The walls are a classic off-white. The oblong mirror stares at the ceiling. I’ve seen nakedness hold its gaze. But who knows what it has really seen over the course of its life. Not me. Hokusai’s The Great Wave Off Kanagawa is hung on the wall next to it. That piece is something of a master to me. When I dwell on it, I’m always driven to the cliffs off Big Sur, the poetry of Robinson Jeffers. That old boar plowing the fallow on Mal Paso Mountain. How wonderful! There exists some incongruous, strangely tyrannical connection between the two. I don’t know why. I do know it’s getting cold in here. Shifting seasons. The attention I now have to pay to the regulating of the temperature of my feet is a serious amount. My operating status is almost purely governed by the comfort-level of my feet. If I’m a few degrees off here or there the difference is murder and miracles. Makes sense, I guess. Music and blood must play their part. But some days the cast fails to show up at all. No lines delivered. The floorboards I tread now are wet-underwear-cold. I need some socks brought up to me by room service, stat! Quick, take my name down from the semaphore board. Tonight’s act will not be appearing as advertised. Stop waving your arms in disgust, indicative of my insanity. Just unscrew each light-bulb with mute typewriter screams. The silent music of it all, the tormented leather of a holstered gun. That’s the key! she says. I take a Mexican stand-off moment to reflect. Perhaps her father is really a letdown to her. For he didn’t even take up that walk-on part in the war. What can be done for him now? Very little, I suspect. There are dogs and then there are beaten dogs. When you rehome them, all you can do is let their massacred integrity play out before you. Mop up the flood. The scope is pitifully poor, repetitive to the point of nausea, within minutes. Do your best. Shoulder the burden. Turn to music. Try to get that sickly milquetoast will to pretend around being a connoisseur and such. Let that feigned purpose see out his days. Not the lie. Dear God, no. The lute which stands idle in the corner is not hers, old man, not your daughter’s keep. No. For there must be joy in the blood, the music. Things of this nature. Not cancer.

Come what may.