SPACES WE LEAVE EMPTY?

 9 of 100

le premier jour de fevrier

In my morning drowsy cocoon, one cat under the covers, another curled at my hip, I looked the top of my dresser piled with miscellaneous scarves, earrings, cloth bandages from my knee, and then over to a glass fronted bookshelf only to wonder who do I think I am. Who do I think I am with all these possessions, most of them non-functional. And just in general, who do I think I am? Stay tuned as I AM clueless at the moment. Cats to be fed, bladder to be emptied, mother to be motivated.

Much later.

I meant to start a conversation with Wendy on the topic of stuff and identity. However, as we often are, we scurried to the catch-up corners of our various friends lives, our own lives, and looking around. Wendy grew up on the other side of LA and has not spent much time in my LA County world. I took her around to the schools I attended, showed her some of the "historical" sights and gave a short running commentary on growing up around here. We then jetted down to Long Beach for lunch at The Coffee Cup, a quick tour of my Long Beach haunts, some excellent Mexican pastries at a bakery she knew about and then home. She had not been here since Carl died and thought the house looked "super cute." That was nice to hear since I am so loathe to let people in.

I did come home with an aching knee and some tiredness. I watched an HGTV show about this male couple who refurbish and decorate REALLY crappy homes in Detroit. I appreciate their effort, even if I don't always appreciate the results. This one, Bargain Block (?), is better than so many of the HGTV shows. We all love a good renovation, don't we? They give us hope for ourselves.

I tried to take a nap this afternoon, although my discomfort rather prevented that (which does not bode well for the sleep I intend to undertake shortly). I did close my eyes and begin to listen to the audiobook of Bono's memoir Surrender (we will see how far I get. I will never make it all the way through the Jim Thorpe book on this check out, so I might return it early anyway.), I thought about all the stuff so many of us have, particularly those of us we are loathe to self-categorize as baby boomers. I thought that all the stuff, belongings, trash, artifacts, THE ALL OF US, is rather like another casualty of WWII. That young generation lived through the depression, went to war, came back high on life and consumption, further fueled by the military industrial complex and big industry who wanted to continue their war profiteering, and we children of that thought that buying would solve something, fill something, tell us something about ourselves.

I freely admit that this is neither a well-thought out nor well-written thesis. It was just a thought I had and wanted to work on putting down as I despair for myself and so many I know who are just caught up in stuff. 

I need to wind down from screen time. I had a very cute picture of Vera under the covers to illustrate this post, but could not figure out how to add it. Something is wanky with my laptop so ... you'll have to do with the cooperative picture of McCoy.

SPACES WE LEAVE EMPTY

The jade slipped from my wrist

with the smoothness of water

leaving the mountains,

silk falling from a shoulder,

melon slices sliding across a tongue,

the fish returning.

The bracelet worn since my first birthday

cracked into thousand-year-old eggshells.

The sound could be heard

ringing across the water

where my mother woke in her sleep crying thief.

Her nightgown slapped in the wind

as he howled clutching his hoard.

The cultured pearls.

The bone flutes.

The peppermint discs of jade.

The clean hole

in the center, Heaven:

the spaces we leave empty.

— Cathy Song, Picture Wife, Yale University Press, New Haven, 1983