Tuesday, September 12, 2023

I SHOULD DO THE SAME

17 of 100

May 24th

It is hard to make plans to have fun when you would rather disappear into the earth. The depression continues, yet I am soldiering on figuring out who I can see when. As far as I can tell, the Adderall isn't touching this morass of fear, anxiety, disaffection, with a smattering of despair. At least the sky has begun to clear up a bit. I will head for the yard to get the rest of my plants in the ground and perhaps soak up some rays.

August 7

"And then it is another day and another and another, but I will not go on about this because no doubt you too have experienced time."

— Jenny Offill, Weather

And there you have it. Time has passed. Not so sure that much of clear import has happened. Of course, so much is in the small moments and nuances, as my dear teacher Sonia like to remind me.

"... the images of a moment, bathed in a light that is theirs alone ..."

— Annie Ernaux, The Years

That's kind of interesting, making the light of recent events an organizing principle of the last few months.

During April, May, and a lot of June here in LA, the light was always damn grey. Not very conducive to cheeriness for those of us who need some of the inspiration of brightness to orient themselves to even being alive, facing another of those "another days." Of course, when I returned two weeks ago, it was punishingly, disorientingly hot. The goddesses of kindness have smiled upon us, giving us just a bit of reasonable respite so the will to live can regenerate.

It's been a tough. year, all in all. There haven't been any major tragedies, and the bumps have been ones that are recoverable, more uncomfortable, expensive, and upsetting to the general flow than terribly painful things. I had several bouts of pretty severe depression, but these ended up being due to outside and mangeable forces for the most part: too many narcotics (for my surgery), and other ...

August 20

Tropical Storm Hilary continues to rain here in the LA flatlands. Nina has been by my side all day, mostly in bed with me, where I spent the majority of the day, studying French, eating pistachios, and watching a movie. One of my recent resolutions was to try to watch at least one movie a week, as I have rarely been doing recently. I don't know why I chose to watch the flick that I did

September 12

... and now I have no idea what that film was.

Been some tough times for me. I hate hot weather, and although this has been a milder summer, even when it cools out, it take a bit to rev up into actual life and action and then it just might get crushingly hot and you are stuck reeling and hiding, productivity a long ways away.

Tonight, however, tonight. I felt fall in the air. It's still warm and unusually humid for LA, so it feels even warmer. But as I stepped out in the darkening skyscape after yoga, I could feel the underpinning of actual chill and the promise of autumn. 

Of course, the other harbinger of autumn is the Pumpkin Spice Lifestyle that is on display at every chain store we might go to. Someone should write a Pumpkin Spice Season musical. I like pumpkin pie well enough, but I sure disapprove of having it (or much of anything else) shoved down my throat. I think I began to see Halloween costumes in Costco in July, for sure by August. No surprise, you know me by now, but this adds to my consumerism agita. 

It's all the same moment. Time has flattened out. Christmas is 4th of July adjacent in our marketing cycles. And there always has to be some holiday, some event to sell us on. At this point, the quotidienne everydayness is practically something to celebrate. Who cares about any cycles but the marketing cycles, that which leads us. And where is the organized consumerist religion? I know, there are all those prosperity gospels out there ... and maybe we are close with our knee-numbing money-sucking-joy-killing worship of wealth and big business. There is some still disingenuous there. We need to outrightly pray to Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Elon Musk, the murderous Sackler family, and others I likely know nothing about.

Oh yes oh yes oh yes ... another petty puny tirade, when I just wanted to note the coming of Fall.

As summer dies down, my garden is still filled with Monarchs and Swallowtails. They love the milkweed, bougainvillea, and the fennel. When the windows by my desk are open, I get at least two Monarchs a day getting stuck. I even bought a butterfly net so that I could more safely urge them on their way. 

I had a terrible night last night, much insomnia I finally found some music that could soothe me out and own, but it must have been around 3 before I fell into a deep sleep. All the kitties are in and Janet has crashed so perhaps I should do the same.

Thinking of you, even when I don't have the wherewithall to post.



Wednesday, May 24, 2023

GRAPPLING WITH A LUMINOUS DOOM

16 of 100
















Later, May 18th

I did not have a good day. I did accomplish some things, progress was made, but I am not sure who was driving. I got up early for me and somehow managed to pop an Adderall around 9am. This is a good practice if I can remember to do it, but mostly I can't. Perhaps I will find another focus that allows me to organize my mornings better. Slowing down on the alcohol intake and not staying up much past 11pm does help. 

For two days, I could not find my medication for depression. Under better or even normal circumstances, I wouldn't think this was a particularly big deal. There are quite a few things that I am trying to understand and/or process right now. My current sense of self is a bit spongy. And, you know, those crazy dreams. Although I was able to put one foot in front of the other, it wasn't clear that there was an actual direction. As is common with biochemical depression, there are surges of some chemicals that make you more or less okay, so one is surfing with oneself all the while. My depression was not about losing love but I still felt like this 

a window in your heartWell, everybody sees you're blown apartEverybody feels the wind blow

No one was around to feel the wind blowing but me and that solitude to walk around, my mind and energy a circus, not a ball, of confusion, took a bit of the anxiety away. Cycling in a not pleasant way. Still, I puttered and pottered along, finally able to find my missing antidepressants, whereupon, I pop two. I was feeling wiggy enough to consider calling my psychiatrist and/or my gp to help modulate. This is a rarity. I just kept dodging around my corners, trying to avoid sinkholes or manic highs (not really my style). I was almost as if I were rowing through the day, pulling myself forward, then resting from the effort, and hoping I didn't slide back. I felt hollowed out from my belly to behind my heart.

And then there was the matter of teaching while I was almost in a fugue state. This is something that you cannot really share with people who aren't professionals or depressives themselves. And now the words to an execrable song come to mind (still tripping here a bit) 

You got to know when to hold 'em
Know when to fold 'em

And know when you have to keep your shit together. And I was. Class was good.

I am still shaky, my personal re-integration into this current meat suit is not yet complete. However, I will end this for now, hope my dreams are not too intense, and look this over tomorrow.

































May 23rd

It just rolls along, that time and tide. My mental/emotional state is marginally better, but those sinkholes open often enough. One of the main factors herein is the amount of care my mother needs. I have to/had to come to terms with not really having much of a life from now until her end. I still had some idea that there was some autonomy or personal life besides taking care of her, but I had to reframe that. I was trying to get her out the door to see her new urologist (she has a UTI) when I happened to see her trying to wipe herself and get up off of the toilet. She's very frail, notwithstanding that she still goes to play dominoes and hang-out with her friends. She's been given a requisition to get some physical therapy at a gym, but I have had so many other niggetity other health issues that I haven't, with my high degree of unmotivated depression, been able to get this together. 

And, of course, I am worried about going away. She needs quite a bit of help on the personal scale (making sure she has pads or diapers, making sure they are where she can find them, her meds, feeding her, helping her with her clothes, washing her clothes, etc etc) I am concerned about leaving her in the care of others. 

That said, I am so beyond fried right now. It is frustrating as I feel we are close to being able to get by but just falling a bit short. I could use a housekeeper/cleaner a few times a month to just get things to a bit higher standard, and someone to spell me and give me a weekend off a month or even just more hours. This is not to say that I don't leave her alone (checking in with her, of course) for some hours, but it would be preferable to have someone in the house. And I know even the current level of freedom is likely to go away.

In other news, the garden is spectacular, but I do have some work to do before I go away. Yes, and then I am starting to fret about packing and all. How to get to the airport? Can I move some of her doctor's appointments? Will the Janet caregivers take good care of les chats? It's a lot.

Enough worry and grousing. Just giving you a snapshot of "what it is" ... I need to take some allergy meds, my night meds, and get to sleep. Janet has a cardiologist appointment in the morning. Plus, there are two kitties already tucked into my bed.

