GRAPPLING WITH A LUMINOUS DOOM

16 of 100

Later, May 18th

I did not have a good day. I did accomplish some things, progress was made, but I am not sure who was driving. I got up early for me and somehow managed to pop an Adderall around 9am. This is a good practice if I can remember to do it, but mostly I can't. Perhaps I will find another focus that allows me to organize my mornings better. Slowing down on the alcohol intake and not staying up much past 11pm does help. 

For two days, I could not find my medication for depression. Under better or even normal circumstances, I wouldn't think this was a particularly big deal. There are quite a few things that I am trying to understand and/or process right now. My current sense of self is a bit spongy. And, you know, those crazy dreams. Although I was able to put one foot in front of the other, it wasn't clear that there was an actual direction. As is common with biochemical depression, there are surges of some chemicals that make you more or less okay, so one is surfing with oneself all the while. My depression was not about losing love but I still felt like this 

a window in your heart
Well, everybody sees you're blown apart
Everybody feels the wind blow

No one was around to feel the wind blowing but me and that solitude to walk around, my mind and energy a circus, not a ball, of confusion, took a bit of the anxiety away. Cycling in a not pleasant way. Still, I puttered and pottered along, finally able to find my missing antidepressants, whereupon, I pop two. I was feeling wiggy enough to consider calling my psychiatrist and/or my gp to help modulate. This is a rarity. I just kept dodging around my corners, trying to avoid sinkholes or manic highs (not really my style). I was almost as if I were rowing through the day, pulling myself forward, then resting from the effort, and hoping I didn't slide back. I felt hollowed out from my belly to behind my heart.

And then there was the matter of teaching while I was almost in a fugue state. This is something that you cannot really share with people who aren't professionals or depressives themselves. And now the words to an execrable song come to mind (still tripping here a bit) 

You got to know when to hold 'em

Know when to fold 'em

And know when you have to keep your shit together. And I was. Class was good.

I am still shaky, my personal re-integration into this current meat suit is not yet complete. However, I will end this for now, hope my dreams are not too intense, and look this over tomorrow.

May 23rd

It just rolls along, that time and tide. My mental/emotional state is marginally better, but those sinkholes open often enough. One of the main factors herein is the amount of care my mother needs. I have to/had to come to terms with not really having much of a life from now until her end. I still had some idea that there was some autonomy or personal life besides taking care of her, but I had to reframe that. I was trying to get her out the door to see her new urologist (she has a UTI) when I happened to see her trying to wipe herself and get up off of the toilet. She's very frail, notwithstanding that she still goes to play dominoes and hang-out with her friends. She's been given a requisition to get some physical therapy at a gym, but I have had so many other niggetity other health issues that I haven't, with my high degree of unmotivated depression, been able to get this together. 

And, of course, I am worried about going away. She needs quite a bit of help on the personal scale (making sure she has pads or diapers, making sure they are where she can find them, her meds, feeding her, helping her with her clothes, washing her clothes, etc etc) I am concerned about leaving her in the care of others. 

That said, I am so beyond fried right now. It is frustrating as I feel we are close to being able to get by but just falling a bit short. I could use a housekeeper/cleaner a few times a month to just get things to a bit higher standard, and someone to spell me and give me a weekend off a month or even just more hours. This is not to say that I don't leave her alone (checking in with her, of course) for some hours, but it would be preferable to have someone in the house. And I know even the current level of freedom is likely to go away.

In other news, the garden is spectacular, but I do have some work to do before I go away. Yes, and then I am starting to fret about packing and all. How to get to the airport? Can I move some of her doctor's appointments? Will the Janet caregivers take good care of les chats? It's a lot.

Enough worry and grousing. Just giving you a snapshot of "what it is" ... I need to take some allergy meds, my night meds, and get to sleep. Janet has a cardiologist appointment in the morning. Plus, there are two kitties already tucked into my bed.

SLEEPING IN THE FOREST

I thought the earth

remembered me, she

took me back so tenderly, arranging

her dark skirts, her pockets

full of lichen and seeds. I slept

as never before, a stone

on the riverbed, nothing

between me and the white fire of the stars

but my thoughts, and they floated

light as moths among the branches

of the perfect trees. All night

I heard the small kingdoms breathing

around me, the insects, and the birds

who do their work in the darkness. All night

I rose and fell, as if in water, grappling

with a luminous doom. By morning

I had vanished at least a dozen times

into something better.

— Mary Oliver, Sleeping in the Forest, Beacon Press, Boston, 1978

My excellent neighbor and friend, Sally, with roses from my garden. She told me that she comes over and picks flowers all the time. I was pleased.

NO SHELTER FROM THE TONGUES

15 of 100

25 April 2023

I had a hell of a time getting that #14 post out. It has been so long since I have used my laptop and other devices, that I really had to work to remember how to use it all. I need to sit down and spend some quality time getting my devices to like one another again.

