Blogging with the Aliens

I walked Connor to daycare this morning. We call it “school,” and it feels a little better, even if all he’s learning is how to hang out with other kids and not bite them. On the way to “school” and on the way back with the empty stroller, which always feels weird, but is a necessity of walking a child to daycare with a stroller, I met five people whom I know either well or as acquaintances. Five. The first two commented on how big Connor is and how much he’s changing. Someone else was walking their dog and waved. Another was on her way to work and honked. Yet another said he hadn’t seen me in a while and asked how I’ve been. Man, I love this town.

But those who know me know that I’ve slowed down a little these days. A friend loaned me season three of X-files and I’m just as likely to be watching “Paper Clip” or “Nisei” or dipping into the Aliens Quadrology that I bought for the Monsters Ink course. When you get really successful, you know, because you can write your favorite toys off your taxes. So it’s a lot less porch, a lot less cocktail hour, a lot less late nights and beverages and more. I’m hoping this is more than the encroachment of age and responsibility, but it might just be a vestige of 40 creeping up a month or two early. Mostly, I think, it’s just fatigue. I’m too tired, too sad and too tired of being tired and sad. Think I’ll go watch something with Aliens eating people.

It used to be that when I was having a really bad week, I’d dig up my copy of Stephen King’s Salem’s Lot and reread it. It seems a funny choice except that no matter how hard your life is and how many people seem to be in threat if imminent or future demise by long, slow, bone-and-body eating diseases, at least the vampires aren’t eating your town. There is still a place in the imagination where it could be so much worse. To me, that’s comforting. Sick, perhaps, but comforting. The only caveat is the new ghost stories. I saw one (Silent Hill – thanks, Stephen!) that really creeped me out; kinda like The Ring meets Jacobs Ladder meets Hellraiser. And anything that the Japanese have dreamed up lately can full on give a ghost-and-dead-thing connoisseur nightmares. One most go gently into this good night or get the socks scared off ya. It’s enough to make you want to stick with the classics: Aliens, The Thing, Ghost Story.

Speaking of ghosts, I got to wander out and about this last weekend during our local Bragg Jamm music festival. Dan’s band couldn’t play because the lead singer had a wedding, but he sat in with a good new band and did a great job while folks danced and sweated. It felt like a kind of homecoming, an old home weekend. Everyone was out, dressed up, playing music, dancing, sweating in the Georgia summer heat that even new air conditioners couldn’t properly combat. But either side of Saturday night, I just couldn’t get my dancing feet up to their usual revelry. I’m sure it’s because some very good friends are about to lose their first child to bone cancer, and I just wanted to hold onto mine for a little while. It could also be that the thought of their losing their little girl and having to face the long, slow suck that this is going to be just made me physically ill. Either way, I was happy to take it slow this weekend, and then to take it even slower this week. My stomach is in accord, aching when I don’t eat and then punishing me heartily when I do something stupid, like take asprin on an empty stomach, or eat chili and eggs for breakfast.

So we’re going gently this week, playing with the baby, starting back on the manuscript, planning the Fall literary festival and watching movies about how the things that haunt the night eat the unlucky. Survivor’s guilt much? Sure, all the time. But that’s the full contract price for being lucky, then, ain’t it? Ain’t it. Aint it, just. Think I'll go watch The Mummy again.