WAITING FOR MIDNIGHT

pat monk

Already I have changed the wall calendar. Last year I waited a couple weeks into January, not for any reason but laziness. I like the Ramon calendar, big numbers, easy to make notes on. The hardware store used to give them out, then had to start charging for them, then quit having them. My bank gives them out now. One way or another, I'm still able to find one. Asked a couple days ago what my annual ritual is for New Year's. all I could think of was changing the calendar. We have the calendar New Year, the astrological New Year, the Chinese New Year, etc. Celebrate them all? Celebrate one? I pick the social New Year, Jan 1, the one the people around me celebrate. I have a hard time with one date as New Year's. It's like taking a ballpoint pen and marking a point on a child's rubber ball, saying this spot marks the beginning. How else would you place the spot but arbitrarily? To find out why January 1 is purportedly the first day of the new year, it would take looking at the history of the calendar we go by. My personal preference would be the astrological new year, the spring equinox, which seems it would be the more universal calendar. The other new year dates are specific to given cultures. Yet, I prefer these calendars. In Greece a long time ago, 1972, I brought home a Greek Orthodox calendar, a whole new way of looking at a year. Almost every day has something to do with a saint. Maybe they are more personal than the universal, have customs that go back multiple centuries, millennia. They need translation from one to the other like languages. I also prefer multiple languages to one. Switzerland prints three languages on their paper money, Italian, German and French. American white people want only English on our money, while the American reality is at least two languages. 

pat monk

I had a party to go to, one I wanted to go to, that didn't work out. I dressed up for a late night out in the cold, went out to start the car, hooked up the GPS, and the door would not latch. I could not close it. I can't go anyplace with an open door. The interior light was on, bitter cold winter night. I took the bulb out of the overhead light. I could not approach the problem with the door latch in the dark and intense cold. I raised the hood and looked with flashlight at what it would take to remove the ground cable from the battery. Naturally, it's a battery with new posts it takes a special tool to work with, a tool I don't have. Another light stays on inside that I can't remove the bulb from. Early in the morning, I'll try to start the motor, to let it charge the battery a little until I can find a way to fix the door. Something like this happens every winter on a bitter cold night. The car is 22 years old. The motor and running parts are perfect. It's the electrical, brake lines, external parts on the engine that are giving out. Every time I replace a part, it's new. I'd rather pay a mechanic to maintain an old car than make payments on a new one. I'd rather my money, energy, go toward a man making a living independently by his knowledge and skill, than pay into corporate police state. I call it living what I believe. I prefer the world of individuals to the corporate hive, the reason I live where I live. All my needs can be fulfilled locally. Friends ask why I don't go to Walmart for something I can get there for less than in Sparta. It's a ten dollar round trip to the nearest Walmart. Add ten dollars to whatever I might want at Walmart, and I'm better off to buy in Sparta. I don't want to go into Walmart anyway. For me, it's a moral issue. Walmart tramples the rights of individuals and regards their employees the same as cattle. I can't support that, even buying no more than socks.

pat monk

New Year's and Christmas, the holiday season, is a social time. It's about mixing with other people, having a spirited time, party time. I'm not one for standing around at a party with drink in hand playing pretend charming. I say, if that's what you gotta do, go for it. I prefer to stay at home most of the time. I can't blow party whistles, put on a pointy little hat and act like I'm almost three. I'm not a reveler. I've never had that kind of physical freedom. Inhibited. My preference is to stay at home and let other people act out the social part. I'm one of the people who call Christmas and New Year's just another day. My friend Jr Maxwell saw it the same. One New Year's Eve we decided to sit at the table with our drams and wait for midnight. By the time 12 rolled around, both our foreheads were touching the table. We had more to drink than usual. Both of us were drunk. Twelve o'clock was the end of our vigil. We could have taken another drink, but it would have put us on the floor. We didn't want to go there. We sat at the table talking for six hours. We came away from it thinking it the best New Year's ever. I don't recall a New Year's party that was more fun than we had at the table talking, laughing, getting freer and looser as time went by, talking stupid and laughing at everything. By twelve, only the force of will kept us awake. We were drinking liquor that was at least 140 proof, delicious liquid candy. Liquor affects different people differently. Both Jr and I were happy drunks making it possible for us to drink together in excess. Instead of getting red-faced and looking for a fight, we dissolved in laughter. Jr was one of the funniest people I've known. He kept me laughing for hours at a time.

