WHERE'S MY DIET COKE?

It is entirely within the realm of possibility that I am just being overdramatic (or is that overly?). Lately, Janet complains of being light-headed and out of it. Note to self: check her blood pressure. But then again, she usually comes up with this as we are about to get into the car to go somewhere. Today, I am feeling faint, bereft, and tearful. Oh, did I mention thoroughly inadequate and overwhelmed? Over-demanded upon? To the point that even trying to focus on writing seems like too much. I always have somewhere else to be, something else do. I guess any degree of happiness, joy, and contentment are as far out of my reach as the American Dream. 

Well, we all know what a crock of shit that is, was, and ever shall be.

Sometimes, chatting with you grounds me. Today, I think I would sign up for annihilation if the pain wasn't too bad.

Oh, don't worry, I am not feeling at all self-destructive, just, you know those words: despondent, hopeless, crushed.

Some of it is the country we are now awake to. I was pretty sure we were headed that way when reality tv become so acceptable and lauded. That probably sounds radical and wait! overdramatic, but   such a celebration of the banal and crass seemed like a clear warning sign to me. 

But the depression and lethargy of my mother really doesn't help.

I feel dizzy myself. Unsure. Unable to operate heavy machinery like my life or anyone else's.

I try to shift my focus to the pretty flowers in the window boxes outside my desk. I did manage after years to get those installed. But wait! They need watering. Hell, I need watering. Where's my diet coke?

Maybe I need to cry out the poison.

IT IS RIGHT THAT TEARS FALL

I wonder where one gets grieving lessons, other than by experiencing it repeatedly. I will say this much, it is most difficult for a novice who isn't threatened by imminent war down the street, or waiting to be deported. 

I think not only of myself, but of those friends whose parents are close to the end. 

I can see the loss of Ariel is increasing my stress and sadness so that my cold is re-asserting itself. I know some of this is allergy, but I have had enough stress colds in my life to know the specific feeling very well. Nonetheless, I will go to yoga today as I haven't been since Thursday. And perhaps some Claritin might alleviate my symptoms. And I can get in a little lie-down before I go.

For some reason, Joan Baez's Diamonds and Rust comes to me. Maybe it's the "Well, I'll be damned/Here comes your ghost again..." 

Grief is like the ocean as it comes in waves. Does surfing, therefore, make the grieving easier to manage?

Now it's Thursday. I am just about to head out to my yoga class. I keep wondering why I don't feel well, besides the lingering cold/allergy. Then I remember the maple bar doughnut. Janet and I were hurrying out of the house to get to her macular degeneration surgery when she decided she wanted to eat. If she makes toast, she has to butter it carefully, eat it slowly, then brush her teeth, and she will undoubtedly need to use the toilet again. However, tempting her with a maple bar will get her right into the car. If only I could resist. 

Ariel did reappear, but she doesn't seem to be eating. Poor kitty. I will call her vet tomorrow to get her take on it.

Oona did not come in last night. She showed up this morning after breakfast. I found her sleeping in the garden when I watered. She looks as if she were in a fight, a bit. Plus, it is full-on flea season and 'though we have been assiduous in their flea meds, those fucker fleas are outside. I think that's what's biting me in when I am out in the yard.

Weeks later.

I talk to you all the time, just know this. Especially as I am relatively isolated, the commentary to all of you, particularly those who respond, goes on nonstop, Impressions, sentences, observations collect. Themes to discuss with you. 

Then comes some reality creeping around. Once again, I am derailed. Taking care of Janet, the cats, going swimming and to yoga take the forefront. Some new, small tragedy needs immediate attention. Or I am just felled by local, national, cosmic events into a drooling mass of binge watching.

This week, I stepped off the wagon. I haven't fallen, to be sure. Plus, after six months of minimal alcohol intake, a beer can trash me. What will all the stress, I am surprised I haven't sought more solace in food and drink.

THE TRAVELING ONION

It is believed that the onion originally came from India. In Egypt, it was an object of worship—why I haven't been able to find out. From Egypt, the onion entered Greece and on to Italy, thence into all of Europe, thence into all of Europe.