SLEEPING IN THE FOREST


I thought the earth

remembered me, she

took me back so tenderly, arranging

her dark skirts, her pockets

full of lichen and seeds. I slept

as never before, a stone

on the riverbed, nothing

between me and the white fire of the stars

but my thoughts, and they floated

light as moths among the branches

of the perfect trees. All night

I heard the small kingdoms breathing

around me, the insects, and the birds

who do their work in the darkness. All night

I rose and fell, as if in water, grappling

with a luminous doom. By morning

I had vanished at least a dozen times

into something better.


— Mary Oliver, Sleeping in the Forest, Beacon Press, Boston, 1978


My excellent neighbor and friend, Sally, with roses from my garden. She told me that she comes over and picks flowers all the time. I was pleased.





Thursday, May 18, 2023

NO SHELTER FROM THE TONGUES

15 of 100
















25 April 2023

I had a hell of a time getting that #14 post out. It has been so long since I have used my laptop and other devices, that I really had to work to remember how to use it all. I need to sit down and spend some quality time getting my devices to like one another again.

These days, I spend most of my online time on my iPad, either watching some tv-ish thing, or more likely working on Duolingo French lessons. That takes us quite a bit of time each day, especially if I get competitive. I used to play a lot of NY Times games (Wordle, Crossword, Tiles, Spelling Bee, etc.), but that time is now taken up pretty much by French. As I occasionally write a word in French when I mean English or vice versa, I guess it is setting in. I do need to branch out and to try to find the time to read French. Notwithstanding the piles and shelves of books, I am not doing all that much reading lately.

The Kermit Place Readers, my Brooklyn book club decided to read Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man as it is the 70th anniversary of that most amazing book. It is one of the hardest books I have ever tried to read. Seriously. It is a mindfuck. Brilliant. So violent and otherworldly in the first half that it is difficult to pick up. You are not reading this book for pleasure. Which is not to say that the writing, the plot, and whole damn thing is not breath-takingly original. But not easy.

At this point. I am going to check out and head for bed as I have an appointment with my knee surgeon. I get the first appointment so I am in and out of there. Hopefully, it won't be two months before I sit down to write again

Thursday, May 11

I think about you, about writing this every day. Somehow the days go by and I haven't had time to sit down to think and write. My new goal is to find two days a week to write and post. I am hoping that a more specific schedule will prompt me into making the time and doing it. My posting days were going to be Wednesday and Sunday as, in general, those are "more leisurely" days with no yoga classes and less Mom stress. Still all a work in progress, I guess. 

Yoga classes are going well. Right now, I have a core group of about five. Things have not picked up so much since my knee surgery notwithstanding having tried to bring former students back in. The ones who do come are just lovely and it is great experience for me even if it is not particularly remunerative. I am also doing online privates on FaceTime so send me a message or an email if you might be interested. Not sure how many more I can do, but worth checking it out.

French lessons take up a portion of my "free time"; I seem to have lost my ability to sit and read. I am still not finished with Invisible Man!! And now the Kermit Place Readers have move on to Chérie by Colette. In a not unusual spat of optimism, I bought a dual language edition, but I think I will just have to revert to English to power through. 

A close up of a longhorn beetle's face. Also, how I felt this morning.



















May 18

Although the sun is not out, the birds are doing their part to encourage me to live, love, laugh, and be happy (nb "When the Red Red Robin" ... there was a Dion and the Belmonts version which was not tenable). 

I guess the good news is that I got out of bed and fed the cats and voila! here I am trying to post before I trudge through the day. 

I have been having some terrible, unsettling dreams. In one a couple of days ago, I was drunk and driving my friend Matt's parents brand new red boat-of-a car, careening into things and scratching it mightily. Why Matt's parents, now deceased, car? My current explanation is that Matt's dad was a banker and it was a family clearly comfortable and conservative with assets. I'm the car and in the car, careening around, witlessly, to some disaster (my life? I think yes). Wheeeee but not wheee.

