Death Threat in New Orleans

Po Boy Views
By
Phil LaMancusa
Veritas Vos Liberabit
Or
Drive You To Drink
Well, the truth is that nouns (persons, places, things) get old (if they live long enough), wear out and break down or bust. The razor that just got good now shaves like a hacksaw blade that’s been in one too many jail breaks, the light bulb suddenly burns out all by itself and the door now does not close behind you without brute force being employed. Your door keys stick.
You’ve just been pulled over by the cops because, out of nowhere, your tail lights have ceased to come on and the slow tire deflation in the front right and miniscule oil leak are more minor annoyances that try your patience; the light flashes on that reminds you that the windshield wiper fluid needs replenishing. And, that’s the start of your day.
Business sucks all over and monetary obligations loom on the immediate horizon; You’ve been at work for three hours and haven’t made a sale yet. The mailman arrives with more bills that will become due before the money has a chance to make it’s way to your coffers. Illusive income, nebulous currency. Taking from Peter to pay Paul only works until Peter peters out and then somebody has to replenish Peter and that, my friend, is just not happening in this economy. It sucks being Paul.
I hate the way that things on the physical plane come with expirations as much as I hate not having the resources to mend, replace or breathe life back into premature failings that come with age or faulty design. I hate that there is a lack of material magic in my world and I hate having no control over what befalls me and what befalls the things that I get attached to and/or care about. It simply should not be part of my existence to be thwarted in the pursuit of a meaningful, satisfactory and satisfying life. And spiritual awakening? The truth be told, like it or not, there will not be time to fully realize my spiritual potential because somewhere in the heavens, in that great unknown, there is an expiration date… on me.
Okay, so now we’re getting into a fear of death rant, conscious or unconscious, right? Well, suspect that if you will, and, of course, you might be correct, and you might also be that person that life has treated with more (or less) kindness than it has me and wonder what the heck I have to complain about. And I might just be the person to counter with “what the fuck do you know?”
It is in my nature to complain, to rail against the machine, to question authority, to doubt the existence of a higher power. It is in my nature to seek a level of satisfaction greater than that which I have and become very, very inconvenienced when things don’t go the way I would like them to or have the outcome that I expect. Am I so much different than say, you?
I wasn’t like this when I was younger, at least not to this extent; but, I’m older now and the immortality of youth is getting thrown into my face akin to a childish fantasy as the fact of more years behind me than before me becomes a blatant reality. I am the weatherman that did not predict this outcome, try as I may, I cannot call the shots being fired across my brow.
As the soft bright light of spring sunshine diffuses itself through the window and caresses the bed which I share and the room itself, festooned with art and literature, takes on an Alice blue glow, serene and hushed. I waken slowly counting my blessings and probing lapsed synapses for vestiges of recently forgotten dreams. My back hurts, my knees are stiff, my throat is sore.
Dark jolting morning brew, bitter consciousness, acrid aftertaste to smiling lips with the day’s first kiss. Flannel trundling, water splashing, brushing, flushing, sitting, standing, shaving myopic morning with my tablets of bodily control to ingest, an allotment of antidotes for an anemic, acerbic, non-anomalic anachronism fluctuating in pressures and shortcomings, wellspring of potential and delight. I also cannot shave my face without wearing eyeglasses, I have a perpetual ringing in my ears called tinnitus and a rumbling from my insides that result in occasional erupting gaseous miasmas. Aint nobody’s business but my own.
To the canines! To the felines! To the breaking of fasts and cooperative coexistence with my turn your turn return rerun get ’er done and get going to days after days after days of those events that will alter and illuminate me, and I am there. And I am impotent to control the uncontrollable; the vagaries and upsurges, swirlings and swimmings now cooperating now in opposition to eddies and currents, bobbing and weaving and dodging matter as it hits the cosmic fan of everyday life. Into the breach! To the walls! To the sea! To the lighthouse!
After all, I have my health don’t I? I moisturize, I groom I exercise, I drink plenty of water. I take calcium, blood pressure medication, vitamins and something to calm my prostate and control my bladder and cholesterol. I have fruit smoothies to start the day with flax seed and even a regimen of diatomaceous earth. There is no medication that counteracts decrepitude and age.
Terminal survival retribution without reprieve or parole; death to the defiant, no sympathy, no clemency, no mercy.
Does it get better than this? If I stop counting my blessings will I lose them? Will there be retribution where there is no blessing? What does my life count for if I cannot ask for, deservedly, divine positive intervention in times of want and need?
I wear the talisman of mortality, the mantle of age and infirmary unpacking itself as so much baggage that has been carried and labored under, without hope of reversal. And they say: “such is life.”: I'm fighting in Honduras; I'm a desperate man...