pat monk

A day came to mind when Jr was in his frailty, though still had his mind. A friend of his dropped by one afternoon. He had a quart of liquor with blueberries in it he'd kept on a shelf for twenty years. Jr and I were sitting at our ends of the long sofa, each with our own table lamp. Friend drove up and came in the door already pretty far along. He stepped over to the couch, told me to get on over, meaning move to he middle of the couch, he wanted my spot. Ok. He pushed me with his upper arm. I caught a whiff of his aura of alcohol. He told great stories from past experience that kept both Jr and me bent over laughing much of the time. I'd never been this close to him before, and felt some powerful energy radiating from him, powerful energy. My feeling took it for the immense anger he carries. This is somebody that when when the guns come out, you want him on your side. He is comfortable with red-faced men looking for a fight. His face is twisted like a Picasso face from battering. The bones in his hands are so crushed that his outer three knuckles sank back about a half inch from usual. He told me that when a man first goes into prison, he thinks he knows how to fight. First thing he learns is he doesn't know anything about fighting. The liquor was so good that over the course of an hour or more, the three of us drank the whole quart. Friend kept us rolling with laughter telling comic stories. He is a comedian. He likes to make people laugh. Jr and I were a great audience for him. I won't tell about his stories. They are all "inappropriate," racist, fascist. His opinions make Rush Limbaugh sound discreet. I would be asked to leave DCP if I were to retell any of his stories. The real comedy was in the telling more than the stories themselves. I've seen Jr almost fall out of his chair at the table laughing at friend's telling of one of his stories. They weren't necessarily true. That part didn't matter, the same as a number on a calendar ultimately does not matter.

pat monk himself

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HAVE A LITTLE DRINK ON ME

Just now have diagnosed an odd feeling I've been in the last several weeks, or months. It's like riding in the passenger seat instead of driving the vehicle that is the body. I was about to say things happen to me, I don't initiate action. But that's not it. I go back over and over in my mind to the mosh pit likeness. I'm floating, kept upright by momentum, bouncing from one experience to another, each bump shoving me into a new direction every time, reeling inside, relaxed, in the body, though very lightly so, as in a dream. It's even like being a character in a novel I'm reading. I don't know if it could be called detached, but it's like experiences flow by like air, fluid. It's been a goal for many years to let go of attachment, allow all others their individual autonomy, let go of judgments, receive the spirit of others. I can't tell if it's laziness, weariness, boredom, or if it's something a little higher sounding, like finally finding self living in the spirit of detachment. It feels like that has something to do with it, and feels, at the same time, like simple sorriness. I'm recalling as my friend Jr Maxwell was in his last days, fading, I was a nervous wreck wanting him comfortable for the occasion of the spirit leaving the body. I felt like a coin flipping in the air, one side joy, the other side sorrow. The coin spun so fast the joy and sorrow blurred into one feeling. This best defines what I feel now, constant joy and sorrow blurred as one feeling. I think of a photograph on the wall of Meher Baba. His eyes are full of sorrow while his face smiles. My spirit is vibrant and happy while the body is weary and worn out, would rather sleep than participate in just about anything.

I can't tell if I'm getting more egoic or less. Most often, I think more. I stopped trying to do spiritual stuff, like meditate, read scriptures, go to retreats, read books about Tibetan Buddhism or the Hindu, Ramakrishna. It's all there on the shelves, it's beautiful reading, but I'm not interested any more. I've found my spiritual path in everyday life. I tend not to differentiate good and bad anymore. I am comfortable being seen go into the liquor store. I've known so many men who go to another county for the liquor store, don't want anybody they know to see them, it is funny. I think it's called living a double life. The only reason I'm not drinking right now is I'm out. Will get some more soon. Of the bonded liquor my preference is Wild Turkey Rye 101. Yummy. Don't even want to mess it up with ice. I may stop at the liquor store next time in town. My barber in the early years had his shop across the street from the liquor store. He saw everybody that went in and out. He said to me, I saw Tom Pruitt go in the liquor store the other day, like he was telling on Tom, telling me something I didn't know about this old boy I looked up to, bring him down a notch or two, caught him in a sin. I said, Yeah, he drinks Wild Turkey. It's small town mind, making drama of other people's sins. Sure, I have a spiritual life. And I drink liquor when I feel like it. I'd rather have an inch of good liquor in an orange juice glass than a beer or wine any day of the year. Somebody thinks it's a sin. That's ok. Old Jr Maxwell taught me how to drink. One sips really good liquor. That's all I'll drink anymore. I'm happy to pay ten dollars more for something I like. If the liquor store kept Haitian rum, I'd keep a bottle in the house at all times. I'm not justifying when I say I drink very little. I like the taste of good liquor better at this time of the life than about any other taste. 

