Worthless (catch of the day)

Worthless, less than, less loss. Loeser. Mary, the teacher I am working with, was married to a childhood neighbor. How many degrees of strangeness is that to be in her class in Oakland, where I let slip some geographical minutia. She startled like a deer caught in the headlights (we used to turn off the lights so the deer could cross the road… We grew fond of driving blind on moonlit nights.) She said Keith was my ex-husband. I didn't ask how long the X negated the husband part, but I could see there was a fair amount of angst involved. I could tell she thought him worthless. Truth be known Keith was younger than me, a friend of my brother's, and also a little weird. Apparently that turned into a whole lotta weird. Andrea, his genius sister is in a loony bin, and I think, what a colossal waste. What's the use of being a genius if there's no channel for it? What good are numbers to a physicist whose brain is biochemically addled? I know about that kind of life—we come from a long line of addlepated dysfunctional geniuses, and idiots to balance out the equation. Then, there's a rather large group of us with various real and imagined ailments so as to make several relatives hovering dangerously close to the worthless camp. Poor things, succumb to their worst nightmares – as if it was something that could be helped. Call it alcoholism, drug abuse, or being bipolar—the end result is a life rendered worthless because of the purgatorial anguish harbored within the mind. The night before last, I dreamt a nun was flyfishing off a skyscraper. I stood behind her, wondering what the catch of the day was. I opened my eyes wide, but  when I wasn't looking, small white lice had nestled in my eyelashes, obstructing the view.

10/13/06 Writers' Group