that Coen moment.

When I think about it now, I'm scared to think of it as ominous --- me staring at the blank switched-off screen of our puny TV set. I can see myself reflected in the tube but I can't see my face. It's like that scene from the Coen brothers' No Country for Old Men. After taking a gulp of a cold milk bottle, the character of Tommy Lee Jones, a sheriff out on a tricky pursuit of a deranged killer, sits down in the sofa and stares at a blank TV screen. It plays out perfectly now in my mind. It evokes dread. There it is. Dread is more like it. I feel dreadful today. I turned off the TV long enough after an AI rerun on a local channel, but I just sat there in a monobloc chair that could be falling off any minute nonplussed at the many minutes that passed. I was kind of in a blank state. Before AI, Glee was on a rampage. I put it on the cheap bootlegged DVD player hoping to bring a jovial spirit to an already ruined day. I had a fight with father, perhaps one of the nastiest fight, because I spewed forth English words that would make our neighbors squirm with disgust, in case they heard it. Oh it wasn’t at all expletives, but they were sure to hurt. Well I was hurt. So it would make sense that the words that would come out of my mouth would be hurtful. It’s inappropriate not just because the familial norm requires that no parent gets a verbal lashing from his offspring, but also because it’s inappropriate for me to speak in a different language when our socio-economic status does not require us to do so. It’s just not right. Even if I went to college, graduated and have work which gave me a language advantage and that I find myself able to express my disgust and hurt in words I deemed fit, it’s not right. It would put people off. Cutting the drift off that may probably lead to morbid thoughts of pulling out an Anton Chigurh magnum and blowing my brains off, I looked up and saw a cross-stitched image of Jesus. Below it was a prayer frame that like me, like our fragmented familial relationships, withstood the many movings-on and stayed; it managed to stay, like a reminder. I knew it was the wisdom prayer, in which you ask God to grant you wisdom, discernment and serenity upon things you cannot change or control. I should know; I always seem to catch myself muttering the prayer nowadays. I knew that prayer frame, though I can’t see the words as clearly as when I had 20/20 vision. But no amount or delusional fits of musical fantasy from a gayish TV show I find to be wholesomely and amusingly escapist would abate the feeling of dread. I regretted it of course; and everything has been said. But I’m a good son. And they just don’t find it in their hearts to know it.