"And mistakes ought to be rectified, only this one couldn't. Between the way things used to be and the way they were now was a void that couldn't be crossed. I had to find an explanation other than the real one, which was we no more immune to misfortune than anybody else, and the idea kept recurring to me, perhaps because of pacing the floor with my father, was that I had inadvertently walked through a door that I shouldn't have gone through and couldn't get back to the place I hadn't meant to leave."
— William Maxwell, So Long, See You Tomorrow, Vintage Books, New York, 1980
I can relate to not being able to get back to the place you hadn't meant to leave on ever so many levels.
Days later.
Yes, well, that's me fighting the ... well, if not good, then regular fight against ennui, depression, and outright self-destructive behavior. A couple of times I have found myself driving in a less-than-location-based fog. I am good on going in the general direction and paying attention to traffic, but not mapping out the most direct route very well. When I am out of the house, in the car, by myself, I very much space out which has led to overshooting freeway exchanges and missing the most direct routes, finding myself having to change course.
And if that isn't an apt metaphor for how I have misspent my life, I don't know what would be. Right general direction, wrong paths, and not always sure where I was.
In other non-news, I finished Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty (audio book highly recommended) and have moved on to George Packer's latest, Last Best Hope: America in Crisis and Renewal (and also recommended). I mention this because, as you may remember, I haven't been able to focus enough to read in many months. I am encouraged.
Vera is not happy with the desk arrangement as I rarely sit in such a way as she can sleep on my lap. This causes her to pace all over the desk and credenza, and, often my laptop. McCoy, however, has found his way to a suitable place in one of the many boxes of books and papers.
The weather continues to be suspiciously clement. I even have on a wrap as it is 63 degrees tonight and the windows are open. Generally, September and October are in the 90s and 100s. The days are getting shorter here and there is an unusual-for-Los-Angeles autumnal nip. This is reducing my excuses to not be productive.
And yet through another lens, I could write myself as ... is it enjoying my days? Nah. But there have been a couple of days where I mostly do what I want: some reading, some needlework, some binge-watching, Janet tending, gym going, wine sipping, some errands or chores (light on that score), and maybe some sewing. (McCoy has moved onto the chair which I am sitting at the edge of. Vera has curled up in the only corner of the desk where she fits and is contemplating the outside.
But there is that low level pervasive depression and anxiety. I think the hopelessness of the world always weighs me down. Waiting for something else bad to happen, feeling sad about the situations of the acquaintance who is trying to find a women's shelter for herself and her children, the dearer friend who is across the country from her family in crisis, the pandemic ... Also, perhaps unadvisedly, I have been re-watching The Wire to see Michael K. Williams, and Breaking Bad to make me forget I am on an exercise bike for 5 miles.
WHATEVER BECAME OF ME
1
because the moon
comes straight up from the mountain
like the hidden possibility of madness
escape for everyone to see
and the wandering stars
who are said to rule our lives
wander on in darkness
I feel a need to lie down among the stones
and caress any of them
who have survived
2
I always looked for what I wanted
in the wrong places
until the desert
taught me to want what I found
now on summer nights
I sit in the garden
where it is hot and dry
and young stones grow like weeds
when the moon turns
a mad white face upon me
having nothing to offer I hold up
my empty hands
it is so easy to be happy
3
this morning a woodpecker woke me
practicing on his drum
and all afternoon cicadas rang
like the telephone I haven’t answered
I am what has become of me
a man who lives in the desert
where coyotes wail more skillfully
than hired mourners
at the funeral of an Eastern king
where every night the stars
whose light I have not earned
and will never deserve
return as if to keep a promise
and even the rain
when it falls is coming home
— Richard Shelton, Selected Poems, 1969-1981, University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, 1982
Today is my father's birthday. How old are you if you were born in 1913? Funny, when I was a wee slip of a kid, I used to wonder where rocks came from and if the ones I was looking at were babies and would grow up to be boulders, or maybe the cornerstone of a bank or something.
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