ब्रेन Gray

One year ago today I met Buttercup. I know because I made this photograph on that day [large]. That's her looking down at the newspaper, in the middle between Constance and El. By this time in the evening I had likely popped several pain meds and smoked half a pack of cigarettes on the way over to the BBQ joint and the birthday party where this photograph was taken. I was even more arrogant then than I am now and so was she. I've looked at it several times today. It'd be several months before we'd get into it over beers and cigarettes and several more before we'd find out what that pain was that took her eye and why her intestines would seize up and then in the coursing pain of a February visit, why grandma June would give in to her own advanced stage of disease and we'd be burying her remains under catholic blessings. We were separated today by the necessities of work and labor and practicality and a border and a state of being.

I woke up confused by the distance and by the distressing phone call from a friend at 3AM. (3AM phone calls are almost never good.) I never recovered and the distress led to unrest and confusion. That's the best word for it, confusion. I made coffee and noticed the fruit flies had gotten unruly and were swarming my attempts, the little bastards, so I decided to finally deal with the trash. The building has no pickup so once a month or so, when the sealed lid Oscar the Grouch trash can that I harvested from a previous tenant gets full enough that the living things from within kind of seep out I double seal the container bag and bring it down to the trunk of the car where it usually stays for a few days until I spy an open dumpster and gorilla toss it Alice's Restaurant style. This time however I thought I'd kill two or three birds with one stone and bring the checks for deposit, the post office box key and run some errands to get groceries, etc. The trouble is with a troubled mind the stress can cause confusion and seize even the most mundane tasks into vicious circles or worse, a dead brain halt. And that's the way it went. In the car, trash in trunk, I leave the lot only to realize I had forgotten my cash, credentials and the damn checks. I swing the car around, park and go up the stairs. On the way I up I remember the discs and mugs left in the Design Center and how I'd better get 'em. Down the stairs again. Out on Main toward the Post, cops lights, inspection again, stupid, so I manage to talk the cop down to a lesser offense as the post closes and I lose my window to check the box. Turn around and I'm back toward the city uncomfortably behind the cop that just ticketed me, by this time sort of audibly barking at nothing in hopes of a hard wired mind reset. Half way back I recall the bank, turn around (U style illegally on the main cross city artery), drive and park in the bagel joint next door feeling hungry. Standing in line for food, nearly forgetting the damn deposit I make a quick break to get it done, leaving the order to toast, clerk waving frantically. Deposit slip in hand, I pat down my inner pockets, second check missing, realizing I grabbed the wrong envelope. In a confusion, leave the bank, return to the studio, stop by the office to pick up the discs and mugs. Inside, still hungry, having abandoned the bagel, I get distracted by a bag of chips and in a soft shift of memory I'm heading out the back door, bag of chips in hand, half way up the stairwell of the adjacent building recalling the discs and mugs. This is funny, I thought, and pat myself down for the moleskin to record the thought (I never leave without it) only to realize it was left bedside. So I stood there half paralyzed, thinking of the festering bag of trash in the trunk and then Buttercup and all the things that make up a life in between, between slow fists of chips, alone in the stairwell, half mad and numb.