On Bleach and Hope

I smell – personally – like a combination of bleach and campfire smoke right now. Normally, this is not a smell I cultivate, but I earned it today and I’ll be damned if I’m not going to just sit in it for a second and reflect.

Contradictions and commonalities.

One of the things I did today was clean a long-neglected and downright-medieval bathroom. No, it wasn’t mine, but I suppose anyone could find themselves in a position where situations got away from them and they – well, no. Who am I kidding? This wasn’t just any bathroom. This was a special kind of filth. Awards are presented for this kind of set-up. Think “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” meets “Whatever Happened to Baby Jane”? It’s a combination of years of cob webs and the creepy feeling that something bad is about to happen. Nothing good can come of being in a room like that.

What can I say? It’s a living.

As I was leaving the cleaning job I got a call from someone I’d had Bloodies and breakfast with only hours before, and she was crying. I met with her at a mutual friend’s house.

Would it be wrong of me to not tell you why she called? Would it be enough to say that it was one of life’s tragedies, that my hope for her is that the pain she feels now is only so she’ll have something against which to compare the joy that will surely come her way?

How else does one get through pain, than by clinging to the belief that its corollary emotion must be out there, waiting?

It is now 11:34 on a Sunday night; and my friend, I still reek of bleach and campfire.

Every day’s different. And sometimes, to paraphrase Grand Master Flash, there ain’t a damn thing funny.