ruth ticktin

Battles Soothed Briefly

Stepping outside to clear his head, Walter breathed a cold rain about to fall from the overcast sky. The whiteness above him chilled the blood inside, preventing a smooth flow throughout. He walked around back to make sure the garbage cans were all covered up securely in case there was to be a storm.

All over the world people prepare for bad weather, he contemplated. Some battle, some bask within, but weather remains one of the few things we all have in common. The weather, our shared hot topic of conversation, is thankfully a perfect buffer. Walter doesn’t consider the subject unemotional or an apolitical safe choice. For him, everything is about everything and he can get angry, hyper, sad, or elated depending on sky conditions or the surrounding air.

His back-and-forth dialog, actually monologue, doesn’t usually last long enough but succeeds in breaking his momentum of worries, exchanges of self-doubts, and over-thinking. They told him in a vets’ group, years ago: don’t stress the little things. People say things which you can’t take seriously forever or at each and every moment. Therapy group members and family were always telling him, “Walt, get over it, let it ride.” Once people got to know him, they called him Walt. The shortened name that rhymed with Halt became who he was and, though abrupt, he got used to the name. For Walt, there was never smooth sailing for any long period of time.

The well-intentioned advice did little to curb the creatures inside who wouldn’t let him forget stuff and stayed to haunt him. What if he had said no, turned away, or broken free?

At group therapy, a routine was suggested for him and, in fact, this was of great value. A basic schedule and a dependable organization strategy didn’t get the praise deserved in helping the human psyche. Walt, his group, and counselors agreed.

“We are chaotic creatures looking out onto turbulent weather,” he called out. What we need are piles and file cabinets to store stuff, so we can find chit and toss shit. Garbage cans help as well. Trash has to be removed or we’ll rot alongside it. As he walked back into the kitchen, Mario, his co-worker and friend, remarked,

“How’s it looking out there?”

“Bout to rain but don’t think it’ll be a big, bad storm.”

“OK you might be singing out here, but I hear dishes calling your name.”

“Yeah, yeah, I’ll get ‘em clean.”

The best part of dishwashing was the dish-dreaming. If he wanted to, he could spend the entire working hours playing back––soldiering, foxholes, actions, and reactions. These thoughts could consume his entire life and pretty much already did. His two years of duty were an eternity. After that had been a matter of disrobing, filing, and dealing with wherever he’d put the horrors. They retrained the first group of vets he’d been with in the hospital, after his active-duty discharge, explaining the mantra, “This won’t go away.” Later he learned, “This can’t be masked,” when he’d been in a rehab facility. Walt understood that he was one of few to have survived mostly intact. He proceeded to write bad poetry, which he recited or sang off-key while washing dishes,   

Looking at the sky, at the cloudy day, 
I keep wondering
will sky ever appear? 
Cumulus puffy clouds, or stratus straight and gray
will sky ever not be, 
bombs strangling gas fires, sulphuric explosions?