A slight misapprehension of our backyarad

The weather over this last, burdensome week has been remarkably reminiscent of the mosquito plagued dampness one might encounter scant latitudes from the equator. Those portions of my skin that have been left uncovered itch as if sprinkled with the devil's own compound. The stifling heat, in similar fashion, has exerted itself on my mind, making each movement infinitely heavier. I have been unable to think, and thereby, unable to write.

My novel remains untouched, my prospects dim as bookblack. Even on days such as this, when clouds, white as a gentleman's pressed shirt, sprawl across the sky as though to suggest the promise of rain (which they will not deliver), I cannot delude myself into thinking my prospects blue as the sun or green as the still-thriving ivy.

Ida believes, as I have told her, that I am focusing my efforts on the garden in mute anticipation that the worst of our fears will come to pass. She is inside sewing hems on my trousers. She plans, if our prospects do not rapidly improve, to speak with our pastor about doing small portions of piecework for the congregation. She tells me that the choir has long needed new robes.

Myself, I am well lost and preparing to swallow what pride I may have remaining. I shall speak with Mr. Rockwell on the morrow.

A few peculiarities

Last night, Ida and I spent several hours seated, at a respectable distance, on the sofa in our sitting room watching television. As those miraculous light-filled images of personages far away in time and place flickered across the bulging screen, I could not help but glance occasionally at my dear wife's profile lit by the faint blue glow of our most prized contraption. The television program Leverage, upon which my wife frequently discourses during tea, aired a charming play on honesty and deception last eve. My wife watched with rapt attention, though I, alas, had difficulty following the machinations of those swashbuckling characters.

I was, I believe, much too taken by dear Ida's profile in that faint blue glow and the continuing calculations of my feeble mind regarding the madness that my novel has become. Indeed, after Ida had retired early to the boudoir, I spent several hours writing and managed to pen, in a most figurative manner, an ensuing chapter. It is a chapter, I fear, that reduces propriety and domestic stability to little more than a midsummer's dream. Furthermore, after having worked for what I deemed a suitable amount of time, I remained restless and concerned by the reception the work may be receiving elsewhere.

Such immediacy, I do not doubt, is a peril to the honing of finely wrought words and paragraphs. Yet, already, there is response. The public is speaking, though I oft may struggle to understand what they say or why they might say it. Take for example, this analysis. Apropos of nothing, the author evokes Marx and the working class, who in all frankness, remain largely absent from my tale of fallen petite bourgeoisie. Unlike the brief morality play Ida and I enjoyed within the context of Leverage, the means of production here are not quite so quantifiable as tapes. Moreover, there is a merger of capital and worker that I daresay Marx might never have envisioned. The dilemma then is merely in methods of distribution. The media, like the tapes on that television morality play, becomes central to the conundrum.

But perhaps there is something to what he's said? I must reflect further upon these troubling notions. I must continue my work without neglecting the attentions of dearest Ida.

Summer storm

A flash storm just blew through our neighborhood. Hail, lightning strikes, thunder crashes, window-rattling wind. Our beagle, Jack, shadowed me around the living room and kitchen, half-begging for the Pop-tarts I'd made for Ida and myself before dinner, and half-cowering at each house-shuddering boom of thunder.

The storm, like my fortunes, was over almost as soon as it began. In the evenings, I study Ida's face as she stares, unfazed, at the latest installment of America's Got Talent or a re-run of The Sopranos. I keep expecting to find evidence that our decline in stature has taken its toll on her, but other than the slightest strands of gray in her still lustrous hair, I find none.

I cannot help but wonder what she thinks of me. Was I dishonest with her in how I first presented myself? Have such reduced expectations altered, in any way, what she feels for me?

I do not know. I must, however, succeed. Somehow.

After the storm, we ventured into the city. Police lights pulsed mere blocks from our house, cordoning off lightning strikes and downed power lines from the unwary. Sheared branches, bright with summer green, littered the roadsides. Twenty minutes and the world had changed.

Today, I've made little progress on my novel. Given my current prospects, I must make this a success. Mr. Rockwell, doubtless, has little time remaining for gifts, and those of my colleagues who have been little affected by the economic downturn are, doubtless, leveraging what assets they can for their own betterment, not the betterment of one whose origins, I must now admit to myself, remain suspect.

For now, I must rest. Perhaps tomorrow will bring more whispers from my muse, a smile from my dear Ida.