In other car news, I got my first moving violation since 1975 or so (that one was me driving recklessly and fast up 5 to get to a game at Dodger's Stadium). The violation fee is $480. Ouch seriously. Not to mention the increase in my insurance. Which just adds to the general dread of trying to get by these days. I also went back and looked at my insurance premium in order to teach which is $600. I barely make that much in a year of teaching. To that end, I have applied to teach in the Silver Sneakers program at a local gym. 

I am going through some struggles as evinced in my dream. There was another in which cats I had unwillingly abandoned were thrown in my window as I was going somewhere in a house that moved. One was a beautiful mackerel orange tabby with glowing hazel eyes. I was glad to have him back although he was kind of foaming at the mouth, maybe. And how to pay for a vet? 

Yes, money worries.

Anywhere you go, it's the same cry
Money worries
Anywhere you go, it's the same cry
Money worries

Janet is deteriorating ... maybe that is just aging. It's the house that is deteriorating and no room in the budget to fix much of anything. I think my focus on gardening is for this reason. I can kind of control and afford it if I am careful. The results are right present. The garden is just beautiful. The first sunflowers and the poppies are winding down, the the delphiniums, cosmos, bachelor's buttons, and roses are jamming. I just go out and get lost in the dirt. About a week ago, on a Saturday, a neighbor was also working on his yard. Being a friendly fellow, Tony came down to kibbitz a few times. I was out there for about seven hours. He finally told me I need to stop. Then he started laughing because I was the dirtiest person he had ever seen. It's true, I did look like I was trying out for a part in Li'l Abner.





















LILIES


I have been thinking

about living 

like the lilies

that blow in the fields.


They rise and fall

in the wedge of the wind,

and have no shelter

from the tongues of the cattle,


and have no closets or cupboards,

and have no legs.

Still I would like to be

as wonderful


as that old idea.

But I were a lily

I think I would wait all day

for the green face


of the hummingbird

to touch me.

What I mean is,

could I forget myself


even in those feathery fields?

When Van Gogh

preached to the poor

of course he wanted to save someone—


most of all himself

He wasn’t a lily,

and wandering through the bright fields

only gave him more ideas


if would take his life to solve.

I think I will always be lonely

in this world, where the cattle

graze like a black and white river—


where the ravishing lilies

melt, without protest, on their tongues—

where the hummingbird, whenever there is a fuss,

just rises and floats away.


— Mary Oliver, House of Light, Beacon Press, Boston, 1990

Tuesday, April 25, 2023

THERE AIN'T NO PLACE





14 of 100

12 fevrier

We are all a bit edgy what with the heater not working and a cold spell back upon us. I have ventured out of my bed to see if I can be useful at all, but between the chill and the cats, I might just go back to bed. In the summer, my office window is open during the day so that the cats can come and go as they like. However, they don't seem to think anything of the weather, so they just jump up and request to go out or come in with obnoxious frequency.

Idrisse, in particular, is a crazy-making kitty. She will pound on my bedroom window should I be on my bed. When I go to the backdoor to let her in, she sits on top of the cabinet adjacent to the kitchen door to ponder whether she does want to come in or if she would rather stay outside. Some of her rumination is due to fear of Vera, however, I attribute most of it to her exercising what she thinks of as her kitty rights to be indecisive. The other cats are more forthwith about their comings and goings, which is generally related to food, although sometimes inclement weather can influence them.

Last week on Wednesday, I spoke to one of the domineers, Joseph, and he did not sound very well. When queried he said he felt fine. Yesterday, Diane called to say that he was in ICU due to covid and pneumonia. Why are we all so reluctant to see to our health? Meanwhile, Janet has been hacking off her head today. I think she needs to stop drinking coffee as I think this cough is acid reflux. I found some omeprazole and Claritin to give her, the Claritin having been recommended by her doctor. The incessant coughing gets on my last nerve and all of those in between.

I also had a very frustrating day with my French study. I just kept messing up which, of course, made me mess up more. I think I need to go read some English and ice my knee. To be continued. 

The next morning.

