Cold. I remember cold. Maybe because I worked in the heat, played in the heat, maybe because summer was the time of being outside, swimming, doing things, I don’t remember heat, or being too hot. Cold, yeah, cold, I do remember cold. Not just the absence of heat, but the total lack of comforting warmth. The air was cold, the floor was cold, the food was cold, the surface of my skin was cold, the walk to school was cold, the sun was cold, and life was cold.

It’s too late now, to look back, like being in a car and wanting to see where you left an hour after departure. It’s gone. There’s nothing left of it at all. It never existed except in my mind.

            Someone told me, who I can’t remember, when is a mystery, and why, yeah, I get why, but they said every time you think back, open a memory, that memory is changed, polluted, obscured, and scarred by your mental touch. Who you were when that memory formed is different now. Now you are not the person who stored that memory so when you feel it, you’re going to add, or subtract, make stronger or weaker that memory, and in all of this, the memory’s original form is lost forever.

            “I want to talk,” she said, and of people, this was the one person I most wanted. She and I had dated, broken up, dated, and finally it was final.

            “Okay.”

            We walked across the parking lot of the high school, she stuck her hand in my jacket pocket, her fingers cold, mine colder, we intwined our fingers, tightly, hanging on to the only thing left between us, the tightness too much but that was all we had. The wind blew hard into our faces, and I had no idea where we might be going, just walking.

            “I’m pregnant,” she said and I felt cold.

            I swallowed hard, tried to do math in my head, tried to think of something to say, found nothing, wanted a drink.

            “It’s not yours,” she said, and her voice broke.

            She turned around, walked back towards the school, and I waked on, into the cold, and now, at this moment, I can see the image in my head of the paved parking lot, the basketball goals, the field beyond the parking lot, the dead grass, the tree line, and I wonder how much of what I remember was ever real, perhaps little of it, except for the cold.

I remember it was back in 1976, I was in high school, sixteen years old, and drinking Jack Daniels right out of the bottle, chasing it with Mountain Dew, just before the bell sounded and class began. One of the straight kids, one of those students who didn’t drink alcohol, and didn’t smoke pot, looked at me, and it was like he was seeing a snake crawl out of the earth, or maybe an alien landing here, hard to say.

“How can you stand to drink before school?” he asked.

“How can you stand not to?” I replied, and neither of us had an answer.

Last night was filled with garden variety anxiety dreams.

The metallic sound, repetitive, sharp and rhythmic was familiar, personal, and somewhere being awake and sleep, dreaming, hallucinating, dying, that point where anything that can be defined, I realized it was the sound of a wedge being hammered into firewood in order to split it. One of the chores I had when I was growing up. I don’t remember being warm. I don’t remember comfort. I remember the sound of the maul’s flat head hitting the wedge, driving it deeper, tearing the wood open, breaking it into pieces, so it would be easier to burn.

With most of the country in some sort of surreal deep freeze on Christmas morning, remember that each car accident requires law enforcement, EMT’s, 911 operators, Emergency Room doctors and nurses, road crews to clean up the debris, wrecker operators to move the cars and trucks, firemen to put out fires, electric company people to repair damage to poles, and none of these people will be home for Christmas morning.

In the meanwhile, somewhere out there is a young man or woman, who is wearing a uniform for the first time on Christmas and they are far, far, away from those they love. Or it might be someone who has been in uniform for years, who is once again missing their family today.

Those who go out and do things we do not see, those who serve this country, those men and women who have jobs that keep our world running the way we like it, are rarely thanked, but to those who love them, at this time of year, they are always missed.

Merry Christmas, to all who are out in the cold, or in a uniform, of who are performing some task so the rest of us my travel more safely.

And to those people, and their families, too, Thank You!

Writing is ricocheting all over the inside of my mind. So much stuff bouncing around, like rubber balls in a metal room, and although it’s fun to watch, and to listen to all of this stuff, it’s difficult to sit down and writing about one thing at a time.

The limb collided with her face and stopped the panic running. Nearly unconscious, she found herself facing up, looking at the sky through the limbs of the trees, and suddenly, fear returned. The bear was still out there. It might arrive at any time.

            She tried to stand, fell, then lurched to her feet. Trees, more trees, and trees was all she could see. The sky was still there, seen in patches through the trees, tall evergreens, but even as the idea of being lost struck, the light of the sky seemed to be fading.

            Her shoulder hurt. The bear, huge and brown, had grabbed her pack and dragged her into the woods. She managed to get the pack off, and ran, and ran and ran, but now where was she? Where was the bear?

            Downhill would be toward water, but the ground sloped down, then back up, or did it? Too many trees were around to tell. But standing still seemed wrong. She walked without any idea what direction.

            The darkness seemed to close in tighter with every step. Now she was the terrain was getting steeper, but turning back seemed to be a terrible idea. The air was growing colder, too. She heard a noise, a voice, a woman, maybe, then a man’s voice, a light, a small light, she stumbled towards the sound, and the light, and saw a man and a woman having sex by flashlight, no, the man had his hands around her neck, she was pleading for him to stop.

            She approached the two, saw a rock on the ground, and hit the man in the head as hard as she could. The woman on the ground was half naked, gasping for breath, but could stand. They walked to the man’s truck, the gasping woman could only point now, but they got into the truck and started backing out of the woods.

            The man came out of the darkness, a knife in his hand, lumbering towards his truck and she screamed. The bear was behind the man, charging, snarling, and grabbed him by the neck and took the man down.

            “You okay?” the cop asked at the Emergency Room.

            “Yeah, I think so, how’s that woman?” she asked.

