come saturday morning

i remember learning that perjury was wrong. it came late in life, later than for most, but i love to break the law. always have. "we don't do that," said an old man from east LA, an old man who had learned over many years and with a brain as wet as Bandon, not to.

i have mentioned before in this oddly living diary, this public journal no one is interested in, that i have abandoned my life. it's true. yesterday i moved a plant for the first time in (apparently) a very long time, to find the base of the basket had become one with the hardwood floor, the cotton rug beneath it serving as little more than laminate at this point. I live alone. i hire housekeepers because i don't like to clean house. it is clear to me that they have not been doing their job either. who is to blame? i am only happy once blame is assigned and somebody feels bad, but the housekeepers are long gone (as is my stash of vicodin for the hard times) and it is, after all, my house.

the floor under the plant is warped, black with mold. unredeemably, i think, bent. i don't know what to do. i look at it, and it represents what has become of my life, of my ability to hold this thing together over so many years. I am a homeowner with the brain of a renter. I want to move, i dont' want to take care of it all anymore. i want to hit the road with a backpack, be twenty, and live the life that was never that good, but in my memory. i walk down the road and see homeless people, basket people, shopping cart people, and consider: they sure don't have much overhead. The clutch is going out in my new truck, i hotrod like a teenager, i will never grow up. i don't want to be twenty again. god no. but i view responsibility as a burden better borne by those with experience. with training. surely a woman with more training would never have allowed her floor, her beautiful oak floor, to rot before her eyes. surely she would have smelled decay in process.