Janet is still hacking although it has subsided somewhat due to the administration of hot black cherry tea and Vicks Vapor Rub. McCoy is clicking around the house because he staid inside for breakfast instead of running out with Fox and Nina. I would get up, probably, but Vera and Bebop have me somewhat pinned down. I probably won’t be able to stand Janet’s coughing for much longer. Or those cat nails on hardwood floors signalling the call of the wild.

The day started out somewhat warmer and sunnier, which did give me some hope for a warmer day. That, however, has gone and I believe the temperature is dropping. I’d like to get Janet in the shower, but I am afraid she would get colder without benefit of the heater. I don’t need the complaining. At any rate, I should get up as Janet is getting a visit from a PT and I need to clean the carpet and straighten up.

In better news, I haven’t taken any pain pills but my knee is not hurting. I am still very very stiff when I get up. I slept deliciously late, having a dream about a yoga studio where the questionnaire about previous experience pissed me off mightily. I was yelling at and humiliating people. Very Zen of me. Sigh. I would prefer to continue to stay cuddled with Vera and Bebop, practice my French and then read some more of Monkey Boy, but I have things to attend to. I will do a little French before I get up.

15 March 2023

The relentless rain has relented enough for the hummingbirds to venture out for some food. The wisteria is blooming notwithstanding the inclement weather. As I look out into the yard, all I see is relentless wet and green. Weeds as high as an elephant's eye.

Been a long month. 

Joseph shared his covid with Janet and she, in turn, shared it with me. Although she is 96, I became more ill than she. My first night I was crazy feverish, aching, moaning, and throwing off all the covers. I tested positive for a good two weeks and was down for most of that time, missing physical therapy and everything else. Except French. Every day, the French. Saigon, I'm still only in Saigon.

Must fly now for a doctor's appointment.

25 April 2023

Finishing this post is what is getting in the way of writing more.  So here goes.











Sunday, February 12, 2023

AS INTO DAYS

13 of 100

11 fevrier

Although it is entirely unruly and overgrown, there is some beauty in the backyard out my desk window. A bright orange tabby cannot fail to be striking against a nearly neon green of the wild grass and the tangelo tree. The vine that has a name like "carolina" is budding little yellow flowers and beginning to bloom. Out of the other window the wisteria is budding like mad. The neighbor's purple bougainvillea stands out against the gray stormy sky, and what ho! Fox has jumped up there to add another color dimension.

I did manage to garden in the front yesterday. The knee made it pretty difficult to move. I hadn't realized how often I needed to get up and down. I seemed to make appropriate accommodations, though I experienced some bad pain and stiffness last night, the discomfort went away. 

Patrick and I are having breakfast this morning with two of our former Kava friends, Vicky and Rita. We keep trying to make plans but something always comes up. Until anon.

Almost tomorrow.

Breakfast was delicioso and muy rica Mexican food. None of us could finish breakfast as we ate too many warm chips and fantastic salsa. Patrick's burrito was ginormous. So much for light eating. We were all happy to see one another again. Vicky and Rita used to come to the Saturday Yoga Wall class which was very small and that is where we got acquainted. Turns out they are screaming Democrats as well, so we had a lot to chat about. Hope to see them again sooner than later.

After physical therapy, I came home and accidentally turned off the pilot light for the floor furnace. This was a bad move on my part. Janet stands over the heater several times a day at this time of year. And, it is a little bit colder today. Patrick walked over with a small space heater. I just bundled up or got under the covers. The gas company comes on Wednesday. 

Speaking of which, our gas bill was $250 last month which is three times normal. Janet is always cold and just turns up the heater as high as she likes. I cannot get her to dress more warmly, no matter than I try.

I didn't really get anything done in the world of progress today. I did quite a bit of Duolingo French and read my next Kermit Place Readers book, Monkey Boy by Francisco Goldman. This is rather the perfect book for the moment, being just literate enough to be engaging but not daunting.  I am very much of a mind to keep on reading, but the cousins are taking out Janet for a belated birthday breakfast tomorrow. We need to be down there at 10:00 (Coffee Cup in Long Beach), so I will need to get Janet up around 8. Which means I need to be up then. Vera is already curled up on my pillow, which I prefer to her sleeping on my legs or feet, particularly as I am not yet comfortable with my new knee. 









