My
judgement is shot, it really is, despite all my hours of pensiveness;
I'd even go so far as to say it's shady. I don't trust it and it sure
as hell doesn't trust me. I size her up (for if I am a she so must be
it) and refer to her as a 'wiseguy', resisting the urge to say it in
a terrible American Mafioso accent. Though she really is cracked, I
tell you, absolutely dotty, with a brazen mouth and swollen-headed. I
don't know where she gets it from or what, if anything, made her that
way or if she was just born like it. You wouldn't think I had a
fruitcake like her in me to look at me, but the brain's a funny
thing, it conceals and lies even to the body it's occupying until
those angels and devils, at least inwardly, want to be revealed,
tired of you thinking it was you or asking all the goddam time who
said that? You are not as funny or as smart as you imagine.But whoa, what a ride when one of them does!
Sleep, what's that?! Mind running in goddam circles, nitpicking at everything and having to break off from whatever you're in the middle of to make goddam lists of things to do and ideas; scrubbing yourself in the shower and finding you're reciting what seems like the perfect prose for that piece you're working on which didn't occur when you wanted it to when you had a notepad and pen handy or a keyboard in front of you, so you recite it over and over like a goddam parrot, only to find that when you come to review the in-progress piece it doesn't work. Or your mind seeming inclined towards one course of action, then later the same day or the next dubious about taking that step, which makes you wonder why you were so wired about it before, or not as the case may be 'cos it works in reverse too.
Man, what a rush, but not when it plummets. That's a bum deal.
The ol' lady is full of wisecracks, but then she's lived a long time, longer than me and not just with me for I think she moonlights, and was probably even around in the days of Fitzgerald, Capote and Salinger, or p'raps she just has a thing for American novelists and their habitual expressions for boy, when she's in one of her moods does she like to goddam and Chrissakes a lot, which then drop into my thoughts as if it were natural that they should do so and not put there. She's a crafty one, making out that she's my buddy and all when she's more like a goddam principal or a Miss Hannigan.
I can't imagine that she was ever a doll for her Americanisms and all are too masculine, calling me ol' sport when she wants to get me on side and a phony when I won't play. I used to tell her without me there wouldn't be these shadow punches, but once when I did she socked me one, so I stopped. Boy, did I have a headache after that, and even had to take to the sack for a couple of days. It was summer and then she tends to go all Miss Hannigan on me and drinks Tom Collins like bathwater. She sure ain't an easy lady to please, but she's kinda fun. Kooky, you know.
As for the schoolmarm persona, she's no fun at all and sort of deaf. She talks over me and don't listen, saying I know, dear, and boy, can she be strict after she's done telling me I do everything backasswards, Miss Hannigan's word not hers for my dumb-ass behaviour. I bet she did used to work in or run a high school or something, not that that prevents her from being insulting and somewhat crass, especially if Miss Hannigan keeps butting in. A Hannigan Hangover, I call it, which often gives me a dose of the grippe, 'cos boy, do they conflict. It's a real pain in the ass. The schoolmarm tho' is not as cruel and asks me questions and all, 'cept she has no interest in answers, providin' or hearin' them, 'cos she just wants me to say yes, ma'am, no, ma'am, rather than Miss Hannigan's goddam or Chrissakes. I'm fond of her tho' 'cos I save much more dough when she's around. She keeps me straight.
Most of the time tho' I walk in goddam circles or sit on a park bench 'cos their wisecracks pull me in too many directions and scrambles my thinkin'... that's where I'm sitting now on a park seat watchin' this kid chase pigeons.
Picture credit: Angels and Devils, Circle Limit IV, M. C. Escher
