ÉTUDE SUR LA DISCIPLINAIRE ET L'EFFORT #1

 59 of #100daychallenge

The Hong Kong Orchid is blooming again. Not easy to get a good picture of it, but that color! There are also some very large sunflowers that will be blooming soon, right next to this tree. 

The cats are sprawled around me. McCoy is giving Nina a nice head bath. It has been almost a year since they came to live here. They are full grown kitties now. Nina is very bonded to me so she comes to me in the evening. McCoy heeds the call of the wild as long as he can, and dusk is primo bug-chasing time. Even cat food doesn't tempt him much. Vera is parked on top of my needlepoint, so I could not continue even if I could stay awake, which I cannot.

Tomorrow, another yoga class and then on to gardening. I hope I do not succumb, early in the day, to the seductive narcotic of needlework.

Today was mellow and pleasant. I feel significantly more relaxed than last week. Besides Saturday morning yoga, I had breakfast with KH and Patty at a place called The Crooked Duck, then dropped off a lamp for a second round of repair. When I finally got home, I took a long, rousing nap and I seem to be pulled back in that direction.

LIVING IN SIN

She had thought the studio would keep itself—

No dust upon the furniture of love.

Half heresy, to wish the taps less vocal,

The panes relieved of grime. A plate of pears,

A piano with a Persian shawl, a cat

Stalking the picturesque, amusing mouse

Had been her vision when he pleased “Come.”

Not that, at five, each separate stair would writhe

Under the milkman’s tramp; that morning light

So coldly would delineate the scraps

Of last night’s cheese and blank, sepulchral bottles;

That on the kitchen table among the saucers

A pair of beetle eyes would fix her own—

Envoy from some black village in the moldings . …

Meanwhile her night’s companion, with a yawn,

Sounded a dozen notes upon the keyboard,

Declared it out of tune, inspected, whistling,

A twelve hours’ beard, went out for cigarettes,

While she, contending with a woman’s demons,

Pulled back the sheets and made the bed and found

A fallen towel to dust the tabletop,

And wondered how it was a man could wake

From night to day and take the day for granted.

By evening she was back in love again,

Though not so wholly but throughout the night

She woke sometimes to feel daylight coming

Like a relentless milkman up the stairs.

1955

— Adrienne Cecile Rich, The New Yorker Book of Poems, Viking Press, New York, 1969