Learning to Sing Backup

My son is nearby, he is talking to me. He’s also eating my French toast. Drinking my morning coffee. He has some survival skills we need to brush up on. Eat. Sleep. Work. Repeat.

Autistic Trains

Suddenly, he’s got me with a meme. “Yadda yadda yadda, autistic train guy…”

What?

Autistic dads, it’s like the number one thing, train set in the basement.

[pause, are you okay with me leaving out the quotation marks like that?]

We exchange some words, pleasant words, about “What are you talking about?” Back and forth to each other infinity until we die. This time he heard me.

“Pull up Know Your Meme. Search for Autistic Trains.”

I search Duck Duck Go for “autistic train guy” and it comes up with the guy. My son says that’s not the guy. But wait, he says, it’s not a guy, it’s an idea.

“What trait or hobby are autistic dads known for?” he shouts at his phone.

A slitherin sexy female voice comes on with some longwinded AI explanation and sure enough the first example is trains. “Nailed It!” he said.

“Nailed it,” I respond.

Nano-connections.** Baby steps. One day at a time. Lost time. Lost boys. Lost.

In other words, it’s going great with my son. We were going to go out for breakfast. I delivered coffee to his shed and asked, “If I said yes to going for food, how long do you think it would take for you to be ready to leave?”

He takes a lot of time to … well, wait… here’s the best part of the moment.

Earlier, I’m lying in. It’s 9:47. He pushes open the door a bit, lightly knocking. “Hey.”

I’m unresponsive with a headache and attitude.

“He pushes the door further open and says, “Which one should I wear?”

I rise up and look. He’s holding a plastic crown and a black knit cap.

“Sorry!”

“Black!”

He texts me a few minutes later.

{point of order.ghosts play the song the chemicals between us* by bush}

i want you to remember – bush

I am laughing. I might still be in a natural state from last night. I want to get up and tell my son, it was okay, he was attempting to rejoin after a swing he took at me last night around 2:30 am. Not a physical swing, goodness, sorry. No, a verbal jab.

At 2:30 he was going to make a sandwich. I was watching. “Now, I’m going to give you your first lesson on chicken salad sandwiches.”

“You think you don’t offer advice much, but you do.”

“I’ll take that as a no.”

I turned and went back to bed and wrote the previous chapter. I had for force myself to stop writing around 4:00 am.

you in the dark, you in the pain – you on the run
living a hell, living your ghost
living your end

never seem to get in the place where i belong
don’t want to lose the time, lost the time to come

whatever you say it’s all right
what you do it’s all good
whatever you say it’s alright

silence is not the way
we need to talk about it
heaven is on the way
we need to wrap the world around it
if heaven is on the way…

I am lying there in my bed with my hangover from plant magic. I want to get up and tell my son I appreciated his attempt at humor this morning. “got a funny” I see now, that it was my text to him, that prompted his reply. I was laughing.

I tried calling him. He didn’t pick up.

I made him a cup of coffee with my own. My ritual. One step at a time. Taking him the coffee I’m still chuckling.

“I had the worry, that I would miss you, that I needed to get up and tell you I got your joke. And I occured to me, ‘fuck it’s gonna take him at least an hour to leave’ and I couldn’t stop laughing.”

Now he’s laughing too. “Shared my laugh,” I said to him.

In the end, I offered to make my famous French toast. “It’ll be quicker,” I said. My son is very into efficiency. I get it. I’m into productivity. We are a like.

Autistic trains, nanoconnection, food. Then the music is hijacked by my own playlist and my ghost handlers manipulation of my present moment. A text from my adopted father, John.

[Point of order: John – me, John B – my best friend since 2nd grade and the reason I was called John Mac, John Falve, my sage elder.]

Yes, humanism. Contact. My “it’s not about the tennis or the food, it’s about the magic of banter and mutual affection” John.

{queue.never let you go, third eye blind song and name of my first movie}

maybe we’ll be friends, I geuss we’ll see – third eye blind

And with that I’m going to lean into my human side. The tiny flutter of anxiety last night gives me course correction advice for my day. Be easy. Be gentle. Love your inner John in the same way you love the other two Johns. One John is twenty years in the future, the other John is nine months behind. Our human viewports are in alignment for a breif moment.

Here’s a big lesson for some future chapter, I’m wrapping up to go be with another human for a bit of joy and transmission of wizdom and care. Listening. That’s the big currency we spend with each other. It’s hard to listen. We all want to tell. Today, just listen. Even though this world, my writing world is exploding around me, I can let John the elder have the floor this afternoon. If he asks I can share bits.

Okay, here’s the next blast: Every you you will ever be in this human viewportal is within you at this very moment. The inner child thing was a great guess, but it’s deeper than that. We’re just beginning to reveal the secrets of this time-space=love equation. We will get to that next.

{queue.carry the zero.built to spill song}

My son is also known as the zero. (gotta go, waves)

afraid it’ll fall apart – carry the zero

{queue.satan is my motor.cake song}

Okay, I need to get out of here, before the ghost algo overwhelms my good vibes.

my intentions are earnest and true
but under my hood is internal combustion power

and satan is the only one
who seems to understand

{queue.everything you want.vertical horizon – seriously i need to leave}

{queue.don’t miss.thebluestones}

Transmission END OF LINE****##

{queue.rolling with the punches.thebluestones} i lied, leaving now

*that was a hollow link, looks like a link, but hey, what, no linkee workee
**blues clues***
***i’m going to gather all of these on a blues clues page, eventually
****end of lie

return to index | this is a chapter of a novel** in progress: