DARK DECEMBER DAY

A nap helped. After dinner, A and I watched the first two episodes of Six Feet Under, which she had not seen.  That’s a very well written show.

Cooder is sleeping on the pillow beside me and I can hear Emmylou’s bells in the hallway outside my door.

I hope I get some sleep tonight. I took some sleeping medication and it is still early, so wish me luck.

The next day.

I did manage to sleep reasonably well and am somewhat less depressed. A couple of posts back, I mentioned teaching handwriting to children; this morning, this article

What’s Lost as Handwriting Fades

was in my FB feed, which the one or two of you who might be interested can check out. 

I also found this short clip about lower income classes being kinder, which was really interesting. I was musing yesterday that pooling our resources and going for some kind of communal living in our old age might be the way to go.

Now it is Tuesday. There's a big storm, mostly rain but maybe an inch of snow tonight. The rain made moving a challenge; I hope the snow doesn't stop me altogether tomorrow as I have some running around to do. The last little bits are usually the hardest.

Not made any easier with worry about a very close relative who had to go in for emergency surgery today. (Not my mom.) Still waiting to hear how it all went. Then a young man I worked with lost his mother, and that must have been unexpected. He was an excellent fellow, so his mother must have rocked.

Emmy and Cooder are in the freak out phase, as the furniture disappears and the room gets more and more bare.

So, my relative is through surgery and it all went according to plan. I kind of feel as if I should be continuing to pack, but also that I might just be more focussed in the morning.

The depression is at bay, although I have moments of being on the floor, they are rarely for any length of time. I'm kind of vacant because all I can think about is what else I have to do. And I worry about the cats travelling. Emmy carries on so much. Then there is the carting of the material goods upstairs, parking in Park Slope and all that kind of thing.

Transitions are difficult. Remind me not to move again in December.

So, this is just a check in as I haven't been writing, although I keep thinking about it. I need a break.

WE HAVEN'T RECOGNIZED

Hmmm … that’s what this morning feels like. Notwithstanding my turning out the lights fairly early, I dozed, waking up on and off to The British History Podcast, mostly about Carausisus and Constantine. After awhile, I couldn’t take the narrator’s voice any more and switched to This American Life and then I think George R. R. Martin’s A Dance with Dragons finally put me out.

I tried not taking sleeping medication. I tried just falling asleep old school, without being bored or lulled to sleep. No good. The dementors were tapping at my window, waiting to crank up the anxiety into full on misery.

I didn’t get much sleep, but I had to get up to take Cooder to the vet, to see if she is healthy enough to fly to California. That cost a lot more than I anticipated. I think the lack of sleep and concern for her made me unfocussed and the next thing I know, I had spent almost three times my anticipated cat vet budget. I even asked the vet if it were time to put Cooder down, but she thought not. I may be in for a regime, if we can afford it, of weekly hydration shots which will keep up her kidney function. And possibly a regimen of special food. Regimen and regime in the same paragraph? Nearly the same word ... I suppose I could do better, writing-wise.

Besides the back hurting again, being sleep deprived, and probably freaking out about getting moved, the continual computer problems since I upgraded to Yosemite, the world seems so relentlessly awful. Although I try to keep my intake of bummer material at a manageable level, but between the Rolling Stone article about rape culture at the University of Viriginia, the ousting of the homeless in San Jose (... who would have thought you could make the homeless more homeless? That's nearly oxymoronic.) the Ferguson decision atrocity, and the Eric Garner murder, I am beside myself, and goodness knows being actually me is crappy enough.

The dementors began their attempted incursion with a vision. The world in a 3:1 aspect ratio like those pictures you see of Paris with the demon on top of Notre Dame (kind of like this but feeling squishier. And darker, more ominous. And more medieval.

I know the positive thinkers and the spiritually minded tell us all the time that there are plenty of options out there, and I know this is true on some levels, but it does feel as if the sky is falling or has already fallen, albeit in slow motion. More like ash smothering us. It's getting darker. And smaller. And harder to breathe. Cirrhosis of the heart and spirit, or just blackened like black lung. 