— Emma Bailey and Editors of Prevention, Better Living Cookbook, 1974

When I think how far the onion has traveled
just to enter into my stew today, I could kneel and praise
all small forgotten miracles,
crackly paper peeling on the drainboard,
pearly layers in smooth agreement,
the way knife enters onion, straight
and onion falls apart on the chopping block,
a history revealed.

And I would never scold an onion
for causing tears.
It is right that tears fall
for something small and forgotten.
How at a meal, we sit to eat,
commenting on the texture of meat or herbal aroma
but never on the translucence of onion,
now limp, now divided,
or its traditionally honorable career:
For the sake of others,
disappear.

— Naomi Shihab Nye, Yellow Glove, Portland, Oregon, Brietenbush Books, 1986 

SORROWS MUCH KEENER

Well, I’ll be damned if I haven’t managed to stress out and cause a relapse. Perhaps this bout will be more short-lived (although life/lived are a sore subject today). And damned if I didn't wake up at 5:30 again. Sleep beckoned, so I staid in bed. Since returning to yoga, I have begun, again, to focus on my breathing to fall asleep. Breathing practice, like sun salutations, are part of yoga I have never much liked.

This morning Death Don't Have No Mercy (Hot Tuna version) has been in mind. Hot Tuna was one of the loudest bands I ever saw. Then again, I was once sitting upstairs at the Kaiser Auditorium in Oakland listening to the Dead. I looked down and saw that the sound was moving the material of my jeans. And then I wondered what that level of sound was doing to my ear drums. (Stuart was with me and did some nice drawings.)

Update!

Ariel lives to fight another day!

A week later.

Can or is broken-heartedness just a simple thing? Is it complicated or just a basic fact like breathing.

Today, right now, I am, I seem to be, broken-hearted. I am still breathing and moving around, but I really want to lie down and sleep or get lost in some nice long narrative on a screen.

We haven't seen Ariel for a day. I have looked all around the garden and house, but no kitty.

Last week, the vet could not find anything overtly wrong with her. We came up with a treatment plan to make her more comfortable. Ariel's life had another plan.

My mother is taking this very hard.

My mother has been depressed since Anthony Bourdain killed himself. I know his suicide has affected so many of us. My mother cannot shake her sadness over this. I've tried to get her to talk about it a bit, but to no avail.

Just all the loss right now.

Our personal, smaller losses in life, but the bigger loss of our sanity, our integrity, our country. And the trumpeted (no pun intended), televised spectacle, nearly a celebration of depravity batters our souls. Staggering is how it feels. And staggering feels like how I am getting through life at the moment.

This winding down of life is excruciating. These losses take their toll on my mother, who seems more frail, resigned, and distant. Where and how can we comfort one another? What is the lesson? Is there a lesson?

I sit here looking at life and death in the garden outside my window. And the struggles (my hibiscus needs food badly). In my immediate view are the impatiens and penstemon in the newly installed window boxes. The butterfly garden effort must be succeeding as there are yellow and monarch butterflies almost always in view. A red rose crowns a plant in my neighbor's yard, towering over the yellow-painted brick fence. Butterscotch, the kitty that will probably die of a recurrence of cancer is stretched out in the window beside me. A breeze blows through the hot day.

THE BLUE BOWL

Like primitive we buried the cat
with his bowl. Bare-handed
we scraped sand and gravel
back into the hole. It fell with a hiss
and thud on his side,
on this long red fur, the white feathers
that grew between his toes, and his
long, not to aquiline, nose.
We stood and brushed each other off.
There are sorrows much keener than these.
Silent the rest of the day, we worked,
ate, stared, and slept. It stormed
all night; now it clears, and a robin
burbles from a dripping bush
like the neighbor who means well
but always says the wrong thing.

— Jane Kenyon, Collected Poems, Graywolf Press

IT'S JUST THAT

Dead flowers?

I fell down the rabbit hole of despair today. The fever of depression took ahold of me. Oddly enough, I had just ordered a new copy of Sticky Fingers which arrived today. And boy does this lyric fit:

It's just that demon life has got you in its sway

It's just that demon life has got you in its sway

I woke up at 5:00 or 5:30, which was okay, but I didn't really want to get up. After some less than pleasurable time spent listening to Morning Edition (Trump! Guiliani!), I finally fell back asleep. I probably should have bitten that bullet and gotten up. (I think one of my neighbors is smoking pot.) 

