Sometimes I have been unaware of what happens, colloquially, within some of my friends and that doesn't manifest itself in signs on their bodies, since people can worry themselves into high blood pressure, tension headaches, and heart disease. But few can accept that their bodies also take orders from their psyches, as well as their environment and genetic make-up, and generally a sick mind is more cursed and embarrassing than a sick body. But when symptoms of a disorder appear on the skin, it's fortunate, as they may only be skin deep, or if the body has a greater problem, a reader of skin has warning, a danger signal, since a change in the shape or color of a mole can mean a melanoma. When the skin is red and itchy, most people want relief. Other physical disorderssnoring, heartburn, insomnia-might be considered unimportant, but these can also alert a person to problems which are not necessarily organic, though snoring often indicates blocked nasal passages and, less frequently, sleep apnea, which can be fatal. One friend couldn't sleep without pills. In the mornings, for several hours until she sloughed off their side effects, she was a fury, a monster, she'd say, until two cups of black coffee and a cold shower made her what she called human. During this time if anything occurred, when she wasn't fully herself or adequately awake, something which she had to manage, she couldn't do it, since she could barely speak without a rising ferocity, and instead she quelled the violence that coursed through her, which was frightening to witness, and twice I did, regrettably, later worried she'd turn it against me, which she did more subtly, and she is a person who couldn't survive in a war or a world changed drastically, if her pills weren't available to bring sleep. They didn't console her, they subdued her, because her mother had died when she was six and afterward she couldn't rest, since in dreams, I believe, she twisted into the monster who killed her mother. She became a mother later and insisted it was to he what she hadn't had, she hadn't been mothered, and convinced herself that, even though she could barely awaken in the morning, she could meet a child's needs. It was about this time she left the father of the child, to raise the child alone, and I haven't seen her in a long time, since after she gave birth, she abandoned all of her friends, to enter into a bond with her daughter, like surrendering to a nunnery, while also trying to kick barbiturates.
After pouring the soup into the toilet, I was concerned that it might clog the old john, but I'd been at a loss to figure out what else to do with the soup, unless I put on my shoes and walked into the forest and spilled the unsightly red concoction onto the ground or on the small plants that grow at the edge of forests, which might invite unwanted animals, like skunks, near my room for solitude. I like animals, but I don't like some, especially when they inconvenience me. There was a raccoon who would sit at my door when I lived in the South for a time, so I couldn't enter the cottage until it moved, since it frightened me. I had no idea of how to relate to a raccoon, if it was rabid or friendly, and sometimes it ran across the roof in the night and terrified me, and then I wanted it killed. Usually, I don't want animals killed, but sometimes I do, like my insane cat after he stalked and attacked me. His sharp claws gouged flesh from my left calf, tissue oozed from the fresh wounds and blood flowed down my leg, and I grabbed the cat and tore him from my calf, while another tenant, where I normally live, who had stopped by for some unimportant reason, watched in horror. There are four indentations on my calf from the expulsion and permanent loss of tissue, which force me to remember my insane cat and to doubt my own behavior toward him during his lifetime, when I tried several methods to quell his ferocious, apparent hatred of me, but could not, and which culminated in my ending his life, for which there is no record except my own, and the man I lived with, who rarely mentioned it then, but he does probably blame me, since he and the cat were friends.
Yesterday, returning from the library after the intoxicating encounter with the inquisitive, disheveled woman, I saw six deer, and, when they noticed me, they became exceptionally still, looked at me or in my direction, so I whistled and waved, because I like deer and wanted them to see I was friendly and wasn't stealthily approaching to hurt them. These are protected deer and have grown up free from harassment, safe from being hunted and killed, a freedom everyone should have, but which many don't and have to fight for, though some never want to fight. Deer overrun parts of the country, because they are protected, and now many starve, so some want to kill them, to limit their number, so they won't starve, and others don't, though killing may be less cruel, still I wouldn't want to see them killed, and sometimes there is no solution to progress, except more of it. I stopped in my tracks also, advanced quietly and slowly, whistled, stopped, advanced, whistled, and only one deer bothered to continue to look at me, and I thought, maybe I'll make a friend while I am here, a deer who visits me, isolated or in glorious solitude, and wellcared for, and then I won't miss my young cat as much. Each time I see the deer, whether there are six or three-there is never one who is aloneI believe it is a fortuitous omen, but no one has ever said that sighting deer brings good luck.
The red tomato soup has coated the toilet bowl. It probably would have been better if I hadn't been lazy or cautious and had walked into the forest, but I didn't, and I was still hungry. To distract myself, I started a fire in the large, stone fireplace. Everyone here has a fireplace, and I started the fire by twisting single pages of old newspaper into rod-like forms and placing kindling on top of them, this time arranging the thin sticks of dry wood into a configuration I'd never tried before, but which I'd seen the older man here, Gardner, employ, effectively. He was, in his amused rendition of himself, and also became to me, a Count, adept at firebuilding, and other things, and his wife had left him, he told me early on, or maybe he said she wasn't around anymore. On that first night at dinner with him, when all new arrivals appear like magic acts, wanted and unwanted, the Count befriended me and the tall balding man, who, after dinner, leaned over to talk with him and whispered, his mouth close to the older man's ear, as they sat near the fire that he, the Count, built for us, though I kept a distance from it, because it dried my skin. I wanted to know what passed between them, and, against my will, since I generally want little to do with others who might intrude upon my feelings and insinuate themselves into my thoughts, such as the two disconsolate young women, a curiosity about the Count festered, as I considered he might be the person who would change my life, a thought I'd wanted to renounce upon first hearing it from the cardreader, but which took hold, like my mother's tenacious tomato vines, which were rooted in the fertilized soil in the garden at home.