That's how I feel about Eric Garner. Like the middle class and the 90%, we can't breathe. What are "they" going to do with us? Line us up and shoot us or let atrophy, depression, and neglect kill us slowly as the spirits of many of us, older and younger, grow ever more leaden and hard?

Well, my back isn't feeling better. So perhaps I would be better off to try to get some more sleep and see if that improves my mood. 

A bit later. 

Worked on my (frustrating, non-paying) job. And hung out with Cooder a bit who had a good appetite. 

When I was a child, I recall asking my mom about The Decline and Fall of The Roman Empire. I must have seen some reference to it, or perhaps The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich or I just got them confused. No matter, I had anxiety about it. I wondered how it happened, how the people felt, did they know? Did it just happen instantly, like a volcano (the other disaster I worried about). My mother told me that it happened gradually. That civilizations rose and fall. And that the United States might be in the decline (mind you this was in the 1960s). 

She was right. And I was right to be worried. 

The other thing was the Depression. I recall hearing about that, maybe seeing The Grapes of Wrath on TV, and being terrified about living through such terrible times. Well, I got what I feared. It also feels odd that I am listening to the British History podcast which goes into the the Fall of the Roman Empire in significant detail.

I will try for that nap now and hope that I wake up feeling better, more energetic, and ready to make some serious progress on the last packing push.

I'm not a fan of Chuck's but 

“There are only patterns, patterns on top of patterns, patterns that affect other patterns. Patterns hidden by patterns. Patterns within patterns. 
If you watch close, history does nothing but repeat itself. 
What we call chaos is just patterns we haven't recognized. What we call random is just patterns we can't decipher. What we can't understand we call nonsense. What we can't read we call gibberish.
There is no free will. 
There are no variables.” 
― Chuck Palahniuk, Survivor

WHY THEY CALL IT PERSPECTIVE

So, my back hurts again today. It’s not terrible, but it is a step backwards. I wish I could just stay flat today, but I need to push to get the rest of the way out of here for the moment and on to the next. Plus, the bed is completely covered in various items of sorting.

And to that end, I found an underpacked plastic storage container that could be put to better use. In it, I found a New Yorker from 2004. This passage is underlined

It always takes a while to look back and see on what point the significant lines of history converge—that’s why they call it perspective.

I just looked to see that it is from an Adam Gopnick article on the First World War.

Cooder and Albert are both very restless today, which rather makes me crazy. Cooder is insisting that only Greenies will do today. I’m both pleased to and anxious about our trip to the vet tomorrow. I don’t know what I will do if she is not fit to travel. And now, why will she eat the dry cat food out of my hand and NOT EAT the exact same food out of a bowl? Is that the infamous cat cussedness?

Later that same evening.

I am not feeling all that well, although the back pain has improved. I might be getting a cold. At any rate, I think I am going to try for some shut eye now.

WHAT IT WAS LIKE THERE THEN

In the world of guilty pleasures, or just meaningless activity, I must own up to watching American Horror Story. I got the first season on DVD while I was in Seattle working on the Fire Phone, and it scared the daylights out of me. I skipped the second season. I watched the third season with John and Melinda.

This season I like it even less, but I enjoy the art direction and seeing the regular actors take on different parts (Kathy Bates is particularly good as a bearded lady in this one). Emily Nussbaum, The New Yorker TV critic wrote about this season in the latest issue. I thought this was interesting:

“American Horror Story” will never be for every viewer; it is, above all else, rude. In the first season, it was rude about a rapist in a black latext gimp mask. In the second season, it was rude about a lampshade made out of breast skin. In the third season, it was so rude that it was incoherent. By rude, I don’t mean “politically incorrect,” that inane term for celebrating stupid remarks for their honesty. I mean rude in a grander sense: brazen and crude and funky, open to the ugly as well as to the beautiful, with a vision of the body as a source of both suffering and ecstasy. This sort of rudeness derives from the understanding that, some of the time, a demand for politeness is really a demand to be quiet and disappear.”

Moving on. I copied that out yesterday. One post a day is enough. This has been a slow year, blog-writing-wise for me. 

So, moving on. Moving was the theme of the day, at least physically. And possibly in other ways, too.  S and I had a long, ongoing conversation today, weaving in and out of the personal and the universal, the micro and the macro. Perhaps the underlying theme was finding yourself, healing yourself, in this very confusing world we live in. 

