FROM WHAT IS

I made it to the library today although I haven’t been reading much. I thought I had only two books (there were about five and two audiobooks) to pick up so I went looking for that New Yorker Book of Poems from 1969 that I had out a while ago. I knew no one else would have grabbed it. Now I have an anthology for perusal. Oddly enough, I opened it to a Mark Strand poem. It’s a long one, so I put it at the end of this post. The end of the poem is in keeping with the “chat” we are having about “what is.”

In my immediate world, "what is" is not much fun. Mom was loopy this morning, dizzy, mentally jumping around and then getting her preach on about getting along with the neighbor. This never goes over well with me. There are times when she sermonizes or philosophizes, rather excluding the person she is addressing. She talks a lot about "her beliefs" and "her belief system," at which time I counter with my tendency to rely on my experience. 

It's all so painful I scarcely know how to scratch the surface of the intensity. I will keep trying.

Off to her dentist for a teeth cleaning because she felt she could not drive herself. The hygienist took her blood pressure again and it was high. That might explain the dizziness and peculiar flight of metaphysics out of context. She wants to exert control and influence over me (others also, but me especially) in this realm. I grow impatient with her "lessons."

She talks about dying more than she ever has. When her comments are mentioned later, she either doesn't remember or shrugs them off, or both. Getting a consistent read on how she is, is very hard. And I just don't know what to make of it. 

So, I renewed my efforts to find a doctor who specializes in geriatric medicine and we have an appointment in 10 days. I also found a orthopedic surgeon to get a second opinion on a hip replacement. Researching doctors, forwarding charts from previous doctors, the all of it, all exhausting. And no outlet for my fear, my panic, my astonished pain, my skidding into loss.

Here are today's tomatoes with my first Thai red chili pepper. My tomatoes have spider mites. Other plants have some kind of mold. It's always something. But I did make progress on cleaning off my gardening bench. And, somehow, I made it into the pool for my half-mile swim. I cried while I swam. Coals to Newcastle? I should have imagined myself as Alice swimming in her own tears, chasing after the mouse.

THE MAP

Composed, generally defined

  By the long sharing

Of contours, continents and oceans

  Are gathered in

The same imaginary net.

  Over the map

The portioned air, at times but

  A pure, cloudless

Canopy of artificial calm.

  Lacking the haze,

The blurred edges that surround our world,

  The map draws

Only on itself, outlines its own

  Dimensions, and waits,

As only a thing completed can,

  To be replaced

By a later version of itself.

  Wanting the presence

Of a changing space, my attention turns

  To the world beyond

My window, where the map’s colors

  Fade into a vague

Afterimage and are lost

  In the variable scene

Of shapes accumulating. I see

  A group of fields

Tend slowly inland from the breaking

  Of the fluted sea,

Blackwing and herring gulls, relaxed

  On the air’s currents,

Glide out of sight, and trees,

  Cold as stone

In the gray light of this coastal evening,

  Grow gradually

Out of focus. From the still

  Center of my eyes,

Encompassing in the end nothing

  But their own darkness,

The world spins out of reach, And yet,

  Because nothing

Happens where definition is

  Its own excuse

For being, the map as it was:

  A diagram

Of how the world might look could we

  Maintain a lasting

Perfect distance from what is.

— Mark Strand