THEN I WILL POINT MYSELF IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION

 94 of #100day challenge

The lilac I thought I had killed comes back with a vengeance. (And some beauty.)

The days just go by, to my continued amazement. Four days since I last wrote? 

Weird weather day, overcast and spitting precipitation, quite unusual for ALMOST SEPTEMBER!!

McCoy just bounced into the room with his little bell jingling and tiny meow. He missed the first round of dinner and is likely reminding me that he would like some wet food before I go to bed. Which could be at nearly any moment.

The last five or six days have been up and down, particularly Sunday, which was a low, possibly due to having imbibed some old vine Zinfandel. As much as I love it, those histamines don't like me. A sad state of affairs, as I switch to white more and more. I have been improving yesterday and today, but I am dragging. I feel the weight of the pandemic, Anita's death, and the road trip up to Oakland, which was hella-fun, but tiring nonetheless.

Yoga teaching days are all about preparing for class. It takes me three or four hours to write a one hour class. Somehow, I think it would be easier if I were teaching a more standard Hatha class where I could make people lie down and stand up and jump around. I need to up my own practice in anticipation of teaching that class which will start in December. Meanwhile, I have two months of chair yoga to learn through.

Vera takes a dim and non-supportive view of computer work.

I finally finished reading a book. My dear friend Bill Groshelle wrote and funded Operation Dragon, a WWII noir with a splash of fantasy and a soupçon of romance. I opened it last night before I went to bed and didn't get to sleep until I had finished it, only stopping for some called-for popcorn to complete the entertainment experience. Perhaps that will have broken my reading fast and I can get back to my usual self.

The book group is abandoning Ulysses. All of us are in some sort of reading funk and have little energy for such a demanding undertaking. We can't really even decide on the next book (although we are working on it). We are kind of lethargic cats in a bag halfway fighting our way to a decision and a new book.

Perhaps I am slow tonight having led my yoga chickadees through 15 minutes of breathing and slowing down today. I must have internalized my own message.  Also and perhaps I am echoing the energy level of Janet. No yelling, more helping. I still haven't contacted the Domineers to see what is up. Haven't really had the energy.

In better news, death certificates for Anita are coming so that I can try to apply to get David the pink slip. One of my friends suggested an on-line grief group. I don't know that I am ready to try to get over missing her. It is sad and painful, but it should be, no? 

Nina Serafina Wonderley in a happy place.

AND THE SCARS WILL BE COVERED

responsibility fell at my feet

like a dead bird

and I left it for the collectors of feathers

now I am leaving these words on sand

for the water

and when everything is gone

a voice will say

that’s home

where two paths cross without speaking

where a lost shoe full of darkness

is curled up

under the roots of the snow

then I will point myself in the right direction

alone I hope

I was never much for company

and start off down an empty road

toward winter and a silence

which no one will ever repair.

— Richard Shelton, Selected Poems, 1969-1981, University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, 1982

OR IS IT SOMETHING DEEPER?

93 of #100day challenge

This one is for Sonia.

Make the Ordinary Come Alive

Do not ask your children

to strive for extraordinary lives.

Such striving may seem admirable,

but it is a way of foolishness.

Help them instead to find the wonder

and the marvel of an ordinary life.

Show them the joy of tasting

tomatoes, apples, and pears.

Show them how to cry

when pets and people die.

Show them the infinite pleasure

in the touch of a hand.

And make the ordinary come alive for them.

The extraordinary will take care of itself.

William Martin, The Parents’  Tao Te Ching: Ancient Advice for Modern Parents

Today was a little bit lighter. And I gave myself leave to not do much and to do what I did do slowly. Small steps were taken. I admit to being restless at 9:30 from not getting any exercise but I will just go to bed early again. I did eleven hours last night. 

