“It’s been a while since the wild water looked like this, but it will again, god willing. Watching the water around here is like the best television show ever. Or ... a perturbing mini-series that you’re addicted to, but irritated by and ashamed to be watching ... when it gets this low, and slow. Sometimes, I just look away. I don’t feel right, or that I have any right, to judge the river. I love it too damn much. I don’t want to feel betrayed by it. Not now. Not when I’ve wrung out every possible betrayal from my life, or thinking I have. And from the vantage point of the car repair waiting room, after having been teased by “Steve” whose texts are actually send out by “Jen”, I feel a kinship to this crazy mis-mash we’re calling life right now. They can fix my tailgate, for $67.50, when, after all, it was my fault that I was in too much of a hurry to take my screwdriver, and ream out all the bark mulch from the joint where the tailgate meets its maker. I admit, I’m fully culpable, and I knew it at the time, but I was too shy to let my job run over, after the whole family came home, and was going to be watching me do it, right there, in front of their house. I don’t know if anyone out there can relate to such a ridiculous, self-imposed & self-created predicament. I’d bitten off a huge clutch of work, hoping to complete it and fully planning to be vacated by 3 pm. It’s not my favorite thing, to be hired help, sweating and struggling, while my clients are blithely recreating in front of me. But, this being Vermont, we are often in the position, of doing grueling work in front of vacationers. It’s not that I mind the work. It’s just the contrast, that feels, well ... awkward. I get my vacation time ... I guess .. well.. maybe I don’t. But that’s my business, and nobody else’s fault. It was completely on me, that my last so-called “vacation” was a complete fail, where I ended up having to hide the fact I was just wanted to get home and cry. Some of us are weird that way. I’ve cried my way through the streets of Rome, and even plotted my way to the very ends of an island, to avoid anyone seeing what I was unable to express directly. I’ve been pregnant and in front of an airport X-ray machine, ridiculed & abandoned by my significant other. Then feigning sleep, on the flight, just so no one could see my silent tears. I’ve been courted by a handsome man, who thought he could flatter a woman my age, and get her to buy into some “Infinite Banking” scam. I’ve also had nice glasses of wine, with decent, under-appreciated divorcees, still living with their children. But in the end, it’s my choice and my solace to spend a timeless day weeding bindweed out of a raspberry patch. I love to move stones. I’m so looking forward to the patio renovation I’ll be doing next week. And satisfied, by the nuanced audio work I did, while it rained last week, and I was stuck indoors. I could live inside headphones, but I know it’s not healthy. That’s why I get into my truck, and cross gaps, and pull into driveways, halfway across the state, just about weekly. I could be fully immersed in audio and music production, and I know I will be, as the leaves begin to turn, and the snow begins to fly. That’s enough for me. I guess take my cues from the river that scares me by nearly running dry. It makes me mad that things can near come to a halt, and then stutter forward again, as if ... But I’m used to it. I’m exactly that. Just a worker bee, in a cruel, cruel world. Picking up tips from the youngins, who have it better, but barely understand what it is that they stand on, god bless ‘em.”
