Once, I might have spent the same time writing, but now I read instead; Brautigan, Twain, Gerard Manley Hopkins, even a little Steven King thrown in to stir the pot. It’s five o’clock in the morning and even now, at the height of summer, August brings darkness to linger where once, not long ago, the rising sun would set my biological clock ahead two hours and force me into action. Now, I tend to follow suit with the darkness, content to tarry and satisfied to ease my way into the day along with the sun.

I’ve never thought of myself as certifiably lazy—recalcitrant, perhaps, but not lazy in the sense of true indolence. I suppose there are different sub-sets of the genus Lazy. My particular taxonomic designation might fall somewhere amidst the alleles of Lethargica and Lacklusterica if examined on a purely genetic basis; weaker evolutionary dead-ends exhibited by out-of-work actors, rich kids with inexhaustible trust funds and dope-smokers of any generation. The fact that I don’t fall into any of these categories personally doesn’t disqualify me from identifying with any and/or all of them. Even there, I qualify, because I would love to see the world through their eyes but can’t find the energy to attempt it. My genetics won’t allow it. I’m a hybrid, a hatchery trout, a mule. My bloodlines have been tainted with work ethic, the product of indiscriminate breeding between farmer’s daughter and Appalachian war veteran/rail-rider. If only my father had had the good sense to hook up with a bar floozy, perhaps even now I could still be taking a toke off a doobie and watching the mailbox, waiting for my welfare check to arrive. 

But no, he had to marry a Nebraska girl on her first trip to the big city, thereby ruining any chance I might ever have of being genetically worthless. Oh, what possibilities I might have had if only he’d stayed a little drunker and she a little less. Then, he’d have been forced to find someone who actually slept at the bar (or immediately outside) and my DNA would have been pure. Well, as my mother used to tell me, “Boy, there ain’t no sense in cryin’ over spilt milk… you are what you are”.

You also ain’t what you ain’t.

So, here I sit, reading instead of writing. Pardon me, but I must go. Brautigan is telling me about dead bears and houses the color of years, and I must decide whether I’ll go to work or simply let my recessive genetics prevail. Decisions, decisions…