2:30 p.m. Sunday after exiting Joan’s house.

Rather than head straight back to Scruffy, I decide to hit the office.

Do a bit of blogging…

Pulled in and parked.

I find the office still here…always here…like a snag in a twisted brain.

I stroll in like I own the place. Stroll in passed the sleepy-dude-who-smells.

That’s him in the white t-shirt.

Don’t know his true name. He’s a regular. He Falls asleep. Barista nudges him awake. (they draw straws to determine who nudges him) He Smells. He always smells. Not as bad as the Irish dude.

This office was once a Pasta Pomodoro. Starbucks took over and kept the décor. Huge space for a Starbucks. Space allows for a kind of smelly dude toleration. Meaning, you come in here, you encounter a smelly dude, you move past him and his smell as if you’re passing an island at sea…you move into the shock of smelliness but as you drift past the smell recedes. Kind of like Ulysses passing the island of sirens but not so mythic.

Or dangerous…

They sit beside the ocean, combing their long shiny hair and singing to passing sailors. But anyone who hears their song is bewitched by its sweetness, and they are drawn to that island like iron to a magnet. And their ship smashes upon rocks as sharp as spears. And those sailors join the many victims of the Sirens in a meadow filled with skeletons.

Painting by John William Waterhouse

But Ulysses wants to hear their song. So his has his crew plug their ears with wax and has them lash him to the mast…and as they pass the island he screams to be released as the madness of siren song overwhelms him.

I’ve had nights like that at Mona’s Gorilla lounge.

Anyway, the sleepy-dude-who-smells is not so intoxicating. I move past his island and the air freshens.

No big deal.

A Static Time Zone

A lazy vibe? Okay. Sunday afternoon torpor. Nobody’s got anything special to do. Just hanging at Starbucks. I grabbed this big table. The other occupant vanished before I arrived, leaving all his shit at the table like he was vaporized by an alien.

I’d think it was strange if I didn’t know the score.

You can do that here. You can leave you’re shit at a table (laptop, coffee cup, vape tube, etc.) and split for the racetrack, or where ever, come back later and reclaim your space. I do it all the time. I’m not a gambling man but once I drove across town, came back two hours later and nothing was touched.

Because the office is a static time zone…

Nothing changes here.

Legends…Myths…Hieroglyphs…Easter Island Monoliths…the pyramids of the Monte Alban…gigantic worms of the Precambrian age…smelly old farts bracing coffee tables…

But no funerial…people drift in and out…tables vacate…people show up with laptops, tablets, smartphones…they sit and drink coffee and stare at devices…this never changes…they are the undead taken for dead waiting to be dead…but not especially alive when here….

Now I’m not alone

The vacant dude appeared, grabbed his crap and split. A moment of peace before this annoying couple arrives to occupy the other half of my table. They set up their devices like normal people but the woman insists on cleaning the table while the man fidgets. They don’t seem to appreciate that I was here before they arrived, as if they feel they ought to have this table all to themselves. Well I feel like leaving but I’ll stay awhile just to spite them. Why? One reason: they’re young.

I despise young people. The young are ignorant. Vane. Untroubled by their lack of wisdom. But their worst trait is the most troubling: the young are restless. They can’t sit still. They feel they own the world and must occupy it all at once all the time. Like they do this table. Cleaning it with a napkin. Arranging their bags. Rearranging their coffee cups. This table! They don’t belong here.

Or, maybe I don’t belong here.

Maybe I have it all wrong. My powers of observation have waned. Things are changing all around me. A new age is dawning. The new age of youth.

The Old. My people. We’re being killed off.

Killed off by our young relatives.

Thalaikoothal

 Thalaikoothal is the traditional practice of senicide (killing of the elderly) or involuntary euthanasia, by their own family members, observed in some parts of The southern districts of Tamil Nadu state of India. (wikipedia).

Yeeesssss sir! Leave it to the Indians. They’ve been killings off their aged parents like it’s no big deal for thousands of years. That’s right…the same place where the wife tosses herself on her dead husband’s funeral pyre…that makes perfect sense, doesn’t it?

But killing off the old folks? That really burns me.

Typically, the person is given an extensive oil-bath early in the morning and subsequently made to drink glasses of tender coconut water which results in kidney failure, high fever, fits, and death within a day or two.^[1][2] This technique may also involve a head massage with cold water, which may lower body temperature sufficiently to cause heart failure.^[3] Alternative methods involve force feeding cow’s milk while plugging the nose, causing breathing difficulties (the “milk therapy”) or use of poisons.^[3] Wikipedia

The milk therapy!

That’s the ticket. Give old Pap the milk therapy. Moves you closer to that inheritance, kid.

You ask me, I’d get the jump on the kid. Catch him snoozing one day and shive him in the ribs.

Show the ungrateful bastard who’s in charge!

I’m done here

Head back to Scruffy, plug in my heater cord, drink wine and read some more about these wretched Tamils. Or better, catch up on the Donald Trump news!

Meanwhile, the-sleepy-dude-who-smells looks different. What gives?

I guess he got cold…