals, gotten angry at Blue Shield of California and now things are in gear, the day has begun.
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