on the menu

Earlier I was working on my taxes. The past 11 years my then wife Susan did our taxes. She has a math mind. I have a silly mind. Today, no house as deduction, no marriage as deduction, no Susan, there’s me on my own. No surprise, then, to hear the sound of moans, whimpers, teeth gnashings, and howls coming from me while attempting to follow directions at which a fourth grader would giggle. We be who we be.

Por que you ask? The tax dummy thing? Beats me. When I was a kid, back then in the best times, there was a saying we all knew – “You are what you eat.” On a walk a while ago, the pile of W2’s and 1099’s and tiny interests already gathering traces of dust, I got to wondering how that phrase, the “eat” one, would apply to my dumbfounded connection with federal and state taxes. All I could come up with was a reminder of that popular Japanese Koan from the “Blue Cliff Notes” – “When hungry, eat math and taxes.”

Boz Scaggs had a song, with Duane Allman on lead guitar, back in 1969, back when that “are what you eat” saying was around – “Somebody Loan Me a Dime”. It’s a wicked good one, and I think, silly mind and all, I got thinking about borrowing money with the income tax thing like a tell-tale heart over on the corner of this small black desk grinning back at me. Boz, Bro, please lend me a dime.

Or Harry Nilsson and “Me and My Arrow.” – “And in the morning when I wake up she may be gone, I don’t know.” All this, menu of my life.