To the left I have my nightstand radio playing blues before sunrise.
To the right I have the morning birds singing through the open window.
In the middle is the tinnitus ringing in my head.
Together, the cacophony has my thoughts wandering, moving too fast to pin down to chalk.
From the Strait of Hormuz, to the Pope stirring up the Gospel, to the water bill due tomorrow, to the 60 Minutes stopwatch marking the end of the weekend.
My mind is anxious. I couldn’t even remember what movie I watched last night when I woke up.
I’m starting to forget stupid things like that more every day.
Today’s Chalkboard is going to be like a Seinfeld episode, a chalk about nothing.
I wake up almost every Sunday morning to a blues program I’ve been listening to for nearly forty years.
That alone is crazy….
…things measured in forty years.
Forty years ago used to mean the Second World War or President Truman. Forty years shouldn’t be Live Aid or Reagan telling Gorbachev to tear down a wall.
There isn’t anyone laying here telling me to turn off the radio or shut the window.
The one thing I do miss is the Sunday paper that was as big as your sister’s ass.
I was listening to Lou Manfredini yesterday on the big GN. He is the handyman guy who gives advice to callers with broken doohickeys and thingamajigs.
The callers always have thick Chicagonese accents, and Mr. Fix-It answers in clean deez and doze sentences.
At one point they ran a station break. The voice was Orion Samuelson, who recently went to heaven.
I started crying. That voice always brings me back to my Oldman.
Now I’m thinking about the guy who does this blues show on WDCB.
Just like Orion, or Dick Buckley, or Lin Brehmer… sooner or later this guy who has been spinning blues records for me on Sunday mornings since the eighties, is going to sign off for the last time.
And when that happens, it won’t matter if there is someone laying here telling me to turn off the radio.
Oh yeah, I woke up with rosary beads under my hip. Like the movie I forgot, I forgot that I meant to bang out a round of Hail Marys before falling asleep. I can’t even remember if I finished a decade.
And no, I wasn’t drinking.
Just an early evening cocktail with my mother-in-law before dinner time.
I gotta shave if I’m going to Mass. I forgot to take my dress shirts to the cleaners yesterday.
The sun should be starting to peek out soon.
I need to stop rambling about nothing and go make a pot of coffee.
The Sox are at their usual horrible pace.
At least the other Chicago team has climbed above .500.
I gotta go pay that water bill.
I put a half-ass grin on the sun today. Go get that gusto and maybe… just do stuff.
Sometimes the most astonishing things come from stupid stuff.
Or maybe from nothing at all.
Happy Sunday, you Chalkheads…
