When you return to the room of breakfast you notice two events most distressing
for One-Who-Slept-Too-Much. First you spot for the third time the ever-present
mud on your shoes, mud that lingers there like heat on the street: there plain to see
but there seems nothing you can do but notice, yet you divine to take care of that
obstacle straightaway. Then you observe scurrying about the pantry the lead
battalion of ants from the trail on the rail, threatening to takeover the pantry's
dark cavern and you remember monks of old occupying coffin-size caves,
plain rooms dug out in the side of muddy mountains. The ants prove
quicker on their feet, naturally.
You make noise and blow breath in the direction of the ant sangha and they respect
your incantations enough to scatter. Your brain knows how they must feel. You
determine to get out of the house quickly to forestall another muddle when you
hear these words, "Have you seen my keys?" You have not but as you take
to the car flowers for another's worksite you notice keys resting as if on
sabbatical in the ignition and you reach for your own keys to unlock
the door and then notice with the turn of a wrist that the car is not
locked, was not locked for the night's duration and you always
lock, a habit left over from your Boston days when to leave
a thing unlocked was to issue an invitation but, come
to think of it, so was leaving it locked, as you must
recall the time you returned to your Washington
Street apartment to find the door lying prostrate
on the living room floor, having been battered
from its hinges by burglars. Hard to tell
a problem from trouble on that
particular occasion.
Eagerly you whisper the good and bad news, finding the keys sought and in just
the particular place you find them, the way curiously one loves to be the bearer
of news, pleasant or not, not as the messenger that gets undone, be it said, yet
the one that knows with pride a thing secret, perhaps even mysterious, until
revealed for the first time. But the morning's distractions hardly end there,
for as you start to make a turn at the front porch your eyes give you a start,
for lying nearby snake-like coiled around bedded shrubs, you stare starry-
eyed at the soaker hose left running overnight when the very day before
it rained with a flood Noah himself would notice. So you turn off the
faucet to the luxurious soaker and you notice the shoes muddier than
before.
The morning ends as you approach the van on your way to Wal-mart for
a pedometer plus the necessities of green tea and red wine. With hands
in pocket you discover you have the keys not to the van which is yours
to drive this day but to the "J," what you call the old Infiniti that you
bought some time back when son younger was in a car crash that
scared everyone involved but him, because he was really hardly
hurt and it proved not his fault and yet his car was "totaled,"
so to replace it you gave up your Honda that you'd bought
for him to take to college anyway but he had other ideas
and chose a neighbor's Toyota, that was right fine--
as they say in North Carolina, where you taught
once--but that you had just had the transmission
replaced and then it's ruined by the accident,
so while the young man gets the Honda
the old man goes with son elder and
they find this mint condition 1994
Infiniti J30t--"t" for touring--that
the Other Insurance Company
pays for and that you call a "J"
when you like to hear sounds
your own pretension makes.
So you make one last trip--you trust--back into the house to swap out the key and you
see now dangling from the sole of your shoe the mud that's nibbled at your sleepy soul
all the good morning so then but only then you reach for a wipe, spit onto the cloth,
wipe it on the shoe and wipe off the mud, free at last from the distractions of a morning
scattered by too much sleep. You think one last thought, you are Not Making This Up.
