The internet connection is being moved Thursday and so I will resume a more fluid blog schedule when I have a new office to blog from.

That said, as long as I am here I might as well write. I just posted the fragment that I had started on yesterday when Kat showed up to volunteer coordinate me. I have some pictures on the palm of my van loaded down with four twin beads and their box springs that I might post later.

An elderly woman in Clayton donated a bunch of furniture to the thing for the people who shall not be named due to the contract which requires secrecy. Have you noticed more and more of these shhhhhhhhhh contracts in your life? I think that in the donation case it is appropriate, but in the case of the place that I arbite for it seems less about anyone’s protection and more about protectionism in the isolationist sense: a pessimistic proprietary perversity propagating paranoia.

Mary just called. She is in a love fest with her new puppy Champaign – a pure bred French bulldog from a breeder up in Iowa. This breed was a favorite of French prostitutes and all other libertines who wished to be or emulate the Bohemians. The French have always been obsessed with Foucauldian dynamics of dominance and submission, so given the historical context of the breed one must ponder the fine line between paper training and water-sports. Just a little bit of transgressive humor there for you Mary.

I am in the clutter and appliance stage of the move. Today will be the last vestiges of the kitchen. This afternoon I think the fish shall follow. This evening perhaps the washer and dryer. Tomorrow I’ll move the berputer, as Rachel’s daughter Ali used to call it. It’s only the twentieth so that leaves many days to clean the template for the next occupants of this space.

Moving stirs up all kinds of sediment, not only the literal detris lifting out of the rocks in the fish tanks and the dust in the air, but the objects that are metaphors for moments in the past. You are forced to look at things that you’ve kept but haven’t handled in some time. I feel like a recursive prospector on a second or tenth sift through the same wash of sand discovering some gold, some foolishness and everything grainy from the weathering of time.

I just threw out this metal ring that I had saved from when Michael moved out the last of Richard’s things. It was a small brass tube that I found in the garage and have kept slipped over the necks of random bottles of booze. I’ve no booze now, none for seven months anyway, so I’m telling myself that I’ve got no place to keep the purposeless ring. I guess it wasn’t purposeless in that it was a Richard reminder that I’ve just let go of.

Richard was my landlord before the corporation bought this place. Sometimes I take a can of coke over to his grave. He used to send me to the store for coke and cantaloupe, only if I was going already of course. I’ve written about Richard before, though not in some time. I suppose he’s part of why I’ve stayed here so long, maybe even considered buying at one point. He’s a piece in a puzzle tied up with the loss of my own grandfather while I was away at school and unable to participate in his passing.

I’m a little haunted by Richard’s son’s lack of fidelity. He’s a few years gone now and there is still no tomb stone, just a wire placard and some plastic flowers. Considering what they sold the building for, money should not have been a problem. Two hundred and seventy thousand dollars ought to cover a two foot slab of granite.

Richard’s cemetery plot is just a few blocks from here and I can see his section from the road as I drive up Olive Blvd. He’s lying just across the street from the Good Will if you want to give him a nod. We used to watch Cardinals games together in his half of the side by side, or in the hospital room when he was on his way out. One of the last things he ever said to me from the bed at Barnes Jewish was, “If it weren’t for The Dominican Republic St. Louis wouldn’t have a team.” That’s worth a chuckle for Richard as I make my own way out of the home that we shared.

Richard gave me and my many friends access to this home. My relationship with this address began with him shuffling to the right hand door trailing an oxygen hose and telling me that he liked me better than the boys that he had already rented the place to. Ruthann and I moved in a few days later. Four years and four months later, three years since Ruthann moved on, I’ll close out the Delmar chapter in this lived life.

Kathy, my new landlord, has planted a stunning garden that I can help her work in the spring.