Book

Thinking knowing only of an extra day I went in search at 3am. It’s just one day I thought on a holiday, hell, you take those unintentionally or intentionally so often Steve they should be par. But there’s something different about shared extra days and plans that might afford time.. I thought to unbox some cat storage window bin sleep spots this weekend with that extra in mind, so many years later and what was in them knowing I had the time at 3am to stray off the usual course of a usual weekend’s days/nights. The one extra day/night for the searching being huge. Hello two Saturdays.

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Jesus, I really gotta pare this shit down, so many books, so many books I’ve held onto as if it were a sacrilege to let them go. It’s heavy and heavier still as plenty of them might be considered questionable these days, according to small minds at smaller minded schoolboards who have never read Fahrenheit 451, damn those classics.

I was in search of something specific, something I wouldn’t find, but instead found something more.

I found your Bible Dad, replete with masking tape to hold it together after so many opens and page turns and devotions, because sometimes masking tape, as paper glue flimsy as it is, a tenuous easily dried and cracked thing, still holds sitting under cat’s asses in storage bin windows and found pictures of Beck and Nick and Ma and Me, Ma in her latest at the time coolest of doo. Mom could easily put any girlfriend wannabe to shame in her cool. I found pictures of Merlin and Benny from a time dearly missed in some of course ways, cats yes, Danielle almost, in Dayton OH, a close to 40 year old Wayneburg College recruitment pamphlet, there were programs from college plays, from Brigadoon to By Jupiter to Our Town where I sometimes played the lead, found children’s artwork thanking us for a show, though I don’t remember such, and they’re all old enough now to have had their own kids, maybe even grandkids, though I applaud what we apparently did in our reaching out of the arts. There WAS a time GOP. Fuck you by the way.

I found memory.

You didn’t make any notations Dad as you should have, in that unmistakable script pen of yours, though you had your placeholders, as I wouldn’t have made any notes either if I had had such a book I guess, it was just yours, it didn’t need any extra notes from you on salvation. Notations for what? What would they say? What would they do other than lead to frustration of a world not on what you thought should be page? Would they sway us with an extra Joe pen scripted word? No, it wasn’t intended for anyone other than you and I think you came about that, you had heart and compassion for other people’s differings. That’s why there is a sudden miss Dad as I uncover cat spots and bibles after so many years of carting things from place to place, and I uncover that you made no notations, you didn’t see this future where page could be forced. You were better than that. It wasn’t meant for anyone else other than you in the daily and in the end, a lesson not learned by the current rabble who wish themselves more than rabble, wish themselves to rabble you with their own notations and interpretations that judge you and want make decisions for you because of, it was just yours held together with a dried cracked masking tape that’s not supposed to hold but still does, protected by cats all these years later through all the moves, it was just yours.

Will I read it, imagine your comfort of it? No, probably not, though maybe, though maybe I already have noting no notations but words bleeding in, maybe for Dad future reference, stories to be told, placeholders a start, but it was a just yours and it framed you.

I have my own things Dad, my own frame, as you always knew, minus the slight disappointment, not of a me, you were always so almost gushingly proud, but of my different frame, my own take on the world, my own books my my own writings my own looks or just thoughts that are really heavy Dad, so fucking heavy as I look at them, around them actually, fearfully sometimes, as straight up looks are a place you don’t wanna go, unlike you in this masking tape wrapped comfort of yours. You were steadfast in your faith and I’m envious of that. Always envious.

There is a miss today Dad.