Ill at Home

Standing at the back door, squinting in the sun, I somehow smell wood smoke & mint.  If anyone sees me, I must look high, but it's just that I'm not wearing my glasses.  Beyond the patio, the yard starts to blur.  The next street over is suburban Monet.  There's an absurdly loud cardinal in a mulberry tree--bobbing red smudge, grey branches cross-hatching pale blue that hasn't yet deepened into a proper sky.  This tree is entangled in a thick type of vine that, by Summer, will cover it over with it's own leaves, weighing it down, warping it into a wind-bent pose.  It's part of the reason my garden corner has become Shady Compost Corner for the past five years.  Poke and morning glories seem to like it.  Actually, the patio is an area of large purple-red bricks overrun by ivy from the South and honeysuckle from the North.  The furniture is verdigrised and lacquered by seasonal particulate.  It looks like nobody lives here.  Sometimes I wonder if anybody does.  "Aww, Shane just stepped in a big pile of Emo!"
Yeah, ok.  But that wave of adult self-sufficiency I was surfing has turned into a backwater lagoon.  I don't want to wash my dishes, I don't want a job, I don't want to drive a car, and I really don't want someone else taking care of me.  I find no joy in that.
Roy Montgomery's guitar sirens down the hall behind me & I look forward to those humid nights when it sounds like the trees are singing to each other.  Terrorists, idiots and malcontents are ruining the idea of travelling for me, but if I had the money, I might risk a plane to New Zealand and stay there.  Until then, there's always Google.  One of my favorite things is when I'm doing some virtual hiking around London, I turn down a little side street, and suddenly it's 2008--the weather changes, the past six years of construction blinks away & old buildings or vacant lots appear.  I imagine these time pockets exist all around us, if only we knew the right words.