blurring_the_edges_50_undercurrents_and_overtones birdmad Summer, in it's typical fashion here in the desert takes its time dying. The intervening two months from your trip to Vegas on to the first cool night of Autumn pass almost uneventfully except for the brewing tension between your brother and your sisters. They don't like Andrew's wife as neither she nor they have made any real effort to endear themselves to the other and Andrew feels caught in the middle. You would prefer to remain above it but everyone is trying to drag you into the middle of it. Only problem is that your main concern besides your own pernicious species of self-interest is your mom and she is showing signs of being ill again and undergoes a second mastectomy. Time you spend with Teri is the only thing that keeps you sane. You never convey to her the extent of how things are at home, content instead to revel in that little extra spark of life she gives off. The only other happy occasion in the family comes when your oldest neice and her shady barrio-trash boyfriend become the parents of your great-niece Monica, a little bundle of cute with a full head of soft black hair. Monica's dad, Carlos had been in jail for two months at the time and will be for another seven months, a product of that weird strain of criminal pride that lurks beneath the skin of some in your neighborhood and others that conveys some perverse, ass-backward sense of accomplishment for doing your first turn in "la pinta." It's no wonder, you think, that as a group, people from around here are pretty well fucked. Here you are priding yourself on that fact that for the most part you have managed to get away with a laundry list of crimes, while the petty criminals and people you would scarcely consider to do your shit-work celebrate being dumb enough to get caught for stupid shit. You don't wear it on your sleeve, but you do feel superior to them in a way. You've had big tastes of the life that they claim to aspire to but will always prevent themselves from ever attaining... and the truth is, it was like any other overdose, exhilarating but sickening all in the same breath. You drag yourself to church alone on a sunday morning, feigning laryngitis to avoid singing with the ensemble, sitting in a rather empty corner of the back row of seats. The church itself is not a very traditional one in terms of the way it was constructed, a large square structure with a few vague hints of Spanish Colonial flourishes on the outside and purely utilitarian inside. There are no pews, just plastic chairs not unlike you'd find in a conference room or classroom, the only obviously church-like thing about any part of the interior is the sanctuary where the sacristy, the altar and the crucifix on its back wall all reside. There are heavy divider curtains that hang from the tracks in the ceiling. When there are catechism classes, the entire floor can be divided up into about nine zones each the size of a very small classroom. During mass, the back third of the curtain partitions become the dividing area between the congregarion and the kitchen and dining area. There had been a fountain in the center of the courtyard, but something had broken it and it was now just a strange peice of 1970's era stonework sitting out there useless. After awhile, someone had the bright idea to remove it from the courtyard and use it in the center of the room, using it as a planter and setting up some of the altar-works and the pulpit in its general vicinity. Neither you nor your mom have been here in a couple of months so the new look is a shock to you. The spartan white walls have been painted over inside to look almost a terra cotta color and the old white linoleum tile is gone in favor of a brick-red ceramic and the chairs have all been aligned from the corners to face the center of the room and the path from the sanctuary to the altar. Neither the usual priest or the deacon are there, with a pair on-loan from another parish while some of the diocese priests and members of the deaconate are attending some big workshop. The substitute priest, Father Leon, is pleasant enough, and paces things well, but defers to his deacon to deliver the sermon and you wonder as he is reflecting on parts of the gospel if he is not drunk as he is even more repetetive than the usual guy and increasingly less coherent. The whole congregation seems to sense that something is amiss but remains respectfully silent, except for you who gets up during a pause to make for the door. Leaving the church, you drive up to St. Joe's where your mom is being visited by one of her aunts. You sit by for awhile until your great-aunt leaves and sit with your mom telling her about the redecorating of the church and the morning's deacon debacle before she falls back under the pain-killer sleep. You sit for awhile longer, still holding her hand before the gravity of it sends you back out onto the street to grab some lunch and a little time alone with your thoughts at Encanto park. Enjoying the cool of the day, you sit for awhile at a relatively secluded picnic table before being rousted away by a trio of stoner girls. They are baked and a little obnoxious, but for a brief moment you are somewhat struck in an odd way by the strawberry blonde in the center who seems a little more goofy but not as loud as the other two. After a while, though, you need the quiet and leave. You get home to find the rest of the family together and behaving more civilly toward each other than they have in a while, but you know that it's not going to last until they sort all their shit out, but for now, it's good to be a family. You take your nephew to the comic shop and the mall to get him out of the house and help him get his mind off of what his grandmother is going through and wnen you get back again, your neice comes with little Monica and you get to hold her for the first time. She makes little noises as if she was talking and seems to be more than content to fall asleep in your arms. You sit back on the couch with the baby still sleeping and you end up falling asleep too. (more later) 031018 ... birdmad When you wake up, the house is empty except for you and your mom as your sisters have taken everyone else out of the house for a little while, sensing that you and mom needed a break from the crowd in the house. In her bed, your mother sleeps like a stone though it is early. The medications take their toll on her. The illness takes its toll. You step outside and wander out into the neighborhood, stopping to sit in the bleachers by the baseball backstop in the park. Tina walks by with her dad and his dog. They wave but they don't stop. You still catch yourself imagining what it would be like to be with her sometimes - even though it seems pretty clear that she never likely entertained those thoughts about you. You need to forget about it, Alex. You aren't doing yourself any favors and in the long run, the time you spend thinking about it only serves to drag you down even deeper. But that's just it, isnt it? That's the rub. You take the pack of Djarum Black cigarettes out of your pocket and drag deeply. The sun sets slowly and you even have time to walk a few more blocks up to the riverbotom where you can see that the trees in the basin have grown back since the flood, none quite as tall, but some must have survived, miraculously. you can see catfish in the murky water as the last light begins to fade and for being only a fvew yards away from a broken down junkyard, this grove of trees along the banks of what's left of the river, the pines, the palo verdes and the creosote bushes smell like the old summer trips into the woods around Payson and Prescott. The first clouds are up in the east and you are home by the time the streetlight in the driveway kicks on. You feel empty and aimless and it is but for the catharsis of a few hundred rounds of Mortal Kombat II on the Super Nintendo that you are ultimately able to settle down and go to sleep just before dawn, having avoided the siblings after the slow, simmering outbreak of new tensions began to rear its head when everyone came home. It isn't your argument, so you leave it alone. 040323 what's it to you? who go blather from