And expectations. How for our generation and the next couple back, what we thought and expected to happen for us, and maybe to us, just ain't. And that's tough enough. But what is harder is figuring out what the fuck to do now and how to do it. So many of us human critters in this country are not getting the retirement and golden happiness on Golden Pond that our post WW2 culture and parents told us about. What I see around in the media, on line (is there a difference?) is still this promise of having it all. There isn't enough in the culture about the reality that the former middle class is living. We still aspire to Mercedes Benzes and second homes while we live in our cars. Maybe aspiration isn't all that great of a thing. What kind of "thing" is aspiration, anyway?

I know I am not saying anything new here, living it is a damn challenge. No direction home, indeed. The search for meaning ... does one ever find it, meaning? I guess you have to BE meaning.

One thing I was noticing in my friend and me is a certain lack of spark and joy. Was that another part of the fable we were fed? I've felt things like sparks and joy, but not for a very very long time. And what about that rude thing that Emily Nussbaum wrote about?

 And "they" tell us that life is full of ups and downs, but baby, this down has been going on for a good while and I, for one, am clueless as to how to change that. Hope is so speculative, another risk. Denial ended up being painful and not just for me but for those close to me. 

I'm a little sad, a little scared, and probably a lot tired. My back is a bit achy, but S did most of the work, so I did not re-injure myself. The cats are at sixes and sevens with furniture being moved. They are the dearest company. It will be hard being without Emmylou for a couple of months. She is such an excellent cat, with some of the better doglike features such as mostly coming when you call, and sleeping nearby. You can only carry on one cat per flight. 

In the midst of these life queries, I was looking for an outside anchor. While perusing my (many) unread Poem-of-the-Day emails, I found a poem from Bin Ramke, a poet I have liked. Plus Bin Ramke is such a strange, rather exotic name.

MAKING IT UP AS YOU GO ALONG

Lucretius loved Epicurus, knew
the world through him; his
meaning was clear: love as a way
of knowing, of assuming the known.

To know is to narrate.
People die trying to tell what
it was like there then. Others
die of not trying. The form of this
telling is, for example, 
a trellis. A growth controlled
unpredictable within measure.

Trellis. Tri licium. three threads.
The weaver knows
through the fingers the way worlds
hold together. Basket makers.
The shadow of a trellis is filled
against itself, against measure.
See the sun try again to
stop the movement of the rose

climbing among the woven ways.

THE RIGHTNESS OF RIGHT NOW

The back is a bit more uncomfortable today, possibly because of yesterday’s exertions. I did buy an inexpensive brace to wear tomorrow whilst moving furniture and what not.

(This is part of the design.)

Today, I am sorting some boxes and figuring out how to deploy things to last me for the next couple of days that I am here. Amazing what I found in a (badly packed) box of papers. One of my favorite finds was the Chrysalis Records release poster for Jethro Tull’s Minstrel in the Gallery, a record I can only scarcely remember. I would bet that most of you don’t remember it either (except for MOZ). If I hadn’t packed up my printer, I would post certainly scan a few things for you. Ah, Ian Anderson and his omnipresent codpiece. 

Yesterday, I made it to the post office with some packages I have been driving around for weeks, waiting for money. When I got to the post office, it was closed for lunch. There. Fifteen minutes to wait. I mention this because instead of waiting in the car, twiddling with my iPhone, or rooting around for a book, I had this carpe diem moment and chose to head to the nearby reservoir to seek out photo opportunities.

I find it interesting that I want to post again after weeks of not being able to really talk. So stress adds to silence, hmmm? Being depressed about money, being so powerless, is worse than brokenheartedness about a relationship. And as I recall, that was pretty damn crappy, requiring hours with the covers over my head and lots of crying.

Many many tears have been shed over the past few weeks. There was also an inability to relate to much of anyone. Only my desire to be kind and considerate to my beyond-kind-and-considerate hosts kept me in the world of pleasantries at all. They have plenty on their family and professional plates at the moment and they don't need any more worries or emotional weight. 