These days, I spend most of my online time on my iPad, either watching some tv-ish thing, or more likely working on Duolingo French lessons. That takes us quite a bit of time each day, especially if I get competitive. I used to play a lot of NY Times games (Wordle, Crossword, Tiles, Spelling Bee, etc.), but that time is now taken up pretty much by French. As I occasionally write a word in French when I mean English or vice versa, I guess it is setting in. I do need to branch out and to try to find the time to read French. Notwithstanding the piles and shelves of books, I am not doing all that much reading lately.

The Kermit Place Readers, my Brooklyn book club decided to read Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man as it is the 70th anniversary of that most amazing book. It is one of the hardest books I have ever tried to read. Seriously. It is a mindfuck. Brilliant. So violent and otherworldly in the first half that it is difficult to pick up. You are not reading this book for pleasure. Which is not to say that the writing, the plot, and whole damn thing is not breath-takingly original. But not easy.

At this point. I am going to check out and head for bed as I have an appointment with my knee surgeon. I get the first appointment so I am in and out of there. Hopefully, it won't be two months before I sit down to write again

Thursday, May 11

I think about you, about writing this every day. Somehow the days go by and I haven't had time to sit down to think and write. My new goal is to find two days a week to write and post. I am hoping that a more specific schedule will prompt me into making the time and doing it. My posting days were going to be Wednesday and Sunday as, in general, those are "more leisurely" days with no yoga classes and less Mom stress. Still all a work in progress, I guess. 

Yoga classes are going well. Right now, I have a core group of about five. Things have not picked up so much since my knee surgery notwithstanding having tried to bring former students back in. The ones who do come are just lovely and it is great experience for me even if it is not particularly remunerative. I am also doing online privates on FaceTime so send me a message or an email if you might be interested. Not sure how many more I can do, but worth checking it out.

French lessons take up a portion of my "free time"; I seem to have lost my ability to sit and read. I am still not finished with Invisible Man!! And now the Kermit Place Readers have move on to Chérie by Colette. In a not unusual spat of optimism, I bought a dual language edition, but I think I will just have to revert to English to power through. 

A close up of a longhorn beetle's face. Also, how I felt this morning.

May 18

Although the sun is not out, the birds are doing their part to encourage me to live, love, laugh, and be happy (nb "When the Red Red Robin" ... there was a Dion and the Belmonts version which was not tenable). 

I guess the good news is that I got out of bed and fed the cats and voila! here I am trying to post before I trudge through the day. 

I have been having some terrible, unsettling dreams. In one a couple of days ago, I was drunk and driving my friend Matt's parents brand new red boat-of-a car, careening into things and scratching it mightily. Why Matt's parents, now deceased, car? My current explanation is that Matt's dad was a banker and it was a family clearly comfortable and conservative with assets. I'm the car and in the car, careening around, witlessly, to some disaster (my life? I think yes). Wheeeee but not wheee.

In other car news, I got my first moving violation since 1975 or so (that one was me driving recklessly and fast up 5 to get to a game at Dodger's Stadium). The violation fee is $480. Ouch seriously. Not to mention the increase in my insurance. Which just adds to the general dread of trying to get by these days. I also went back and looked at my insurance premium in order to teach which is $600. I barely make that much in a year of teaching. To that end, I have applied to teach in the Silver Sneakers program at a local gym. 

I am going through some struggles as evinced in my dream. There was another in which cats I had unwillingly abandoned were thrown in my window as I was going somewhere in a house that moved. One was a beautiful mackerel orange tabby with glowing hazel eyes. I was glad to have him back although he was kind of foaming at the mouth, maybe. And how to pay for a vet? 

Yes, money worries.

Anywhere you go, it's the same cry
Money worries
Anywhere you go, it's the same cry
Money worries

Janet is deteriorating ... maybe that is just aging. It's the house that is deteriorating and no room in the budget to fix much of anything. I think my focus on gardening is for this reason. I can kind of control and afford it if I am careful. The results are right present. The garden is just beautiful. The first sunflowers and the poppies are winding down, the the delphiniums, cosmos, bachelor's buttons, and roses are jamming. I just go out and get lost in the dirt. About a week ago, on a Saturday, a neighbor was also working on his yard. Being a friendly fellow, Tony came down to kibbitz a few times. I was out there for about seven hours. He finally told me I need to stop. Then he started laughing because I was the dirtiest person he had ever seen. It's true, I did look like I was trying out for a part in Li'l Abner.

LILIES

I have been thinking

about living 

like the lilies

that blow in the fields.

They rise and fall

in the wedge of the wind,

and have no shelter

from the tongues of the cattle,

and have no closets or cupboards,

and have no legs.

Still I would like to be

as wonderful

as that old idea.

But I were a lily

I think I would wait all day

for the green face

of the hummingbird

to touch me.

What I mean is,

could I forget myself

even in those feathery fields?

When Van Gogh

preached to the poor

of course he wanted to save someone—

most of all himself

He wasn’t a lily,

and wandering through the bright fields

only gave him more ideas

if would take his life to solve.

I think I will always be lonely

in this world, where the cattle

graze like a black and white river—

where the ravishing lilies

melt, without protest, on their tongues—

where the hummingbird, whenever there is a fuss,

just rises and floats away.

— Mary Oliver, House of Light, Beacon Press, Boston, 1990