Saturday, I was out fighting the good fight in the garden. After three years of relatively pest free gardening, the snails have figured it all out. Would that I were up for an escargot experiment as I had more than enough for a meal. I found them every which way, fornicating, sleeping, eating, sliming. S

 First Pork Chop tomato.

Sweet potato extravaganza.

My mom came out to tell me that she thinks it is time to put down her favorite kitty, Ariel.

Ariel is the sweetest, nicest kitty, and has been my mom's best companion. Ariel has lost weight and slowed down, which is no surprise given that she is about 15 or 16. Ariel's companion kitty, Max, died three years ago, just a couple of weeks after I re-arrived on the scene. 

I was already feeling extra sad as the father of an old friend had died on Thursday or Friday. I carried some of that sorrow as she clearly adored and enjoyed her father. And every time a contemporary's parent dies, I recall that I am somewhere on that line. 

Janet's mortality and vulnerability came into sharper focus. Inasmuch as she drives me utterly nuts, I dread her passing for any number of reasons. And her pain at losing her sweetest Ariel cut me. Although I don't spend much time with Ariel, I have grown accustomed to, and fond of, seeing her sleeping next to my mom, or at her head. We recently acquired a second rocking chair so that both Janet and Ariel had rocking chairs to sit in.

We are taking her in to the vet tomorrow to see if there are palliative measures to be taken to make her more comfortable, as she still has a will to live, or if she is better served by euthanasia.

I feel as if I would be better served by euthanasia at the moment. The political situation is so dearly untenable. I don't want to be uninformed, but the constant onslaught of depravity, cowardice, gluttony, well, you all know the list, — soul AND sanity crushing. 

I try to remember something(s) of joy and pleasure: the setting sunlight on my orange bougainvillea, the perky gladiolus I unburdened from sweet potato and tomato vines, the breeze, Mick Taylor's soulful playing (the Stones should have never let that guy go). 

Did you all know about Oizys? The Greek goddess of misery, anxiety, grief, and pain? Well, I know her well, though I never called her by that name. The personification of Woe. Woe might be related to grief and pain, but these things are not all the same.

Butterscotch among the Veras.

SWAY

Did you ever wake up to find
A day that broke up your mind
Destroyed your notion of circular time

It's just that demon life has got you in its sway
It's just that demon life has got you in its sway

Ain't flinging tears out on the dusty ground
For all my friends out on the burial ground
Can't stand the feeling getting so brought down

It's just that demon life has got me in its sway
It's just that demon life has got me in its sway

There must be ways to find out
Love is the way they say is really strutting out

Hey, hey, hey now
One day I woke up to find
Right in the bed next to mine
Someone that broke me up with a corner of her smile, yeah

It's just that demon life has got me in its sway
It's just that demon life has got me in its sway

It's just that demon life has got me in its sway
It's just that demon life has got me

It's just that demon life has got me

— Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, Sticky Fingers, 1971

HOW DID THAT FEEL?

I may well have mentioned this before in these posts. As I child, I can distinctly remembering some fears about history repeating itself. Volcanoes were one thing that gave me nightmares. Given the current activity in the Pacific Ring of Fire, perhaps the San Andreas Fault and its family can't stand the United States either. Time to blow this pop-stand.

The Great Depression and abject, hopeless poverty frightened me. Now, I get to live just barely above the poverty line. Those images of food lines, Dust Bowl migrants, and general desperation terrified me. I thought by choosing to work in the larger "entertainment" industry, I would be employed. Wrong again. It's pretty hard to accept misery in the face of all the glamorous consumerism surrounding us. You know, there should be some financial threshold below which one is exempt from telemarketers and push advertisers.

And I was afraid of Nazism and Fascism, once I understood them in the larger context besides persecution of Jews (don't misread me, that was beyond the pale of horror and unspeakability). How did that feel, to watch that all go down? Like watching the Bush and Trump presidencies, you say? Yes, that is how I feel. Here we are at the bonfire of the vanities of law, kindness, sanity, compassion, selflessness, generosity, equality, equanimity, art, truth, and beauty.