My friend Sonia kindly sent an email about yesterday's post. I hope she doesn't mind if I share:

I think the yogic philosophy would say something about finding a kind of meditative contentment to our humdrum of daily rituals. But is it our pesky prefrontal cortex that keeps us believing we are meant for more, or is it something deeper? They (more humans) say that plants and animals don't have these quandaries, they simply exist to just exist. Being alive is enough. But there we go again with our big brains assuming we know what the hell plants and animals are thinking! I don't have any good answers here, nor do I pretend to know what this phase of your life is like, just letting you know I felt that. I too find that third dimension fleeting. (And how many more are beyond that?) Keep teaching, I think it helps.❤

Of course, hearing from her gave me a third dimension for a moment.

I am afraid The Domineers are kicking Janet out of the clan. I called a couple of them this week and they didn't return my calls. I kind of meant to call them today but I didn't get around to it. I worry that she needs too much help and she can be irrationally demanding. It does seem strange for them to not be in touch with us all week nor return my calls. This makes me more sad. The Senior Center is still closed so she can't go there to make new friends.

As if I needed something else to worry about.

ETC ETC ETC

 92 of #100daychallenge

Trying to clean the house for the cat sitter, pack, get Janet out of the house, and plan a yoga class.

Two days later.

It wasn't pretty but here I am in Watsonville. It is so weird to be wearing black with no cat hair on me. My sister-in-law is allergic, so no felines here. I messed up the remote and now David is playing punch the buttons as I messed up his tv control.

About to step out for breakfast with my old friend, JD.

And a week later than that.

JD and I had a great visit, of course. He's a yoga teacher, too, so we could chat about that as well as mutual friends, how we survived the pandemic (so far), and always always music. As I had to get up to Berkeley that day, I could not linger too long so although we spent three hours chatting, it felt a bit cursory.

Of course, again, of course, I didn't leave early enough to really miss too much traffic. Driving through my old town and by my old haunts always ... upsets? depresses? discomfits but comforts me? I am well, not haunted, but maybe visited by the ghosts of what could have been, maybe should have been. Particularly given where I am now. 

Kit was home when I arrived and we speedily settled into a conversation that last five hours without much breathing time. I guess we missed one another. She showed me all of her lockdown sewing efforts and they were impressive, particularly a very nice PLAID (matched!) coat. (So hot here today, coats seem obscene.) I have no idea what else we spoke of, but by the time I left her on Saturday after a few more hours of chatting, we still didn't feel we had covered everything.

Writing is not coming easily or happily or even comfortably at the moment. I am in a light but sustained depression. I feel as if I am slipping on icy ground, fighting for my balance before I crash. Although everything feels like a chore, and much of it is, I am getting little drips and drabs of things attended to: cleaning the litter boxes, deep watering my poor plants who are burned and drooping, trying to get caught up on the laundry, writing and teaching a yoga class, such is the fabric of my day.

My life here feels so 2 dimensional whereas the Bay Area and New York feel like a full three dimensions. Everything here is flat and so I am in. What a gift to be so close to so many I love so much, with whom I share so much history and so many books. There is a deadening rhythm to being here. Make the coffee, do the dishes, make the oatmeal, go to desk and do one of a million tasks that need doing, go out to check the water ... etc etc etc. 

Maybe going to bed early is a form of self-care to which I should aspire.

Lowell George: Twenty Million Things

NO FLECK OF TIME

 91 of #100daychallenge

It just may be that I finally accepting or understanding my mother's frailty. For the past few days, I have been able to be more patient and to just do things for her, like get her more coffee or help her find things in the refrigerator. I really don't know how she manages to play dominoes, as one of her colleagues is notoriously short-tempered (more so than moi) and doesn't want others to help her even. So, as usual, we are running late and I need to get her going to get dressed.

Sigh. Another morning trying to get Janet out of the house. Evidently, she is having some trouble, from time to time, controlling her bowels and thus makes a mess on herself etc. This is not a happy trend for me. Good thing I am easing towards patience.

Later.

