Like many oft-untold tales, this one begins with Guilt.

I was supposed to meet Magali, whom we at the Devonshire Senior Center call Maggie, at breakfast at the Center this morning. I was not up to it. I had had a rough night. So I stayed home till she called me, put on my not-faking-much Sick voice, and told dear Maggie I wasn’t feeling well. She was nice about it.

Hours went by and I Facebooked and loafed, and ended up feeling better. But the nagging guilt of not having a Spanish lesson from Maggie got to me. Sloth of the day added to the guilt. So about one PM or so I walked to the Hideaway Lounge, where I knew it was Taco Tuesday, and had their $3 special and a small pitcher of Budweiser for my beverage. A sign said “Mystery Shot $2.00” so after I ate I had that. The barista asked me if I wanted another pitcher and I replied No, I Am Tipsy, You Better Cut Me Off, This’ll Be The First Time Ever I’ve Been Cut Off. She was thrilled to be a footnote in my history of Barfly-dom.

Catty-corner to the Hideaway is the Hispanic supermarket known as El Super. I had never been in there before. Somehow I thought it would balance my karmic books if I transacted business there and spoke only Spanish. So I went to the butcher’s counter and drew number 46. When I heard a number with “seis” at the end I waved and pointed to a pile of thin-cut steaks and said “uno.” The butcher lady wrapped my Bistec Sin Hueso and I got some other things and went to the counter and when the cashier lady said “Hi, how are you doing?” I said, “Bien, gracias” and she apologized, took my money, and gave me change.

Next to El Super is a Fry’s. They are like alternate-universe versions of each other. I’d been in Fry’s before, but not this time, opting instead for the Redbox next to it, where I rent DVDs. Got “The Accountant” starring Ben Affleck, gathered the grocery bags in one hand, and headed for home, a mile away.

The way an oldish man walks home with a good 25 pounds of groceries involves a constant shifting of the burden. First it is left-hand dead weight, then it is slung over the left shoulder, then let down and switched to the right hand, then slung over the.right shoulder. Four sets of muscles. “Teamwork makes the Dream work,” I am told.

It’s been a tough week for the world. Chaos seems to be on the up. A lot of my creative energy went into railing at the sorry start the new American White House is having.

This is the second of three days off. Yesterday was spent taking care of business, including doing my taxes and helping my brother out some. Tomorrow I’ll be renting a car and driving to Tucson, where a stylist of many years’experience, a high school classmate of mine whom I haven’t seen in more than 40 years, will be cutting my long hair down to size. So today was a good day for relaxing and recharging my batteries. This afternoon I. rented three DVDs at the Redbox, leisurely did some laundry, and languidly doodled. Some days it is vital to ignore the world’s woes and simply mellow out.

Drawing has been more difficult lately, and the results have not been good. (You do NOT want to see the Joni Mitchell attempt, for instance.) It will pass. The attached is the best of a bad bunch done this week.

The umlaut forces ambiguity, as does the word split. The next one will be more unforced.

Yesterday, browsing through the video at Red Box, CAFE SOCIETY, written and directed by Woody Allen, caught my eye. It had Jesse Eisenberg, Steve Carell, and Blake Lively in it. It also had Kristen Stewart, who was underwhelming in the only Twilight movie I saw, but she did a good Joan Jett. So, though my feelings about Woody Allen took a nosedive after being convinced that there was some substance to the claims of his pedophilia, I took CAFE SOCIETY home and watched it. It was well done, well written, and had excellent performances. But there were two or more elephants in the room of my head as I watched. A lot of guilt that I would enjoy a probable pedophile’s movie. And then there was the butterscotch schnapps I kept nipping at till it was gone, negatively impacting the drawings I was making while watching the movie, and darkening my thoughts about the movie’s twofold subtext, which I saw as Love Justifies Betrayal/Everyone Does Awful Things. At my tipsiest I reflected on the many horrible, rotten things I have done, a few while under the influence of alcohol or gambling or both, and felt deep shame. I also wondered if this latest Woody confection was his way of at once confessing and justifying his crimes.

Kurt Vonnegut was a reluctant fan of the author Celine, who was a Nazi sympathizer. I don’t know if I’m a Woody Allen fan any more.

An “X Marks the Spot” map is useless when the treasure lies at Z.

Out Wit The Old

Obtain a twisty turn then Lo
Upon his Life its Name her Soul
The fittest future will unfold

Here are two pieces of paper. One is a map, folded to fit a glove compartment. One is a blank, folded for aerodynamics. Follow the path on the map and you arrive at an expected place. Toss the paper airplane into the air on a windy day and go whither it will and if you are paying attention, you will be looking at Earth and Sky and Traveler instead of crude or nonexistent approximations thereof. No matter what the obstacles along the way, you will learn improvisational skills following the glide path.

There are two puns in this acrostic. One is in the title, a corruption of “Out with the Old.” The other may not be obvious to any but engineers, statisticians, bodybuilders, employers, or doctors. “Fittest” is splittable into “fit test.” Our lives are one Fit Test after another, deciding upon a course of action and then seeing how good a fit it is with Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. Some of us ignore the results of the Fit Test and keep on doing the same old dysfunctional thing. Those who grow into physically, ethically, and spiritually fitter beings check their Fit Test results often, and, sometimes painfully, abandon a given dysfunctional path and seek one more suitable. Comfort with dysfunction can be deadly. Dissatisfaction with subpar results is an important step on the lifelong quest to outwit the old.