The lid of the teapot rattled as though terrified. Dad is not the table-banger. No one in the house is. It’s a house of quiet, impatient table-tappers at worst, so Mom’s resilience is just as startling. Like a second startle, the bang and rattle followed by a pedal tone of ominous import previously unnoticed. She would sit back, hands in lap looking, a rock to dad’s crashing waves. “Fuck the teapot, it’s time” the looking would seemed to say.
One did not “have” to get a real job. Venetians would understand the scarcity of resources and the rationale, no, the beauty of a loyalty to one’s parents. They would feel honored to live in the ancestral home. To fight, stiletto bared, for the honor of one’s history - could there be some thing more noble? But this now was some western pastoral anxiety. One must leave the farm for one own land else risk familial competition - rattling of teapots.
One would not be a challenge to father’s janitorial supply sales empire. Expertise in Shoegaze and it’s influence on the fashions and music of 90s alternative does not impinge upon applications of hydrochloric soaps in commercial agriculture. One could argue that it enhances such ventures, though the extent of enhancement has yet to be examined fully. No need to unsheathe one’s stiletto, capulet-style, toward one’s erstwhile benefactor.
This is not the rhetorical strategy mom and dad would take. One is a “big, smart guy” with “potential” to be realized through one’s association with aforementioned commercial agriculture. Operating a bulldozer is an excellent entry to the ground level of a “good company” gracious enough to explore one’s potential provisionally, and without scrutiny of one’s potential bulldozer operating license.
One would, hard hat donned, apply counter-directionally levers cleansed with hydrochloric acid soap then rinsed before scoring began, twisting the bulldozer, tank-style, toward the hillocks of fragrant agriculture, then shift unidirectionally driving the erstwhile plant matter toward loading docks staffed by intrepid CDL holders, brimming with potential, nodding stoically, the roar all around of engine noise feeding back the growth of ancestral agriculture.
So it’s this mucky stuff out by the, short cut?, dad calls it the easement, the easement out to the river walk. Yeah out there. They’re not out dealing drugs there, that’s more toward the train tracks. This spots just a little ugly and there’s this mucky stuff. Gacky. So yeah I just go out there and kind of push it around with a stick, at least that’s what I started doing and like, who cares though if that’s what I still was doing. Okay, so it’s what? Like loamy. But spongy too and not exactly elastic but it’s not total mush either. It’s brown at first but the yellow-greenish-ness of is really more fundamental. The spongy sliminess and the yellow-green under the brown along with it’s easement location - that’s what really is important about it and has something to do with how I’m just smashing my bare feet up and down in it. Weekends first and then after work if it was like a hard day. Um, a hard day? I guess if Tabitha is complaining for hours about how they didn’t get her coffee order right and then just goes right into the mess with her boyfriend and his falling short. She reaches a kind of apotheosis with her health issues around 3pm and then kinda finds her zen and gets an hour and a half of follow-up calls done before flicking through something on her phone for the last bit. I think she has a good day. I wish I could have good days like her. It’s just like I work two jobs, scrabbling through the account audits and listening to Tabitha’s epic saga. I mean I’m sure you’re right, that If I said something to her about that or to Kent I would have a better day and I wouldn’t go home and scoop the stuff up in my hands and ooze it between my fingers as I tighten them into fists. It bubbles in this surprising way when I do that, smelling like, you know like a barnyard smell? More than that too, weirdly sweet too. It kinda burns in my nostrils. Anyway, Afterwards I can just go back and take a shower, eat something, you know, finish my day. I watch old movies and ride the stationary bike. Yeah I really like that, I’d say it’s fulfilling. I think I would rather be doing that because you know it’s healthy right? The old movies are funny and smart and subtle too. I think if I really knew a lot about that I would be a deep person, and I really could be that. That’s the kind of stuff I went to college for and what I was doing when I met Kris. I had to change to study something more practical because of all that Kris stuff and the crash you know. Yeah, I was doing some film editing then, indie stuff, cool but not lucrative. I did the accounting after that, kris has a lot to do with it. It was just easiest to work with dad and get the CPA on the side. Yeah,film, maybe maybe I could find a way back to that. Just how to find the time you know? Ah… right. I guess i am spending lots of time out at the easement soaking in that stuff. Ha! You know it starts out that im just going to slip out for a second and push it around with the stick like before and then im just laying in it, just like, naked even and I can’t say how the time went by. Is it pleasant? No, I wouldn’t say that.