            “Bad, but alive. You saved her life. You know who that man was, the one you fed to the bear?” the cop looked serious.

            “No, I ran from the bear, I had no idea where I was,” she shook at the memory.

            “He’s killed six women. We’re calling him the Green River Killer.”

/

Light rain pelts the windows, almost silently, with the dream world now hesitating to come forward, pushed back by memory brought to the front by the sound of rain in the darkness. Minutes, moments, clinging like tiny drops of rain on the plastic sheeting we have covered the windows of the old house, a decrepit thing, but a woman lived there with her boyfriend, and her three kids. We played poker there, smoked pot, drank too much, and the house never had a lot of heat, never had air conditioning, but we did put plastic over the windows. This was the place we all went to hang out, to crash when we needed a place to sleep, and as my best friend was the boyfriend of the woman, I was a regular.

A mutual friend was in town, a woman who I had a past with, someone who was speaking to me again, warily, both of us damaged by spending time together, and she was in a state of flux, again, between men, between places to live, between being a teenager and being a little girl, and being a mother.

I remember she sat in a rocking chair, the rain outside light, slow, the rhythm unsteady on the plastic, but audible, and the rocking chair moved ever so slowly.

“I hear you joined the army,” she all but whispered, the child in her arms asleep.

“I hear you’re getting married,” I replied, and it wasn’t true, I hadn’t heard that. I heard she had broken up with her boyfriend.

“No, we’re just hanging around like a couple of dumbasses,” she said, and began to cry, the tears as light as the rain.

I remember her saying that sentence, because it seemed so unlike her to say something like that. It was a bitter statement of discontent, loneliness, and frustration.  I had a very rare moment of wisdom, didn’t speak, and instead I handed her a paper towel that was laying on the table nearby.

“Thank you,” she said, for the act of kindness, and the ability to wipe her eyes.

“You know, Mike, one day soon, I mean look at him, he’s nearly five now, he’s going to be too big to rock like this, to hold onto like this, and one day he won’t want me to hold him, and he’ll push away to get down from my lap, and one day it will be the last time we do this together, like this, with him asleep and me holding him, and I don’t want to lose that moment when it happens,” she choked on the words.

The house was quiet, except for the sound of rain, lightly in the background now, and the rocker’s music, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth.

“You’re going away, no one knows where, even you don’t, and your mama is going to lose track of where you are, and one day my son is going to do something like this, be gone, and I’ll be there wondering when the last time I’ll see him for a year, or longer, or never,” she whispered this fiercely, as if there was a rage inside of her fed by loss she felt coming.

I didn’t speak again, but left her in the moment. That moment, the time in which I could have said something, but didn’t, ended.

Two years later, I came back from the Army, a different person, someone who was not the same. I got a call the day after I returned. The woman had been murdered in a robbery. A daughter almost two, and a son that was nearly seven left behind.

Take Care,

Mike

2023 is going to be an interesting year for American politics. The January 6^th Committee has referred serious charges against a former president. Most members and former members of the Justice Department believe these charges will come to fruition. Few believe we will see Trump in an orange jumpsuit, but it’s no longer out of the realm.

Meanwhile, other than his bewildering cosplay as various alpha male role models in the NFT world, Trump has remained both still and silent. With Ron DeSantis becoming the Republican to beat in the next election, and Trump’s star diminishing after the beating his candidates took in the midterms, the true choices for Trump are narrowing.

His first choice is to drop out of the race to defend himself in court. This takes him well out of the spotlight, and makes Trump irrelevant, something that he is loathe to do for any reason. At his age, 76, Trump has to know the odds of another election are nearly zero. This is his last chance to be on the stage again.

The cards have fallen harshly against him. Assailed by both the state of New York and Georgia, Trump’s legal woes worsen every day. Republicans who once flocked to kiss the hem of his garment, are now backing away, and some are publicly saying Trump should not endorse candidates, and certainly not run again. Trump’s run seems doomed.

His options if he quits seem dire. He’s ravaged DeSantis as a pretender, yet in this, Trump could find salvation. An adept liar, Trump could simply deny ever saying anything derogatory about DeSantis and throw his support behind someone who could issue Trump a full pardon for all his sins since the beginning of time. Trump has grifted millions in his time, and likely broke more laws than we’ve discovered. DeSantis could win over the Deplorables, take the middle of the road Republicans easily, and the next election would be his to lose.

The downside to this is Trump, even if he can deliver votes, may be so incredibly toxic that he drags DeSantis down with him, and might even do just that, just to spite the Republicans for dumping him. Unstable and unmanageable, Trump is a scary force to be reckoned with for friend and foe alike.

Which leads to yet another scenario, in which Trump manages to escape himself. Trump could use back channels to contact Biden, who is no stranger to political maneuvering. After all, you don’t think Biden was really everyone’s favorite, do you?

Trump makes a deal with Biden for the pardon. Then Trump goes full blown Trump on the Republican party, wrecking down ballot races and sabotaging DeSantis. Biden, after the election, has Trump arrested and no one believes Sleepy Joe would have ever cut a deal with him.

American politics has dropped to the level it is now a beauty contest for whichever baby is screaming the loudest. Bereft of true policy, the ability to govern, or so much as acknowledging they should, politicians now play a game to see who can be the best of the lesser evils. There are no goals, no great programs to enrich the lives of citizens, just endless fund raisers, kowtowing to donors, stump speeches aimed at rousing the rabble, with more and more money being poured into this mess each and every year.

Trump, sadly, is only a manifestation of the problem, not the problem itself.

Whatever happens, we will get more of the same.

Take Care,

Mike