almost okay

My Dear Lyzako,

As I sit here in this stale, beige room at the Airport La Quinta in Buffalo nursing the various aches and pains brought on by ten more hours of mind-numbingly pointless physical toil, I find myself just now sipping the day's first Blue. It is just past six and all I have for company at the moment is the television, which is alright by me.

'Hollywood's 100 Best Celebrity Bodies' has just counted down to the top five with two of my very own favorites - Beyonce and Jessica Alba, making the cut at Numbers Four and Three respectively.

In case you care, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie claimed the Silver and Gold in a surprise husband-and-wife finish that left many viewers (including myself) speechless and bewildered. Good old cable television. I had truly forgotten how little I missed it.

The view out my second floor window is of a stand of wind-battered scrub trees, broken branches dangling earthward here and there calling to mind human skeletal remains, one pale limb amidst the greenery looking more than a little like an arm stripped of its flesh, the tiny end branches mimicking the shape of an open hand.

I've punched the mute button on the remote and opened the window as wide as it will go (three full inches until the frame encounters a burglar-proof stop) and am grateful for the occasional cooing of a lone mourning dove hiding somewhere in those trees, her plaintive call luckily surviving the predominant hum of tires racing over asphalt and the whine of jet engines as planes arrive and depart from the airport, which is about a mile due east.

Tomorrow is another day of work, I'm afraid, including a six-hour, rattle-bang drive in an aging and creaky delivery van that shudders and shakes and rolls and bounces to a degree that deprives both driver and passenger alike of any real sense of comfort. As the lone passenger I will long for sleep and an opportunity to forget about the past few day's work and all my troubles, a chance to forget about the rising cost of oil and the salmonella-tinged Texas tomato crop as I replace reality with a few sweet, lazy napping dreams.

But the van will allow none of that silly nonsense as we traverse northern Pennsylvania, travel the Ohio Turnpike and head for Michigan, each tiny crack and bump in the road magnified tenfold by failing shock absorbers and rusty springs.

Once home, I have to hit the ground running and work again until the wee hours tomorrow night. All this after an early five-o'clock rising in the morn, my spirit dog-tired and my colon still laden with the day's first defecation, the one that usually arrives between eight and nine.

I figure I'll be somewhere between Erie and Cleveland when I actually shit my pants.

But work is work, and as such, is necessary. The work, mindless though it has become, provides a roof over my head, Blue in the fridge and food in my gullet, while occasionally allowing me precious time to sleep and to dream.

I've little choice but to take the bad with the good, I guess.

I'm just grateful that once in a great, great while... once in a month of Sundays... once in a goddamned coon's age... I'm still able to savor a quiet moment of peace when the voice of a single mourning dove rises over the evil mechanical din of this horrible, hideous modern world.

Regards,
Marty Sherman