You have certainly heard it before: I staid up too late reading, didn’t sleep well, and then
in too late. It’s after noon, and I am only now finishing my second cup of coffee and looking at the news sites.
I didn’t read much of the current news this morning. I am interested in the Covington KY school boy story, but I doubt I can get anything resembling the truth, so I will leave it alone for now. Perusing the New York Times obits, the Overlooked No More entries were fascinating, leading, as such meanderings so often do, to me placing more books on my To Read List (currently with about 2,000 entries).
Here are the folks who caught my attention.
Annemarie Schwarzenbach
It sure feels like this.
So, Janet and I made the chicken soup, which came out quite well, although she hasn't had any yet. She swears she will never cook anything again. I am not so sure of her resolution. It takes me awhile to remember that I actually like cooking and not just the idea of it. Janet hummed while she chopped which either means she was soothing herself or grooving on it.
So, yeah. I was up late reading the third book in Ferrante's Neapolitan quartet (Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay) and listening, not at the same time, to the Marie Colvin biography.
Sitting here in a one lamp lit room, I could hear the (not) dulcet tones of cat bathing. I looked around without being able to see a source a couple of times. No cats on bed or dresser. Oh, there she is on the high shelf where the tv is. Oh that Scotch.
Okay, time to drag myself to yoga. And hopefully get some sleep tonight. I need to get up before 10:00.
On to the next day.
Writing from an unmade bed. And yes, Scotch is contributing to the unmade-ness, however, I had an opportunity while she was eating.
I feel accomplished, although I should push myself to more tasks, in that I finally reorganized my mother's sock drawers. She constantly complains she has no socks because she has forgotten when she kept them. I just put them where she now looks, while trying to corral the many odd socks into pairs. I also made appointments for her blood tests and for a steroid shot. That all felt like a lot.
The weather is just nippy enough to discourage moving around and to encourage climbing into napping. I am almost finished with the Marie Colvin bio (which is due today, at any rate). However, I shall find some slippers, make the bed, and try to find my damn registration in the morass. I can listen whilst I sort.
Now on to Thursday. Still plugging away at this.
I might have mentioned in the last few months that I am trying to reroute my quick and reactive nature to things and become a bit more focussed on taking the time to complete things. I think my experience as a producer taught me to pile on steps and make progress wherever it could be shoehorned in or addressed. This made lead to progress on many fronts, but absolutely adds to being frenetic and never getting the satisfaction of completing anything, really completing it past "good enough for now." Which only keeps the to do list ... and when I going to carve out time for that ... ever growing. Just like my reading list which already has more entries than I will ever be able to read in my life.
I have tried to keep the phrase, "take the time" in the forefront of my pea brain so that I slow down and do things more thoroughly.
I think the stress, always the stress, is that my mother is old and fading and where will I go and what will I do with all this stuff. That's my bedrock all the time.
And rather than encouraging me to just do it ... never my strong suit, having been bred to indolence and denial ... I just want to sleep and read and space out. That's my instinct. Motivation for much of anything has been crushed in the many horrible realities and generally feelings of uselessness, hopelessness, and, in some ways, end times.
And and and again ... I needs must stop this musing to get Janet over to her blood test in about ten minutes.
HER POLITENESS
It's her politeness
one loathes: how she
isn't insistent, how
she won't impose, how
nothing's so urgent
it won't wait. Like
a meek guest you tolerate
she goes her way—the muse
you'd have leap at your throat,
you'd spring to obey.
CONNECTIONS
Connections lie in wait—
something that in
the ordinary line of offenses
makes offense more great.
They entrap, they solicit
under false pretenses,
they premeditate.
They tie one of
your shoelaces
to one of a stranger,
they tie strings to purses
and snatch as
you lean down, eager
for a little something gratis.
— Kay Ryan, The Best of It: New and Selected Poems, New York, Grove Press, 2010
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