the disinvited

Time intervals sound short by name then seem long when measured in retrospect. Even two weeks feels like a lifetime, which is probably generations for some of the insects moving into the tree I planted on Earth Day. A neighbor stopped by for coffee that morning and some friends came by for lunch after my gardening. I planted sunflower and corn seeds, trellised the hops, and moved around the phlox, roses, and trumpet vines out front. It's been raining most days since, which has been a good excuse to take a break inside, but now the grass is reaching up to Teemo's chest.

The historical society hosted a tea time that day. I didn't attend but I did stop by the day before to help setup. I had Free at Noon playing while we added plates to tiered stands and tied ribbons on vases. I made it back to Lansdale that evening and finished a chapter of Ulysses then walked over to the crystal shop to stock up on incense and catch up with the owner. I met some friends for a beer and the blues then moved to a quieter bar for a cocktail. I brought up the lotus eaters and thought about the ways Joyce, Proust, and the Food Network raised me and shaped me into the Yankee Doodle Dandy I became.

I was socially drained by then and skipped church that weekend opting instead for a walk around the boro. The weather was clear and sunny, and I could smell grills and fires on almost every block. All the dogs were out, too, and everybody seemed to have their windows open. I overheard a couple fighting, friends singing a shanty together, somebody practicing piano, and a radio broadcast. I laid in the hammock listening to blues and folk on my radio thinking about how to react to news of the end of my winter romance and how the erosion of love might be obfuscated in the folds between the beats of my sampling frequency.

I grieved the change then let it go. It rained heavily last week, which provided its own plausibly deniable cover for stagnation, but I made a point of keeping active. I made cosmic crackers and melted my brain watching Cocaine Bear with friends. I've been out of touch with the news but did see the debt ceiling debate is still dragging on. I thought that from a monist perspective cash looks like a higher level abstraction energy store beyond helium and carbohydrates. The latter seem easier to measure with agreement, inasmuch as nobody seems interested in debating how many calories are available in the sun or the trees. Measuring a cash supply is trickier because the potential energy there is driven by a labor force that can actually metabolize those dollars both presently and in the future. I think a similarly objective valuation of cash might be one determined by a weighted measure of the working population that accounts for current metabolic capacity and potential reproductive ability so that roughly as people are born and find happiness in fair weather the supply goes up and as people die and fall to heartbreak and disease it goes down. This at least pushes the politics of augury to those estimates where we can argue about them in more concrete terms of capability rather than pretending that the federal government is subject to the same constraints and conventions as personal finance.

I wound up sick myself this week and despite my claimed insistence on not stopping I had to slow down. My uvula was comically large so I went to urgent care. They ruled out strep, flu, and COVID then told me it was some other virus and to go to emergency care if I was worried about suffocating. They didn't prescribe an anti-virus, which is ill-timed because I just canceled my Norton subscription along with Netflix. So for my palliative care I had steroids, benzocaine drops, phenol spray, spicy lentils, and video games. I played a little Breath of the Wild then started and finished Uncharted 4 in about three days. For all of Avery's ideation of a penitent thief I thought he failed to realize his claimed ideals by misestimating Libertalia's cash supply. With all that wealth he could have built hospitals, waste management, and lead free water supply lines, all of which would have kept the cash flowing. Instead he froze his assets in paintings and statues that nobody could metabolize. Still the treasure havers inspired the treasure hunters, and both Evelyn and Nathan wound up with homes filled with hoarded wonders that their survivors can pick through, which must be included in the assessment of our cash supply and considered while setting the debt ceiling.

My ailment finally seems to be lifting today. Of all the medicine I consumed the lentils last night seemed to be the most effective. I think they were so spicy that they numbed the pain better than the benzocaine. This morning a friend told me to kick out the disease as it's not welcome anymore. I like the imagery of a sword and shield in the house, but I'd never use either so their presence would only give me Avery anxiety. I thought about hanging a broom and pot lid over the mantle instead and imagined myself armed with both chasing the virus out the door. I listened to Bailen on today's Free at Noon while writing this and feel ready to act. The peach tree is fruiting and needs protection from the sparrows, the grass needs a trim, and I need to begin the next lifetime.