TO TEST WHAT

Another day, another cat spit-up on the floor to clean up. That’s the wisdom around this place.

Another day, another cat spat to break up.

Another day, another purslane plant, or fifty, to pull.

Another day, another occasion to be nauseated by Donald Trump.

And so it goes.

And so it goes and so it goes

And so it goes and so it goes

But where it's goin' no one knows

And so it goes and so it goes

And so it goes and so it goes

But where it's goin' no one knows

Oh, sometime later ... like days ... but now it is the evening of August 7th. I have been reading a lot this weekend and not getting enough done. But you have heard that from me before.  

There is a difference between solitude and loneliness, she thought, and wondered what it was.

She should have spent more time with her own mother. She should have moved in with her mother to take care of her, she saw that now. So what if her mother’s apartment had been an L-shaped studio? So what if her mother kept it at 102 degrees and could not stand the smell of any food cooking except white rice, and so what if she talked and talked and talked and lived in the past? Now that Joy was older, she understood her mother. It was cold, that was why the heat in the apartment was turned up so high. Her mother’s ceaseless talking was an activity, a way for her to be alive. As for living in the past, the past was all that was real.

—   Cathleen Schine, They May Not Mean To, But They Do

Of course, in the middle of that moment of copying and feeling affectionate towards Janet she came in to the room and a spat followed. Yes, I see the irony. I am trying.

16 August 2016

I have been musing on why I have neither been posting nor writing. I think about writing, and not just this blog, every day, off and on, all day. There's a zone or a mindset that I must be resistant to these days, although my heart leans so in this direction.

Hot. Everywhere. Not just here. The heat is a challenge to productivity and good humor. 

The good humor may be further challenged by a reduction in medication. I am taking a break from the daily dosage although I do plan to return to it in the Fall. Being off of anti-depressants is interesting. So many things pierce me deeply and I find myself starting to tears quite often. I go through internal tides of high and low with greater frequency. I can see how this can be dangerous to me, given my suspicions about the value of (my) life and the awful absurdities of modern times. That said, it is both refreshing and painful to be what is au naturel for me.

I am going to make myself unpopular out there by saying that summer is my least favorite season. (I want to say I hate it, really.)  I disliked it less in the East where I know that the weather is currently dog's mouth hell. It's no picnic, no matter what the marketers tell us.

On a cheerier, more positive note, looking up from my desk and seeing a Japanese eggplant a-brewing along with cherry tomatoes, basil and the corn that needs planting is a far better view than it had been. 

If only this were true:

THAT WILL TO DIVEST

Action creates
a taste
for itself.
Meaning: once
you've swept
the shelves
of spoons
and plates
you kept
for guests,
it gets harder
not to also
simplify the larder,
not to dismiss
rooms, not to
divest yourself
of all the chairs
but one, not
to test what
singleness can bear,
once you've begun.

— Kay Ryan, The Best of It: New and Selected Poems, Grove Press, 2010

The cats are all reasonably well, although Ariel is beginning to get that kidney-failure coat that old cats sport. Butterscotch is doing fine, even being more affectionate with me. She does try to kill Oona several times a day and we have to lock her up in one room overnight lest horrendous cat fight cries wake us (me in particular). 

Oona is filthy most of the time, being a white cat in a garden.