PLACES I CIRCLE BACK TO


The first time no one listened

becomes that home I seek

again and again when I

speak, thinking each time

my voice carries —

it vanishes in others’

visible breath. I haven’t found

a room I can fill.


Outside, plants grow and shed leaves

where they find themselves, and the horses

stamp at flies without a trace

of anger. Sometimes I vanish

comfortably under the sun

and undivided sky


while puddles shrink

invisibly after days of rain

leaving, instead of dust, a mud

that holds everything in place —

this is how the ground gives up

the moisture that has come

and come to it beyond

what it can drink. A blessed


tiredness. As sometimes when I’m reading

and the words pull themselves together into a story —

into a person more right than wrong

in a recognizable dilemma —

someone not blurred by decisions

or divided into faulty halves


but leaning into

her fate, one long dance,

as into a day of work. As into

days of work we seek

and do and seek respite from, to

tell ourselves we are really here.


— Leslie Ullman, Dreams by No One’s Daughter, University of Pittsburg Press, Pittsburgh, PA 1987


Tuesday, February 7, 2023

ONE CORNER AT A TIME

12 of 100

six de fevrier




Janet had a doctor's appointment this morning, a little on the early side for us. It felt more on the early side as I am just not falling asleep as soon as I would like to. Like now. I might not have mentioned this before, but Janet will often fall into a ditty or a song, even when you would rather she did not. For instance, at dinner in a restaurant. Or just sitting in her chair, rocking. This morning, trying to calmly wrangle her into getting dressed on this accelerated schedule, I found over the heater and not in her bedroom getting ready. 

Since there has been talk of a nursing home, I have been infinitely nicer to her and far more patient. Which is not to say that I am always patient. But no notable yelling or scolding in quite awhile, although I will own up to a bark or two. Instead of calling her from the doorway to get up, I've been sitting down on the bed and making up songs of my own. Nothing I can remember, of course. Turns out she responds to this better than being spoken to in a sharp tone. 

At any rate, she started reciting/singing, "Have you ever been in the shade/ with marmalade?" as if it were a 1940's standard. She asked me if I knew that song. I think she made it up.

We made it to the doctor's office in fine time, even after a quick stop at Patrick's to drop off my vehicle registration (he's borrowing my stick shift Fit) and pick up my dry laundry (still no dryer). The doctor's office was busy, of a Monday, with plenty of older folks and wheelchairs. We were sitting in the office waiting room when a trio sat near us. The family relationships were not easy to discern. One person was very old, in a wheelchair, and bent over as it straightening up was no longer an option. (It sounds as if there are chipmunks in the kitchen making that cccccaaaaacccing sound. Now cats are fighting, which is odd because Vera Paris is usually beating up Idrisse when that happens.) 

At any rate, one old person coached the wheelchair person about doctor's office etiquette: "I don't want you singing, and I don't want you farting, okay?"

Today has not been a good one, pain wise. I finally took an oxycodone (and some single malt scotch). I got some relief right away, but I just looked at my knee and it all looked red and swollen. I did not do much of anything but walk around quite a bit. I always have errands to run, things to clean, etc. Difficult to NOT do those things. I have an ice pack on my knee right now, but my ankle and foot look a bit more swollen than in recent days. 

So I was in a crabby, pernicious low-level pain wet cat mood all day. I misplaced my (add your own expletives here) Apple Earbuds. They are so hard to keep track of. In a household of playful animals, one never knows who found what and how they might have played with them. This frustrates me incredibly as I know I saw them yesterday when I recharged them. 

This pain (not severe but there) and the whole healing process are getting to me. I just cannot move around as I would like. I am not capable of doing as much as I would like to be doing. 