I like to keep a dram nearby sometimes for a sip. The inch in the orange juice glass will last an hour. I used to stop at Jr's house on the way home from work and sit with him for two hours. He was old and lonesome and his spirit was depressed. There wasn't anything I could do to help him with his troubles, but I could visit him regularly so he'd have at least one friend drop by in the course of a day. We sat at the kitchen table with our drams of the best liquor ever made on earth, two drinks a night over two hours. Over five years sitting at the table every evening, he told me his life. We talked and sipped. After his spirit left the body, I asked for the orange juice glass he drank from. It was all I wanted for memory. He had been drinking daily since age 14. Age 86 the doctor told him he was in excellent condition. His blood pressure was always right. What he died of the doctor called a "slow fade." He drove a "bull noser" several years, took two six packs of beer when he went out in the morning. The working class people around him thought him a drunk. Yet by the standard of the middle class or the ruling class, he drank very little. I'd heard for years that Jr was a drunk. He wasn't anywhere near a drunk. As a bluegrass musician in the old days and the old ways, he liked to get drunk on weekends. Playing bluegrass banjo at a dance, he kept a quart jar nearby or in his car for intermission. He said, the more you drink, the better you play, to a point. At that point you stop drinking. Beyond that point everything falls apart, you're getting sloppy, eventually stupid and have to be carried to the car. He kept himself at that point when he reached it and played the fire out of his banjo. His favorite fiddler to make music with most often drank beyond that point. 

Every Friday and Saturday night I'd visit Jr, he would continue drinking after I left and get himself shit-faced. He told me, "I like to work like hell all week and get drunk on the weekend." It was the rhythm of his life. I don't like to get drunk anymore, don't like it at all. He didn't care if he fell on the floor and went to sleep. It's his home. He couldn't fall off the floor. I wasn't there to control him or change him, only to give him company. In that time we had become friends. Near the end, in his last weeks, lying in the bed, me giving him a little sponge on a stick dipped in water to keep his mouth wet, we were talking. I sat in his wheelchair beside the bed when we talked in the mornings. He said, "I wish I could pay you for what you've done for me." I said, "You paid in advance. Five years of sharing with me the best liquor made on earth is worth something. To me, it's worth a whole lot." I had never thought of it like that. It was said without thinking. I heard myself say it and was glad. I could not have said better thinking about it. I did not want to be paid. One of his friends offered to pay me. I said, "If you pay me, then I'm working for you. I'm here for Jr, not for money, and I want to keep it that way." He comes to mind, remembering his last months of mind going away and and gone. It went away in one week. It was like a bathtub draining. I accepted it that his conscious mind was shutting down. He retained his subconscious. I knew him well enough that we could communicate. I see him in the middle of the night, all the lights on, wheeling in the wheelchair all over the house looking for something in his dream mind. I didn't stop him. I sat in my chair with a book and stayed aware of him, not interfering. What he was doing was important to him. What I'm feeling now takes me back to this time with Jr when his mind was fading and went out. I've come to a place where there is nothing I want. The mind doesn't run non-stop like it used to do. Now, I can stop it easily. I've fallen into a don't worry / be happy place. It's the joy I feel all the time, possibly a happy spirit, mixed with the sorrow that goes with physical existence. I feel content as a donkey in a meadow nearly all the time.  

photos by tj worthington

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HAVE A LITTLE DRINK ON ME

The Sunday afternoon race happened in California, a two mile track. 200mph was their speed all the way around the track. They'd go into a curve at 200+ and come out of it at 175 thereabouts. They were aggressive today from the green flag all the way through to the checkered flag. It was a good run. No bad wrecks. One driver lost traction and his car careened with locked brakes directly into a wall at probably 100mph, straight on. It lifted the car up in the air. The driver was put on a stretcher and taken away in an ambulance. I'd say it jarred him pretty good. A flat tire from time to time brought out the yellow flag and pitstops. The end fell right into Kyle Busch's lap. He was running third behind two whose names I forget battling it out in a neck and neck run for the finish line. One bumped the other and they both lost traction. Kyle Busch zipped past them and Jr Earnhardt right behind him making it a surprise win for Busch. He is the driver who catches my attention most. I've seen him lose traction several times and he kept it in the road. He has a special skill for getting his traction back. He's like somebody good at sand trap shots in golf. I was glad to see him get the win.

