PRESENT'S NOT THAT

I need to interrupt this post with what? A special bulletin? 

I've been working on this post both theoretically and actually for a couple of days. I haven't quite made it to the keyboard to write all that I am thinking and feeling. I am so uncomfortable in the world, I feel as if I am on some kind of prickling ice fire. Just morally and spiritually itchy and miserable. I know a lot of it is the sound of long unleashed misery and injustice cacophoning around the country. And the constant pressure of our desperate failure to run this country in a reasonable manner. I wonder if this is what it felt like in Germany after Kristallnacht. Or maybe a regular day during the black plague. I fucking do not know. I only know I am in deep and abject panic, pain, and anxiety. Did I fail to mention deséspoir?

Back to the post I was working on.

As is often the case.
As is often the case.
As is often the case.



I just picked a random sentence from a random earlier post. As is often the case, I am kind of tired. I went swimming today for the third time since I arrived back from New York. I am working my way back to my regular routine, but not all the way there yet. And today I feel it. 

One would not think it would be so challenging to get in two swims a week, given that I don't even have a regular job, but it still takes planning unless I could get up and do it before sanity and light set in. I don't anticipate that. I am not sure I could trust myself to make it to an evening swim at this time of year. It is hard enough with the grayish light and cooler temperature.

One of my friends says he has a to-do list three pages long. I am not even organized enough to write a list. But I did make more appointments for Janet (oh joy! Teeth cleaning! Pneumonia shot! Physical therapy!) as well as starting the bid process to get the jacaranda tree trimmed. 

I think I have hit my three accomplishments a day. I stopped by the store after the pool, my hair turbaned in a towel and a dress thrown over my wet swimsuit, to get the necessary vegetables to go along with the chicken I need to roast. The bird has been washed and is moving toward room temperature. If I get that done and the kitchen floor washed it will have been a stellar day.

The cats are warming up to me. Butterscotch is nearby almost all the time. Emmylou greets me by jumping into the car when I open it to get out. She hung out with me during my post-swim bath as well. Oona almost jumped into the tub with me. Mostly she ran in and out of the bathroom playing with Zora Idris. 

The autumnal sun is so wan. How did the quality of light change so very quickly? It's a dirty dishwater yellow grey without much interest in illuminating anything.

So, a reading/nap break is in order now.

The day after next.

There were a lot of small birds, I almost mistook them for hummingbirds but they did alight, marauding in one of my (very hot) pepper bushes. I could see the red roses peeking over the fence from the neighbor's yard as well.

I was trying to upgrade something on my laptop this morning, which sent me to some morning Melville.

Methinks we have hugely mistaken this matter of Life and Death. Methinks that what they call my shadow here on earth is my true substance. Methinks that in looking at things spiritual, we are too much like oysters observing the sun through the water, and thinking that thick water the thinnest of air. Methinks my body is but the lees of my better being. In fact take my body who will, take it I say, it is not me.
— Herman Melville, Moby Dick

 I am not making very quick progress here. I get distracted by all the other delectable book morsels around me.I found a copy of Dashiell Hammett's Red Harvest at a thrift store yesterday and had to buy it. It was one of my very most favorite books. What's not to love a book with these as the opening sentences:

I first heard Personville called Poisonville by a red-haired mucker named Hickey Dewey in the Big Ship in Butte. He also called his shirt a shoit.

I mean seriously. That is music you can dance to. You cannot go wrong there. As I peruse this again for the umpteenth time, I find it even more interesting, now that I know more about the violence in the mines. My grandfather was indicted for murder at a mine in Arizona. He was a union organizer. Someone was killed in the melee and they tried to pin it on him.

Post outburst continuance.

One of my friends said that he spontaneously retched when he saw the photo of Al Franken. I am in the midst of this internal turmoil of things that have happened to me, ways I might have been party to harassment, memories of the Clarence Thomas hearings, it goes on and on. 

I have to figure out ways to be kind to myself, to take a little care of myself. I do feel ill. Disoriented. And, you know, hopeless. I feel nothing could give me solace or relief. Anhedonic. 

I know this time of year, what with the onslaught of forced fun holidays upon us. December, to me, looks like a lot more doctor's appointments. Maybe some swimming and graphic novel writing in there.

DARKNESS

I caught the darkness
Drinking from your cup
I caught the darkness
Drinking from your cup
I said: Is this contagious?
You said: Just drink it up

I got no future
I know my days are few
The present's not that pleasant
Just a lot of things to do
I thought the past would last me
But the darkness got that too

I should have seen it coming
It was right behind your eyes
You were young and it was summer
I just had to take a dive
Winning you was easy
But darkness was the prize

I don't smoke no cigarette
I don't drink no alcohol
I ain't had much loving yet
But that's always been your call
Hey I don't miss it baby
I got no taste for anything at all

I used to love the rainbow
I used to love the view
I loved the early morning
I'd pretend that it was new
But I caught the darkness baby
And I got it worse than you


I caught the darkness
Drinking from your cup
I caught the darkness
Drinking from your cup
I said: Is this contagious?
You said: Just drink it up

— Leonard Cohen

But all the things that God would have us do are hard for us to do—remember that—and hence, he oftener commands us than endeavors to persuade. And if we obey God, we must disobey ourselves: and it is in this disobeying ourselves, wherein the hardness of God consists.

— Herman Melville, Moby Dick