IT'S JUST THAT

Dead flowers?

I fell down the rabbit hole of despair today. The fever of depression took ahold of me. Oddly enough, I had just ordered a new copy of Sticky Fingers which arrived today. And boy does this lyric fit:

It's just that demon life has got you in its sway

It's just that demon life has got you in its sway

I woke up at 5:00 or 5:30, which was okay, but I didn't really want to get up. After some less than pleasurable time spent listening to Morning Edition (Trump! Guiliani!), I finally fell back asleep. I probably should have bitten that bullet and gotten up. (I think one of my neighbors is smoking pot.) 

Saturday, I was out fighting the good fight in the garden. After three years of relatively pest free gardening, the snails have figured it all out. Would that I were up for an escargot experiment as I had more than enough for a meal. I found them every which way, fornicating, sleeping, eating, sliming. S

 First Pork Chop tomato.

Sweet potato extravaganza.

My mom came out to tell me that she thinks it is time to put down her favorite kitty, Ariel.

Ariel is the sweetest, nicest kitty, and has been my mom's best companion. Ariel has lost weight and slowed down, which is no surprise given that she is about 15 or 16. Ariel's companion kitty, Max, died three years ago, just a couple of weeks after I re-arrived on the scene. 

I was already feeling extra sad as the father of an old friend had died on Thursday or Friday. I carried some of that sorrow as she clearly adored and enjoyed her father. And every time a contemporary's parent dies, I recall that I am somewhere on that line. 

Janet's mortality and vulnerability came into sharper focus. Inasmuch as she drives me utterly nuts, I dread her passing for any number of reasons. And her pain at losing her sweetest Ariel cut me. Although I don't spend much time with Ariel, I have grown accustomed to, and fond of, seeing her sleeping next to my mom, or at her head. We recently acquired a second rocking chair so that both Janet and Ariel had rocking chairs to sit in.

We are taking her in to the vet tomorrow to see if there are palliative measures to be taken to make her more comfortable, as she still has a will to live, or if she is better served by euthanasia.

I feel as if I would be better served by euthanasia at the moment. The political situation is so dearly untenable. I don't want to be uninformed, but the constant onslaught of depravity, cowardice, gluttony, well, you all know the list, — soul AND sanity crushing. 

I try to remember something(s) of joy and pleasure: the setting sunlight on my orange bougainvillea, the perky gladiolus I unburdened from sweet potato and tomato vines, the breeze, Mick Taylor's soulful playing (the Stones should have never let that guy go). 

Did you all know about Oizys? The Greek goddess of misery, anxiety, grief, and pain? Well, I know her well, though I never called her by that name. The personification of Woe. Woe might be related to grief and pain, but these things are not all the same.

Butterscotch among the Veras.

SWAY

Did you ever wake up to find
A day that broke up your mind
Destroyed your notion of circular time

It's just that demon life has got you in its sway
It's just that demon life has got you in its sway

Ain't flinging tears out on the dusty ground
For all my friends out on the burial ground
Can't stand the feeling getting so brought down

It's just that demon life has got me in its sway
It's just that demon life has got me in its sway

There must be ways to find out
Love is the way they say is really strutting out

Hey, hey, hey now
One day I woke up to find
Right in the bed next to mine
Someone that broke me up with a corner of her smile, yeah

It's just that demon life has got me in its sway
It's just that demon life has got me in its sway

It's just that demon life has got me in its sway
It's just that demon life has got me

It's just that demon life has got me

— Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, Sticky Fingers, 1971