I was glad to see Jr Earnhardt get a good second. He is evidently top dog in points now. He's good at keeping his points up and not winning. Since Senior's death, Jr hasn't been an especially aggressive driver. He places well every time, but doesn't appear to be lusting for first so much he'll drive crazy to get it. I can't pretend to be anything but interested in passing, but I think I've seen a difference in Jr Earnhardt's driving since Senior's fatal wreck. He seems to have caution running side by side with his winning spirit. He's the driver I catch myself pulling for in every race. I pull for Kyle Busch too. And Tony Stewart. At the end of the race Stewart tore into somebody whose name I don't remember, hit him a couple times it looked like, and was hauled away by his teammates, one on each arm. He was boiling. This guy on the track had blocked Stewart from getting by him and the move screwed Stewart up. He certainly believed he had cause kick some ass, even if it is on tv. I like Stewart's spirit. I was glad to see no big wrecks occurred. A few spinouts. I hated it for Clint Bowyer when his engine blew. The cockpit filled with smoke and him doing 180 coming out of a curve. I don't know how he breathed. The car took its time coming to a halt, smoking tires and tearing up turf, smoke billowing out the side windows, the cockpit a dense cloud of exploded engine smoke. It took him awhile to get outside the car when it came to rest. I began to wonder if he might be dead from the smoke. He crawled out and stood upright.

The Bud beer commercial of the Clydesdale horse and the guy that raised him from birth, Stevie Nicks' singing. It's like a whole story in half a minute. I don't get tired of seeing it. It was one of the SuperBowl new commercials, the one most talked about. For my way of seeing, it's the best commercial I think I've seen. It makes me wet-eyed every time I see it, once a week. Three years later the horse spots him in the crowd. I like the brevity of how the whole story is told in just a few moving images like snapshots. It's moving in the heart. The fun part is that I have to think about it to remember what beer it advertises. Bud is not a beer of my choice. I've had plenty, drinking with other people and that's what they had. I don't mean to say I'm above it. Yellow bubbly water doesn't satisfy my palate when I want beer. I don't require bigdog beer either. I like the middle range in beer, same as in wine. I tend to like a German beer about the best. Not big frothy Beer Haus mug beer, but bottled beer from the grocery store in Sparta. They have a good enough selection for me. I so seldom buy a sixpack that I don't remember last time. The girls at the register in the grocery store must think I'm religious because I don't buy beer. Only beer I've had in several years has been Red Oak brewed in or near Burlington. It satisfies how I like beer to taste. Can't get it at the grocery store. Soon I'll be driving by Burlington, will stop and maybe pick up a box of bottles to use my Red Oak bottle opener on that I use for keychain. Have a Red Oak party of one. Drink away my frontal lobe, get down on the floor with Caterpillar and have a talk.

My thinking is, why pee all night to get to a certain place in the head when I can get there in a hurry with some good 100+ proof liquor and not pee so much. Wine is fine, but liquor's quicker. I don't see any point in wasting time getting there. Go straight there and keep it there in moderation right on through. I like to put up my sail, catch the wind and go. Then ride with the wind, not a race, just a nice gentle flow. I don't like hangovers and puking. I've learned where the lines are for both. By this time in the life I never drink enough to have a headache of any sort in the morning. Two drinks of good liquor and I have no hangover. Three and I do. Three makes me a little wobbly too. Four makes me not want to get up out of my chair for a long time, sit back and let other people do the talking; that is, if I don't get on a talking jag. I only did that once that I recall. And Oh Lordie how I embarrassed myself, not so much what I said, but the nonstop jabber that never ended. I couldn't stop it. I talked like a spoiled child. Bad headache in the morning. That behavior happened in the younger years of finding the boundaries. I was a bit of a slow learner in the boundary department. Early on, getting shit-faced was worth the hangover. Later, it's not. That still leaves me plenty of room to enjoy good liquor. A couple drinks of some super fine hard liquor is what I call candy. I like it straight. I like the bite. Of store-bought liquor, Haitian rum satisfies me about the best, and Wild Turkey Rye.

I don't mean to suggest I drink regularly, because I can't afford to. Though I like having something for a sip now and again mainly for the flavor, for the candy of it. Like I have some within reach I've not touched in probably two weeks. Had a sip then. It was a few weeks or more before that I tasted it. You don't have to worry about me pulling an Edgar Allen Poe dead drunk on the side of the street. To get that helpless out in the open in public with no backup is something I can't allow myself. Nor can I go to a blackjack dealer and throw away thousands of dollars, even hundreds, even any. I'm not interested in money enough to gamble. I like the George Thoroughgood song, I Drink Alone. Can't drink anyplace but at home anymore. That's ok by me. I prefer to drink at home anyway. I think it's somewhere in my horoscope that I don't like being out in the world in a totally vulnerable mode. Like in Murphy's Law, if something can go wrong, it will go wrong. I like to have some conscious control when things start drifting in that direction. I don't want to be like a college student guy I saw some years ago walking across a suburban street plastered drunk. His foot hit the curb, he flopped face down on the sidewalk, plop, right in front of me. There was nothing to do but leave him alone. At the suggestion of help he became belligerent. I figured he was where he wanted to be, successfully shit-faced, face down in his nose's blood on the pavement. Patience for stupid white men is not one of my virtues, and I walked around him.


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