SO HARD TO HIDE LATER

Still have a bit of The Bird Song floating around my head. All I know she sang a little while and then flew on. 

The week has a left me with residual sadness and ... some kind of weltzschmerz. Another terrorist attack on innocent young people by a crazed white male. 

My nieces are moving along with their lives. We are sad about Carole, but she was so unhappy. I do feel her loss, out there on the edges of my familial consciousness. 

I took a break from this to plant the damned lilac vine! I also started clean-up on the front flower bed. My azalea struggles along, so perhaps I might afford it more attention this year. Next up, the wisteria, but that means pulling out a bunch of tomatoes and more digging.

(Will post more as it grows.)

Before I jumped into Joni at the end of the last post, I found this Kay Ryan poem, but Joni won out with that line ... out of touch with the breakdown of this century. She wrote that in the last third of the last century. It certainly feels like this one is not going any place any good.

WE'RE BUILDING THE SHIP AS WE SAIL IT

The first fear
being drowning, the
ship's first shape
was a raft, which
was hard to unflatten
after that didn't 
happen. It's awkward
to have to do one's
planning in extremis
in the early years—
so hard to hide later:
sleekening the hull,
making things
more gracious.

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

Oona feels it is necessary to supervise my reading.

The next morning. 

Sitting here in bed with my coffee and ... lethargy, sadness, sorrow, overwhelmedness ... in French that is submerge and in Catalan it is aclaparat. Now that is damned good word. In Dutch, it's overweldigd which is also pretty great. 

Now, even that small discursion ... evidently discursion is rare — I suppose digression is the more common — cheered me some.

I know what some of this is. I don't like getting ready to go anywhere. I don't even like the going, only the being there. This is just like I am with books: I don't like to start nor finish them, I only like to be reading them. And wow, that just gobsmacked me with all my unbegun (should that be unstarted?) projects. I am a prisoner of inactivity, intentions, and possibilities.

Be that as it may, two friends of mine had big news they wanted to share with me. They are moving from Marin County to Kentucky, just outside of Cincinnati. This encouraged me. I see so few possibilities for life after mom, for hope, for breaking the bonds of this heavy heavy heart. That these friends are uprooting and starting over at this point in their lives just gave me joy and hope. Their courage, their optimism, their fortitude gave me something, even for a time, that I don't get too much: happiness.

They are
sleekening the hull,
making things

more gracious.

And, with I will bid you good-day and see if I can't get those chores done and get to Palm Springs. The limes are coming!

The limes are coming!