It's at that too-hot point of the day wherein making progress on anything is twice as challenging. I have so much housework to do. I am making baby steps of progress, but being overwhelmed can lead one into procrastination and that heat doesn't help.

I was driving over to Christina's yesterday to work on the dress (which we finished ... yay Cuz! could not have done it without her). I was ridiculously stressed out, leading to some anxiety depression. I couldn't find my distance glasses, I spilled a bag of shredded paper, and then at Costco, I couldn't find my car and was sure it was stolen. There I was parading up and down the parking aisles in the crushing heat, cars following me to get a parking space. I didn't even have my 'phone with me. I found it, though, and after an hour or so of working on the dress and hanging out with Christina, I forgot my anxiety. Progress on something was being made. 

But the reason I write this is because on my iPhone shuffle, the first Grateful Dead song I ever loved, when I was 15, came on. Dark Star. It is so beautiful, I was moved to tears more than once listening to it, driving through suburbia. It's like the So What of rock and roll. I would argue it isn't rock and roll. It's more jazz than anything else. Since then, I have listened to it another five times (It's not a short song) trying to parse out who is playing what when, how beautifully players drop in and out, the tightness between Garcia and Weir. Heaven sent. (Here's the single version.)

I think it is amazing that 52 years on, it is like listening the second time ... not the first because now I am anticipating when particular movements start or when the drums come in. Too bad the Dead couldn't stay in that ethereal vein, taking flight.

Okay, now to dishes, yoga books, and nap while it is hot.

ARIA

Music lifting and falling,

Waiting itself below;

The bowl at the base of a fountain

Spilling the overflow

In streams of silk and silver

To runnels underground

The music is more like water

In pattern than in sound.

Moreover, hear this music

And see this water rise

In light almost more brilliant

Than that of Paradise,

Light beyond light, revealing

No fleck of time, no trace

Of cloud, no bar of shadow

To mark the dial’s face.

The double rush and cadence

Of intricate delight,

Music lifting and falling,

Like water, pure and bright,

And light, beyond all radiance,

Intense, complete, profound,

No cloud on the golden mountain,

No shade on the golden ground.

— Rolfe Humphries, The New Yorker, August 26, 1944

EATING THE SAME STONE

90 of #100day challenge

No one can say when the unwinding began—when the coil that held Americans together in its secure and sometimes stifling grip first gave way. Like any great change, the unwinding began at countless times, in countless ways—and at some moment the country, always the same country crossed a line of history and became irretrievably different.

If you were born around 1960 or afterward, you have spent your adult life in the vertigo of that unwinding. You watched structures that had been in place before your birth collapse like pillars of salt across the vast visible landscape—the farms of the Carolina Piedmont, the factories of the Mahoning Valley, Florida subdivisions, California schools And other things, harder to see but no less vital in supporting the order of everyday life, changed beyond recognition—ways and means in Washington caucus rooms, taboos on New York trading desks, manners and morals everywhere. When the norms that made the old institutions useful began to unwind, and the leaders abandoned their posts, the Roosevelt Republic that had reigned for almost half a century came undone. The void was filled by the default force in American life, organized money.

— George Packer, Preface to The Undoing, Farrar, Strauss, & Giroux, New York, 2013

'Tis true I am still not reading much, however, I am desultorily listening to The Undoing. It puts me to sleep pretty fast, yet is interesting. I end up rewinding and relistening, which is fine by me. Packer is an excellent writer and it certainly feels as if what we thought of, for better or worse, as the American fabric of life seems to fray and tear so that there is very little common cloth at this point.

I have had other times when my reading mechanism just shut down. When my friend Patty Moore died back in 1994 or '95, I couldn't finish a book but i did start writing poetry around then. 

Patty Moore was a comet of a friend, streaking close by and bonding. We shared an apartment at the 1992 Olympics at Albertville for five or six weeks. I still miss her as there is no one else from that experience with whom to reminisce. She was beautiful, smart, loving, and supportive, a soul seeker. I am not in touch with anyone else who knew her, but they would not have shared our roommate-in-a-foreign-country intimacy. I don't even think I have a picture of her. 

