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.