before the library

When I sit here at the screen and look slightly to my right, I see these things: a wall calendar hanging on the wall, ‘Classic Cars’, the same one I order every year, in fact the 2024 model arrived on the doorstep last night, along with a box of 60 Bic medium blue ink pens, Morning Pages being rather thirsty. I see a snake plant – Sansevieria – in a recently repotted fake clay plastic pot, and the story in my head is that it is a long-distant child of a snake plant my dad gave me shortly before he moved from a cottage in Onset, Massachusetts to a trailer in Cave Creek, Arizona, dying suddenly four months later. Logic wants me to believe I’m delusional – how could this possibly be a relative of a gift in 1979 when I’ve lived all over and taken five Greyhound Bus rides back and forth across the country, plus car rides and everything, like, “No way, Bro.” And yet, I’m pretty sure it is.

Presently there’s a 4 x 5 photo of one of Donnie Sisson’s cats, taken by me in Melrose, MA when I was crashing in his spare room – that was like ’85, ’86 – and that pic has only recently found its way there, I’m not sure why, it’s leaning against the fake clay pot. Below all that, on the lower little shelf of what’s a small black metal stand Ann lent me, is a picture my dad took of me and my dog Taffy, I’m in my “Atoms” Little League baseball uniform, cool old leather glove on my left hand, both of us looking at my dad, me smiling a very big smile, it’s like 1959, us on the ground beneath this completely magical tree with crazy long beans for its children which grew near the old white barn in our yard, and lit up my life. Taffy’s just looking.

Friday stuff.