Yet again, I managed to make it to morning yoga. I felt kind of weird this morning and came close to calling it in, but I shook off the nausea and was only 10 minutes late. Andrew, Sonia, and Steven waited for me, as we all like to gossip and chitter before practice anyway. As usual, some parts were too challenging for me in my current physical condition, but I did a reasonable job of keeping up where I could. Both Andrew and Steve are yoga achievers anyway, so even under better physical conditioning I couldn't keep up with them. Side crow with garuda legs anyone? It looks something like this but without horrible socks and too much man hair. I didn't even try.

I need to get to sleep. There is so much to do before we leave on Wednesday. My big task of the day was to go through my dishes and slim down by about 25%. Now I actually have to move things along, but at least I made some de-accessioning decisions. Discarding dishes does not seem like a mission (getting out of town) critical task, but with the new Vernon ware, I couldn't put away dishes until I made some room. 

ANOTHER YEAR COME

I have nothing new to ask of you,

Future, heaven of the poor.

I am still wearing the same things.

I am still begging the same question

By the same light

Eating the same stone,

And the hands of the clock still knock without entering.

— W.S. Merwin, The New Yorker, Dec. 31, 1960 issue

THE RUSTY MOTOR OF HOPE

 89 of #100daychallenge

The concept of writing every day for 100 days is clearly blown. But I still want to log those 100 days, even if it happened over 130 days or whatever.

So, I have taught two classes at the Town Hall. I won't say it is going badly, but it hard to get a read on how people are responding as every one is wearing a mask and most seem a bit uncomfortable. Teaching in a studio is much different as people rather intuit most of the rules. Teaching in a large banquet hall place is different altogether. The scale of the place does not promote an inter-student intimacy. 

I really didn't know what to expect, but I was thinking more along the lines of what the Domineers are like. Goes to show what 20 years does to a person. These people all have much more body awareness, so just sitting in the chair is not going to make it. There is wall space available, so we did a couple of things at the wall. I had to extemporize on both occasions, although I was more prepared today. I need to think about what the limitations of the space and the class are and design a class more precisely. And I think it will end up as more of a level one hatha class than chair yoga. Also, the chairs slide across the floor making some things dangerous. 

I am just finding teaching harder for me than anticipated. Ten signed up and came to the first class, but only six came today. And, of course, I am taking it personally ... or at least wanting to but not letting myself focus on it. 

I am doing a bit better. I have managed to get a few things done and I have more energy. I have been to the new gym four times this week, bicycling about five miles each time. My knee hurts a lot a lot a lot, notwithstanding the recent cortisone shot. I don't know if the knee pain is related to the stationary bike or not. I even attended to some of the watering, although I haven't really gardened to speak of.

I miss Anita. I think I dreamt I cried about her as I have yet to manifest the tears and sadness I feel other than moping around and eating too much (hard to tell that is mourning, could just be hot weather). 

ALONE

what a word and I thought it would be

less disrespectful

old rotten teeth hanging on

there is no radius for this

so here I am

with the rusty motor of hope

sticking out of the sand like a dead arm

well it lasted

long enough it lasted until it was over

it ground the corn and did the dishes

and when it started to break down

where could I hide the pieces

with that repairman

looking at my uncouth hair

while I handed him tools always

the wrong one

now I can watch bushes

running their fingers over the legs

of strangers and say why not 

let them have whatever

they get out of it

under the shadows are more

shadows and under those shadows

is nothing

I have my work to do

inventing new memories

and keeping verbs in the proper mood

somebody has to

and if I walk my defeated secrets

like a dog what’s that to you

who left by way of the mirror

still believing that rain shows mercy

when how many times did I tell you

the fireflies are naked and cold

in the rags of their light.

— Richard Shelton, The New Yorker, April 5, 1969 issue