Grocery Friday

Pop offered to stop at Jim’s for pancakes. I jumped on that. He said that since Kay is here, he felt better about being away from the house. It is grocery day.

The only thing is, I am much too full for my steak lunch. I am too full for anything. The plan, for now, is to not eat anything until I am hungry again and have an early steak dinner, maybe at around four. I’ll have dessert at nine or ten o’clock tonight.

Summery Afternoon

Pop returns from the H.E.B. rounds of grocery day. When I step outside to get the groceries, I am slapped down by the ugliness of that heat. That’s a June kind of heat. I’m amazed it doesn’t feel uncomfortable inside the house, but I guess the coolness of the morning is helping to sustain us, holding the afternoon heat at bay, for now.

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1505

I have to take off the T-shirt. The heat is catching up inside the house. It is still pretty early in the afternoon, too. Kay and Pop have left for a little fun; I can show off the blubber.

William Burroughs: And the Beat Goes On

"Kick is seeing things from a special angle. Kick is momentary freedom from the claims of the ageing, cautious, nagging, frightened flesh."

-- William Burroughs

Will Self gives us an interesting look at the beat on the centenary of his birth. Mr. Self is a little predictable in the way he beats up on the man who gave his life over to drug addiction, to junk, to kick, to getting high and lost. But he gives us some quotations from the man's writing that impresses me as a reader.

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[This comes from a letter that Burroughs wrote to Allen Ginsberg explaining his account of being a drug and heroin addict in his book "Junky".]

"As a matter of fact the book is the only accurate account I ever read of the real horror of junk. But I don't mean it as justification or deterrent or anything but an accurate account of what I experienced while I was on the junk. You might say it was a travel book more than anything else. It starts where I first make contact with junk, and it ends where no more contact is possible."

[This is an excerpt from the book "Junky", which Mr. Self calls "the very archetype of the romanticisation of excess that has so typified our era".]

"I loosened the tie, and the dropper emptied into my vein. Coke hit my head, a pleasant dizziness and tension, while the morphine spread through my body in relaxing waves. 'Was that alright?' asked Ike, smiling. 'If God made anything better, he kept it for himself,' I said."

-- William Burroughs, as quoted by Will Self in The Guardian

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Of a Springtime Evening

I caught myself muttering, as I often do, the phrase, “I wish I felt good.” Then it occurred to me that, after my big breakfast of pancakes and my big steak lunch, and a good afternoon nap, I actually do feel pretty good. I feel not only full in stomach but full in spirit, too. In fact, I am wishing that I could be going out on this Friday night with a few good friends to enjoy the springtime evening. As it is, the only thing I have to look forward to tonight are a couple of cinnamon rolls. If I am not happy, at least I am fat.

Late Shower

Another late shower. It was after ten o'clock already. I remember when that used to be my routine, back when Bo was still with us, but I don't want to fall back into that habit. A shower jazzes me up too much, and I cannot think of sleep until after midnight.

I need to resume my walks and morning showers. My right foot is still not back to normal, but I can evade much of the pain with only a little limp in my stride. Sunday morning, maybe I will see about getting back on that treadmill.