MY FATHER WAS A SAILOR WHO SAILED UPON THE SEA

130. MY FATHER WAS A SAILOR WHO SAILED UPON THE SEA:

There was never any sense to naming things but we did it anyway and every time he got something wrong or called something incorrectly I had to just let it go for the basic premise was simply that he knew no better - and the gong that rang the hour had just gone off (9:00 PM) the radio voice said and I watched him nod and then fall back asleep and he would sleep like that for hours if anyone let him - noisily and with a nasal snore or some noise which came from him - and then just as quickly he'd be awake and just sit there sometimes just staring ahead until perhaps everything came back into focus and it was like that - and enigmatically so - as one by one all the neighbors and friends he'd once known started following him into a Death of their own and by now almost all of them are gone already and those who are not are just waiting - like some old shoe - to drop and it's as sad as anything else : some bizarre appointment we each have yet didn't quite correctly receive the little appointment card for - the one which states the date and the time - and the older one gets the more intense is the realization that the appointment card - having never arrived - is becoming more and more useless anyway as TIME the ertswhile friend of all - has itself already left the waiting room and given up on waiting and because of that there are so so many things that one goes through - reliving the past forgetting everything talking nonsense getting bizarre with strange ideas or simply doing nothing at all - it's really a last act in a one-act play which has gone on way too long : audience restless refreshments already gone lines forming for another production ushers wanting to be paid and rent running out on the performance hall too BUT REALLY what can one do for we're all beside ourselves with worry and grief and it solves nothing in the end UNTIL one day I charted myself and found a sickness in my own loins and knew too it was time to come and without further ado and before long even I was down for the count - the long long langourous count given by referees in skin-tight pants and riding jackets complete with harness and whip and the lithesome young ladies who came forward to draw blood were nothing more than the Devil's retainers and so I did nothing - having already ascertained it was useless to try and I learned too the meaning of 'brouhaha' which all through the Middle Ages was given as the NOISE the Devil made for laughter : some form of EVIL sounding foreboding noise rendered deeply dark - 'BROU HA HA!!' - and I could imagine hearing it at any time and now it's but a word used to denote a big ruckus or large confusion over something a rumble or a fight or some queer disturbance and when you come right down to it that's really ALL I heard for a very long time.