While I fully acknowledge my prejudices, there is still something satisfying about seeing a cat contentedly curled on your pillows, basking in the warmth of the lamplight and your company. A nice, comforting package of the rightness of right now. 

Meanwhile, desultorily packing and cleaning, I am working on a mix, one in the series of Bird songs or songs about birds ... and Freebird came up and I found myself tapping my toes. No idea what this means. Lynyrd Skynyrd and contentment? 

THE HEART IS A WHITTLED TWIG

(This is a shot I took in Ireland a very long time ago.)

Is it time for a new typeface? I’ve been dependent on Gill Sans for quite awhile now. I used to prefer Palatino. Type and lettering have always interested me, although I cannot profess to having followed that spark anywhere, beyond buying a couple of books. I always enjoyed writing by hand, too, if I gave myself appropriate time to focus on that. Maybe I can teach handwriting to children, since teaching handwriting is no longer particularly crucial in the curriculum. 

Yes, musing. Stretched out on the bed, with cold feet again, resting my back and waiting for everyone to finish their preparations for the morning, so that I can slip into the shower myself. The back is better, thank you, and now the challenge will be to do things without doing too much. I have days of moving goods and running around ahead of me.

So, the cat vet visit is scheduled (Cooder needs to be vaccinated and checked out for travel), the car will be repaired on Thursday. On Wednesday, S will help with more storage space reorganization. It’s ON.

The mood here is somewhat sad today. I might not have mentioned that Albert is not doing too well. He had surgery for cancer a couple of weeks ago, and he is in for a second one today. He had some digestive issues and it is hoped that these are due more to his being indulged along with the rest of us over the holiday. Worry fills the house.

The business section was less than encouraging today, with The New York Times and Warner Brothers preparing to lay off significant numbers in their workforce.

Maria Tallchief, missed.

What is to become of all of us? For so very many, the options become more and more limited. I was chatting with a friend last night who (btw, anyone interested in the “that versus who” question can look here; MS word wanted me to use that) is in a similarly challenging situation. We spoke of the many ways we are stressed, and it is quite a tangle of causes, solutions, and non-solutions. Even being able to buy a cup of coffee out on the street once your paltry part-time paycheck is deposited is a special moment. My indulgence is to buy Trader Joe's Salmon Jerky for lunch. Whee!

Okay, showered and working on some lunch, although it is a little bit early for that. The peeps are off to their lives, and I should get along with mine. 

I came across this poem while cleaning out my inbox. Although it is not particularly resonant to my life at the moment, I did like the second stanza.

Duality

Tina Chang, 1969

Perhaps I hold people to impossible ideals, 
I tell them, something is wrong with your 
personality, (you’re a drinker, you’re 
too dependent, or I think you have 
a mother/son fixation). This is usually 
followed by passionate lovemaking,
one good long and very well meaning 
embrace, and then I’m out the door.  

In daylight, I’ll tip my sunglasses forward, 
buy a cup of tea and think of the good 
I’ve done for the world, how satisfying 
it feels to give a man something to contemplate. 
The heart is a whittled twig. No, that is not 
the right image, so I drop the heart in a pile 
of wood and light that massive text on fire.    

I walk the streets of Brooklyn looking 
at this storefront and that, buy a pair of shoes 
I can’t afford, pumps from London, pointed 
at the tip and heartbreakingly high, hear 
my new heels clicking, crushing the legs 
of my shadow. The woman who wears 
these shoes will be a warrior, will not think 
about how wrong she is, how her calculations 
look like the face of a clock with hands 
ticking with each terrorizing minute. 

She will for an instant feel so much 
for the man, she left him lying in his bed 
softly weeping. He whispers something 
to himself  like bitch, witch, cold hearted 
______,  but he’ll think back to the day 
at the promenade when there was no one there 
but the two of them, the entire city falling away 
into a thin film of yellow and then black, 

and how she squeezed his hand, kissed him 
on his wrist which bore a beautifully healed 
scar, he will love her between instances 
of cursing her name. She will have long 
fallen asleep in her own bed, a thin nude 
with shoes like stilts, shoes squeezing 
the blood out of her feet, and in her sleep 
she rises above a disappearing city, her head 
touching a remote heaven, though below her, 
closer to the ground, she feels an ache at the bottom.