Happy Birthday to Me

 Here I am 60 years old. No birthday cards, but I got $20 from E-. I cannot reach Melissa who I want to give a birthday message to her middle child. It is chilly and gloomy and wet outside. Dad told me there was 3 feet of snow when I was born in Marion, Indiana. New Jersey has a slightly different climate. Mom said I was supposed to be a leap year baby but came early. maybe the one time I showed up early - and I aa still paying for that early early arrival. Mom also told me she worked up to the 26th and her co-workers teased that I would come out holding a pencil. I wonder who remembers my mother. I suspect her friends are all dead now. I am not sure I can recall her voice. next month she will be dead 34 years. Dad will have been dead 2 years this June. I thought of Mom and her sister, my Aunt Mary Ellen Finholt, while reading Alice Munro. I think they would have recognized, understood, her characters. Which go t me realizing how close to my mother's age were Margaret Atwood and Joyce Carol Oates and Joan Didion and Susan Sontag and Alice Munro. 

Why did Aunt Mary Ellen not put anything down on paper? Maybe the same inhibitions I had about writing before my arrest - that I had nothing interesting to say, nothing that would be profitable to anyone else? Now I say little and scribble away my life. I see a future with no social life - I find the idea of no people in my life inducing peace. I will have my writing. There is a price to pay for making myself a moral leper, but there may be a profit, too. I admit hoping to entertain whatever readers come across my trail.

No word on my presentence detention credit case. No incoming mail, either. Thinking Gayann has given me up. Surprised by no letter from E-. Paranoia seeping in - or is it always there?

I finished the cancer section for "A Reasonable Facsimile." A mélange of experiences. I hope I did not make it too sentimental. I am giving up chapters for the most part and am thinking in sections. A couple will only be short scenes.

I am going to sign off here. My hand cramps. We have had 2 days of generator tests which leaves the Education Building closed, useless - its generator, or electricity, needs re-set manually. I am in our unit building's quiet room with the lights going on and off. It's 8:04am. I will call Melissa soon. When I do not reach her I will come back to read Yitzhak Gormezano Goren's Alexandrian Summer.

Happy Birthday to me - and to you Aaron

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2/27/2020