August 7
This elder care thing is hard. So hard that you don’t even want to write about it, Rather, eating things you shouldn’t and losing oneself in books are far more appealing. Is it okay to get some respite? Or should I be out there keeping an eye on her as she is quite dizzy and light-headed when she moves around?
I know I should go out into the heat and find her walker, clean it up, and get her to use it again. I know I should go out into the afternoon heat to buy some of those support hose for circulation. (My doctor told me to wear them for varicose veins, but I don’t even, generally, wear shoes.)
So you sit and wait with thoughts of stress tumbling around with the sorrow and fear that each day is one less in her life, and yours too.
September 19
I need to write to you all. I don’t think so much isolation is good for me. I get sad and frustrated. I’ve been sick, so that adds to the all of it. There are days, particularly during this illness, wherein I don’t speak to anyone besides my mom and, believe me, those are rarely substantive conversations.
So, this is my little foray, dipping my toes in to see how it all feels. With so much time gone by since my last post, it is hard to know where to begin and what to skip over. I need focus and grounding … but when hasn’t that been true?
And why do I have Joan Jett’s Bad Reputation pogo-ing around my brain. (Extra points for amusing speculations there.)
One of my diseases is book acquisition. I am always worried I am going to miss something ah-mazing. If the library doesn't carry the book, I will buy it from abe.com (Amazon owns Alibris, kids. Support your independent booksellers.) Somewhere, I stumbled across a reference to one of poet Philip Larkin's two novels, A Girl in Winter. This time I not only acquired it, but read it within the same week. Joyce Carol Oates was not much of a fan, but I think the subtle virtues of the work and the good writing make up for the very slow pace.
"He had every right to expect a friend to welcome him, particularly a friend that owed him hospitality and had not met him for so long. If she could see her conduct from the outside, it might well seem at fault by human standards. But that was where human standards broke down. What happened if she felt no humanity."
Well, hell to the yes on that. Daily we are pummeled with a shocking/appalling/dismaying/polarizing/pulverizing/hypnotizing/shocking/inane lack of humanity. I observed somewhere along the line that Shitgibbon in chief of the tRumpdtf crime family was like an albino of decency, compassion, courtesy, understanding, and/or grace. He carries not a single gene for it.
The Kermit Place Readers (est. 2011?) chose Toni Morrison's Jazz for the September read. I read it when it came out and I did not recall it with much enthusiasm. However, as we all know, things can hit us differently at different times, so on to the re-read. I find it much more intriguing now, likely because I am a more careful reader and not just a shoving-popcorn-in-your-mouth-for-plot kind of consumer so much anymore.
Here's a thought or two I found worth some contemplation ...
— Beloved unleashed a host of ideas about how and what one cherishes under the duress and emotional disfigurement that slave society imposes. One such idea —love as perpetual mourning (haunting)—led me to consider a parallel one: how such relationships were altered, later, in (or by) a certain level of liberty ...
Love as perpetual mourning ... we that certainly comes through in any number of ways in culture, media, literature, music, and poetry. I wonder how that one creeps in to our relationships ... that's an expectation there ... or it was for me.
—Following Beloved's focus on mother love, I intended to examine couple-love—the reconfiguration of the "self" in such relationships; the negation between individuality and commitment to another.
Check that.
and this fragment "—it's hard to match the superstitious for great expectation."
I would say so.
For those dying to know, I have been fixed on the Allman Brothers music for the past six weeks, since my friends Kaye and Bruce took me to see a surprisingly good cover band. Obsessed, I tell you.
When I reopened Kay Boyle after so many months, it was to this poem:
INTENTION
Intention doesn't sweeten.
It should be picked young
and eaten. Sometimes only hours
separate the cotyledon
from the wooden plant.
Then if you want to eat it,
you can't.
from The Best of It: New and Selected Poems, Grove Press, New York, 2010
One of my diseases is book acquisition. I am always worried I am going to miss something ah-mazing. If the library doesn't carry the book, I will buy it from abe.com (Amazon owns Alibris, kids. Support your independent booksellers.) Somewhere, I stumbled across a reference to one of poet Philip Larkin's two novels, A Girl in Winter. This time I not only acquired it, but read it within the same week. Joyce Carol Oates was not much of a fan, but I think the subtle virtues of the work and the good writing make up for the very slow pace.
"He had every right to expect a friend to welcome him, particularly a friend that owed him hospitality and had not met him for so long. If she could see her conduct from the outside, it might well seem at fault by human standards. But that was where human standards broke down. What happened if she felt no humanity."
Well, hell to the yes on that. Daily we are pummeled with a shocking/appalling/dismaying/polarizing/pulverizing/hypnotizing/shocking/inane lack of humanity. I observed somewhere along the line that Shitgibbon in chief of the tRumpdtf crime family was like an albino of decency, compassion, courtesy, understanding, and/or grace. He carries not a single gene for it.
The Kermit Place Readers (est. 2011?) chose Toni Morrison's Jazz for the September read. I read it when it came out and I did not recall it with much enthusiasm. However, as we all know, things can hit us differently at different times, so on to the re-read. I find it much more intriguing now, likely because I am a more careful reader and not just a shoving-popcorn-in-your-mouth-for-plot kind of consumer so much anymore.
Here's a thought or two I found worth some contemplation ...
— Beloved unleashed a host of ideas about how and what one cherishes under the duress and emotional disfigurement that slave society imposes. One such idea —love as perpetual mourning (haunting)—led me to consider a parallel one: how such relationships were altered, later, in (or by) a certain level of liberty ...
Love as perpetual mourning ... we that certainly comes through in any number of ways in culture, media, literature, music, and poetry. I wonder how that one creeps in to our relationships ... that's an expectation there ... or it was for me.
—Following Beloved's focus on mother love, I intended to examine couple-love—the reconfiguration of the "self" in such relationships; the negation between individuality and commitment to another.
Check that.
and this fragment "—it's hard to match the superstitious for great expectation."
I would say so.
For those dying to know, I have been fixed on the Allman Brothers music for the past six weeks, since my friends Kaye and Bruce took me to see a surprisingly good cover band. Obsessed, I tell you.
 |
| A delectable array of tomatoes at the Cabrillo College Farmer's Market. |
INTENTION
Intention doesn't sweeten.
It should be picked young
and eaten. Sometimes only hours
separate the cotyledon
from the wooden plant.
Then if you want to eat it,
you can't.
from The Best of It: New and Selected Poems, Grove Press, New York, 2010