Reading, though, reading is good. Finished the Marcella Hazan memoir and moved on to Sister Novelists: The Trailblazing Porter Sisters Who Paved the Way for Austen and The Brontes. Fun read. Besides this which is most enjoyable if very long (440 pages), I have my French workbook, a poetry anthology (The Yale Younger Poets Anthology), Berlin Diaries 1940-1945 (Marie Vassiltchikov), Last September (Helen Rose Hull), and Jane Gardam's A Long Way From Verona, taking up bed space. Bebop does not approve of the bed space being used thus.

 MEMO


Touch was all.

Many nights of touch

and only yourself to trust.

Your hands led you

through caverns of other hands.

You brought nothing from the journeys,

lost nothing each time the mind

took back its roots,

learned nothing 

when people withdrew with pieces

of what you thought was heart.

The hands set out plates, opened cans.

Your age arrived, one corner

at a time. The familiar hungers turned

their backs. Only the hands

kept up with you,

folding the loose garments,

fingering the sheets

on the thin bed, showing more and more

of their frame, their muscle.


— Leslie Ullman, Natural Histories, Yale University Press, 1979

Sunday, February 5, 2023

DELIGHT DOES NOT MAKE THE HEART CHILDISH

11 of 100

5 de fevrier

Another morning wherein I had a lot of ideas about writing. Clearly, given that it is 10:00pm, that did not come to pass. Whatever philosophy I planned to impart has disappeared in the washes of the day. Cannot remember a single thing.

I've come to realize that Fox is actually Fred Flintstone. If not Fred, then one of those other demanding, hollering tv husbands of yesteryear. Whenever he comes into the house, he starts yelling for food or who knows what. I know he thinks of me as Wilma. I think that constant miaouing is one of the reason I have a certain level of disdain for him. I know this is not rational as he is a cat, but I can only handle so many demanding beings at a time.

When I was growing up, I thought marriages were like the Kramdens or the Flintstones. I thought it was acceptable for men to come in yelling and demeaning to the left and to the right. Janet had to disabuse me of the notion that it was okay for husbands to hit wives. My father was not much of a yeller and certainly not physically abusive, but he could demean in subtle and unsubtle ways. 

Janet's birthday was pretty good. Christina, Patrick, and I took her to The Bread Lounge in the LA Arts District. Very good pastry. Very good tuna salad. Very good bread. Cool place. Janet insisted on singing Happy Birthday to herself. The whole restaurant joined in and then clapped for her. Whereupon she shouted that she was 96 and could stand on her head. Instead, she tried to put her foot behind her ear. She didn't manage it, but she did a better job than the vast majority of us. Of course, at this moment, the very thought of that makes me wince.















100 people on FB wished her happy birthday including famous people Dave Alvin, cartoonist Mimi Pond, and director Tim Hunter. Probably more than I will get.

There's a big week of physical therapy, doctor's appointments and such this week and it is getting on late, although I am pretty interested in the Bernie Madoff documentary on Netflix. I don't think I did a single chore today, save laundry, cat feeding, and finding my car registration sticker. 

GLISTENING


As I pull the bucket from the crude well,

the water changes from dark to a light

more silver than the sun. When I pour it

over my body that is standing in the dust

by the oleander bush, it sparkles easily

in the sunlight with an earnestness like

the spirit close up. The water magnifies

the sun all along the length of it.

Love is not less because of the spirit.

Delight does not make the heart childish.

We thought the blood thinned, our weight

lessened, that our substance was reduced

by simple happiness. The oleander is thick

with leaves and flowers because of spilled

water. Let the spirit marry the heart.

When I return naked to the stone porch,

there is no one to see me glistening.

But I look at the almond tree with its husks

cracking open in the heat. I look down

the whole mountain to the sea. Goats bleating

faintly and sometimes bells. I stand there

a long time with the sun and the quiet,

the earth moving slowly as I dry in the light.


— Linda Gregg, The Sacraments of Desire, Graywolf Press, Saint Paul, Minnesota, 1991


I SHOULD DO THE SAME

17 of 100 May 24th It is hard to make plans to have fun when you would rather disappear into the earth. The depression continues, yet I am s...