SOME CRAB BENEATH

Another night in the bathtub with a pile of books: SuicideBlonde: The Life of Gloria Grahame, StormyWeather: The Music and Lives of a Century of Jazzwomen, Evening is the Whole Day, and City of Illusions. I do like to graze around in books as I actually don’t like starting them, I like to be reading them. I don’t know how this makes sense, but it works for me.

I am happily tired, so maybe the sleeping meds (or the bath?) are doing their work. I am often very down about this time of night and thoughts drift to the dire and sad, so instead of being my happy time of comfort, as it was in younger years, getting into bed and darkness can be a scary thing. Listening to podcasts is still keeping the dementors away, mostly, but I do wish I could drift off in quiet comfort.

(Gangster at rest.)

Scotch is patrolling the bedroom. I am pretty sure Vera is hiding under the bed. Scotch is a gangster, chasing all the other cats, and generally swaggering all over the house. Her preferred victim is Vera, who is a tad too dainty and above it all.  

I didn't get too much of my to-do list done today. I am letting some of that frustration go as I write this ... Mom had an appointment with the neurologist today. He agreed that she seemed sharper and more chipper than when he saw her in October. I asked him to write a prescription for her to get her to read, color, and try to engage in the world. It must have sunk in for the short run as she went to Ikea with me and walked around, fairly able to keep up a reasonable pace.

Rusty but loosening up.

BY THE SALTINGS

When the wind is in the drift

gently, down by the saltings

at dawn, when the vapors lift;

and pattering sanderlings

run from you rather than fly

across the sandflat screaming;

before the runnels drain dry

among the sea-lavender

and sun severs sea from sky,

there is time enough under

any listing low-tide hull

of your choosing to wonder

at the force of it to pull

you to its shelter, alone

as your are and as fearful

as some crab beneath some stone.

— Ted Walker, The New Yorker, July, 1964