Do you know what time it is?

Do you know what time it is?

Does anyone really know what time it is?

Does anybody really care

About time?

He looks down at the dog, and sees that there is hole in the dog’s head.

Inside that hole is a mess. A mess of dog thoughts. Fur, matted, impenetrable.

Must eat. Must find food. What is that smell? She is haunted by smells. Her nose is sensitive to aromas. She is reminded of a time when she and the big dog used to run in the forest.

SQUIRREL! She would run without thinking,happily barking at the squirrel up in the branches of the tree. Come down and fight like a man!

“There is something like abandon in the air. There was something like the feeling of the idea of scarves in the air.

There was a kind of madness in the air.”

It is very foggy, the brain fog has rolled in.

He is reeling in the years.

“He sat and thought about obedience.”

What does it mean to obey, to follow? The leash binds the dog to the man. Sometimes he takes the leash off. She is overcome with the panoply of smells all around her. Is that a skunk?

It is about two blocks away, but still skunk stench is haunting her. An apparition. A ghost of an aroma, so strong to her senses, yet the man is oblivious. He is lost in the fog. His own inner fog, echoing the external fog, which is pervasive but not opaque. When you are in it, you can see in front of you.

He reels back in time. He is eighteen. He had been drinking with friends. Dancing in the living room. He had danced to David Bowie’s Young Americans. Now he is outside, talking loudly. A middle aged man sticks his head out of the second story window shouting “Do you know what time it is?”

He answers back with Chicago, which he shout/ sings with gusto.

“Does anyone really know what time it is?

Does anybody really care

About time?”

Clearly he doesn’t care. He is walking upright. He tastes the madness of youth. His mouth is sour, metallic, no longer compartmentalized. What a fine mess. What fresh hell?

He was to get into his Mother’s car and drive home. Through the fog, the literal fog. There are many reasons why he cannot see beyond the hood of the car. He keeps the car moving between the lines, while he is driving drunk in the fog. How he got home in one piece is anybody’s guess. In fact, it clearly was a miracle.

So many times like that in my life. If ever there were reasons to believe in a higher power….

Like the time my friends woke me up at dawn, still drunk from the night before. They group decide to swim across the lake. They are bound together in reckless stupidity. Stupid is as stupid does. I followed the crowd into the water. Let me say right now, I am not a good swimmer. My mind reels back to the swimming lessons at the natatorium, where a muscular man in a bathing suit lined all the young boys up and threw them, one by one, into the deep end of the pool. There was much water that went in my nostrils, and I was gagging, and more water enters into my mouth. My eight year old mind cannot see into the future. I come up for air, gasping. That boy I was cannot see through the fog of youth. I cannot imagine my eighteen year old self, drowning in cheap alcohol and fog. Or my 65 year old self, drowning in miracles. So many lives for this lost cat.

Clearly time doesn’t mean that much to me, as I was content to drift, my teens melting in my twenties. So many bad experiences. So many good experiences.

Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.

I am back in the lake, in what seems to be the middle of the lake. My friends have swam past me. I can hear their voices becoming more distant, and I hear a motor boat in the lake. They are all too far from me to be able to see me, to note my limbs are heavy, so heavy, sinking into this natural deep end in the middle of the lake.

I could not even imagine the bottom of the lake, but I know it is far below me. I am not moving forward. I am only treading water, as they call it. I tread water, thinking I could die out here. I could die this morning. I am an accident waiting to happen. It is no use. How can I summon the strength to get to the other side?

Yet somehow I do. I am blue and they are laughing. My friends become a mob. I beg them to let me walk back, but one boy advises the forest that surrounds us on this side of the lake, is home to many wild creatures. Lions and tigers and bears- oh my!

I must swim back. And I do swim back. Time goes on. Now I am 65. I am listening in the fog to Pharaoh Sanders and Floating Points, which reminds me of The Park by Robert Ashley.

“There was something like abandon in the air. “

“He is determined to be serious…… Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.”

The fog is all around me. The fog is within me. The familiar is slowly revealed, shape by shape, as I attach words to what I see.

“ He wasn’t happy with world.”

“Obedience was impossible for him.”

Why does the dog not listen to me? I peer into the hole in her head. Who put that hole there? Has it always been there, just under the fur? Her needs are simple. Feed me. Love me. Walk me. Let me sleep. So why is our relationship so fraught?

Yesterday, I made bad decisions. Too many. My wife is concerned.

“Get a grip on yourself.”

“Come down out of the trees and fight like a man.”

This past week I read something about monkeys. I search my brain for a clue. It seemed so interesting at the time. My memories and my retained information collide on a narrow precipice. Don’t look down, his inner voices shout. Don’t look back, his long pants whisper. Don’t expect much, just live and breathe and let it come.

Last week, I was in another accident. I seem to be drawing accidents to me, sucking accidents into my vortex of swirling fears and anxiety. It is no wonder what I am feeling. I am overwhelmed with the enormity of this year, which thankfully is ending soon. The days are getting shorter and darker. The night is a comfort. Sleep is a comfort. Lucky for me I am sleeping well, as I am not waking well.

The accident that happened this week was minor. My new car was bumped from behind by a 79 year old woman, who could barely see above her steering wheel. She was driving in the rain on a dark night, and misjudged the space she need to pass me on the left, as she was heading into the left turn lane.

I am starting to feel that I may be cursed. My wife says to remember the power of threes. I should feel better because my bad luck came in threes. Now that Bad Luck Gods are finished olayimg games with me.

1. Cancer

2. The first accident

3. This new accident

   I said, what about my bypass. Wasn’t that number one?

   Then this new accident is #4., and I have two more coming.

   She said that I don’t understand how 3’s work.

“The origins of the belief in bad luck coming in threes is difficult to trace definitively. One theory suggests that the superstition emerged during the Crimean War, where soldiers were warned against lighting three cigarettes from the same match to avoid being spotted by the enemy.

This superstition has a name. It is called Apophenia, which is the belief that negative events happen in threes.

In health, the rule of threes contains the following:

1. You can survive three minutes without breathable air (unconsciousness) or in icy water.

2. You can survive three hours in a harsh environment (extreme heat or cold).

3. You can survive three days without drinkable water.

Hermann Ebbinghaus' forgetting curve expresses how learned information is forgotten over time. Research shows that after an hour, people will typically forget 56% of what you have presented them. After 24 hours, 66% of the presented information is forgotten. And after six days, this number creeps up to 75.

Warren Ash, who was the drummer in my first band AKA ( three letters), said the perfect set should go like so:

You take it up.

You bring it down.

You take it back up again.

To which I say,

We are born, we live and we die.

Bada-Bing, Bada-Boom.

Thank you for dropping by the read. Feel free to leave your comments, or forget your wallet. Please share with friends, if you think they might enjoy reading THIS IS NOT MUSIC!