Dog Days

Nothing is more boring than waiting around in interminable uncertainty. On Dec. 11 we will have been here four months, when we only came for a week. We now have the best-connected lawyers in town and the case is in a judge's hands, but there is some question of exactly what felony our maid is guilty of, since the stuff is at her house. I should think kidnapping sufficient, but it's Mexico, and here, more than the U.S., one's home is one's castle.

I stay busy answering psychiatric needs of various folks, finishing my book on Eliot, editing the last issue of The Melic Review, singing in the choir and attending church, and playing some music here and there. "Bloom where you're planted" as they say. Trouble is, we're not planted. I don't know if I'll be here next week! This discourages me from extroverted behavior, though I know I must strive harder for involvement than I have.

Kathleen has been much more isolated. We go out to eat, usually once a day, and she sees acquaintances at our usual haunts but as you know, she can't use the phone, and her friends say "call me" unthinkingly. She had several good friends here at one time, but things change, people get into their own shit--wait, everyone's always into their own shit except for exceptional humans--and so it goes, Billy Pilgrim. Kathleen reads close to a book a day. And she is helping me edit my long essay on Four Quartets.

As for humor, our son, who sleeps in our van, was especially frisky this morning. I correctly surmised he'd been physically serviced the night before after a long draught. Although he attends church with us for reasons unknown, he is not a Christian, therefore fornication is no sin for him. But given my experience with church youth, avoiding fornication has long been deserted as a standard anyway.

Hell, I was a virgin when I got married the first time, and that was my worst marriage. But we shouldn't judge standards by results. It does, however, bug me that the only deacon at our church parades around town with his younger Mexican boyfriend, as the entire Anglican Communion, except for New Hampshire, is opposed to such shenanigans among the sacerdotal ranks. Nevertheless, when he serves me communion I don't scream "FAG!" God uses him like everyone else. It isn't any antipathy on my part, just the feeling that without standards there would be no religion, as there would be no need for forgiveness.

This philosophical tendency in myself and my writing is likely the reason I was a virgin when I got married. In high school I used to bore my dates with discussions of Goethe and Nietzsche instead of telling them how lovely their eyes were. Then I was a pizza-faced geek in any case, but as they say, sometimes even a blind pig finds an acorn.

So here we are, "suspended between pole and tropic," awaiting the slow wheels of Mexican justice to free Kathleen's beloved service dog, Kenyon. We are bored out of our minds, truly. Our apartment abuts a main bus line that turns our lungs into diesel bags. The menu at the posada is so limited we've begun to eat cup of noodles for relief. We buy cheap brandy and mix it with apple soda at night and fade into TV Land; unfortunately, only rarely do we get English captions, which tries Kathleen to no end. Just yesterday I found out our host has a DVD player. But I'm too bored to go to Blockbuster. Maybe I'll get the energy up tomorrow. Who knows?

Meanwhile, keep those cards and e-mails coming to cechaffin@hotmail.com

Anything new is great. My sister sent a hilariouis link to an e-bay sale of leather pants. Maybe I can find the link.

What do I have for e-bay? Nothing; our former maid has it all. May she burn in hell like an Aztec sacrifice that was burned before having its living heart excised. Then she's so fat, they'll probably need a machete and a wheelbarrow.

As a good Christian I don't actually mean the above, but I do have feelings. "Prick me, do I not bleed?" Damn straight. (Wish the deacon was, too.)


Your ever faithful literary doctor,

C. E. Chaffin