Time Wounds

He sat in his chair, where he usually sat when weather allowed, drinking his cheap scotch, McGuthy’s. He had different variations on his drink., sometimes he mixed it with skim milk, sometimes he had it hot, with tea. Tonight he needed it straight up. It was early, that was why. There were many messages on the answering machine, but he couldn’t bring himself to listen to them, because then he would feel obliged to call them back. Hell, if he wanted to talk to someone he would have answered the phone in the first place. There was no one he wanted to talk to. He’d spent half the day under the covers watching movies and now he felt like thinking. He sat in his brown and orange chair on the porch that only had room for him and the chair. It was the blue hour, when the day drifts off and first starts dreaming of the night. He felt really good sitting there, sipping his scotch. The impending evening felt like it might have a soul, which gave him a quiet, satisfying hum.

It was early winter, what most people called Fall, but he preferred Early Winter. Summer and Winter is all that there is. Everything else is just flirting. Still, he did love the transitional seasons. They made him feel alive, and at the same time, thinking about the past a lot. Tonight he didn’t want to think about the past. He wanted to think about other things, but he couldn’t think of what to think of to not think of the past. More scotch. It was easy, the scotch was right there by his chair and he poured it in his plastic cup.

His radio was failing him tonight. He kept getting his favorite songs, but none of them gave him his usual feeling, whatever the feeling was. Often extreme, but hard to nail down. Exuberant melancholy? Heartbreaking wonder? He felt flat. There was an article in the newspaper about a week ago that he’d read. Talked about how a lot of Americans were feeling...flat...after the terrorism and the stock scandals and the big bad feeling. (Subliminal Note to Self: Must Blot Out Every Feeling) . The article interviewed a couple of mid-range people and they said they basically just couldn’t get into anything anymore. Basically they were just depressed, and now he was depressed. Fucking media.