The Ties That Strangle

You have to be Zen to light my kitchen stove, and I'm not very Zen today. There are the usual reasons -- I have to go back to my soul-sucking job tomorrow, HBO canceled Carnivale -- but there's some other stuff going on too. Like my uncle who almost died over the weekend, and still isn't completely out of the woods. He's in the hospital in Las Vegas, in such bad shape they called in the next of kin on Friday because they were pretty sure he was going South with some immediacy. Fortunately, as they often are, the doctors were wrong, but he's been on a vent since Friday night, and we won't know until (at the earliest) tomorrow what his overall chances are for survival. It really sucks, too, because I actually like this uncle.

I can't say the same for my brother. This is the homeless one, for those of you in the know. Not crazy homeless -- stupid, totally fucked up his own life through all of his own ridiculous bullshit homeless. So he's here in town, which is another reason my Zen's been trampled. And now he's here in my house -- although he knows he and his goumada can't stay here. But he can drive me batshit for an hour bragging about his truck and the deals he can get me on a used car and how I'm going to dry out my marsala chicken the way I cook it. Or would cook it if I could get the goddamn stove to light. I want to order him out of my kitchen, ask him why if he's got all the answers he's put all his earnings up his nose, remind him that he's in his forties and I'd take even odds he's always going to be a loser based on his track record --- but I can't do it. He's still my brother. And I think about my mother in the other room half out of her mind with worry about her own youngest brother in Vegas, and I step aside and let my brother light the stove for me.

I'm applying for sainthood next week.