WHENEVER WE LIFT THE VEIL

14 of 100

March 24th

Idrisse is outside my window taking a cement squirm and trying to catch bugs. There is no doubt that this is the kitties favorite time of year. They particularly like the evening when the bugs come out, as well as the coyotes. Very difficult to get them in. 

I am feeling a bit better today. Taking it easy and getting to sleep on the early side has helped. 

Saying that the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on Ketanji Brown Jackson are a shitshow is a shallow observation, but that is what comes to mind. What should not amaze me yet continually does is the shocking lack of integrity and thought (ooo, the breeze came up and brought that beautiful scent of citrus blossoms) on the part of the Republicans. The clarity of knowledge that the majority of Congressional Republicans are only interested in power and retaining it should not be ever surprising. Continually soul-sucking good will into dismay.

(Gosh, I am on an unknown quest to write complicated sentences today?)

April 6th

Yes, time does go by.

Amazing how I can have a thought in the kitchen and have forgotten it by the time I sit to write.

Many hours later.

There were storms here while I was in Palm Springs last week. My pomegranate tree had fallen over. My yardman came over yesterday and righted it, securing it so that it is unlikely to fall over again. I had some other work done, so I walked around the backyard checking it out at my leisure (yesterday I was frantically writing my yoga class while they were working and distracting me). There are many blooms on the tree already. Last year, I got three or four pomegranates, this year it seems to be producing much more.

I can see McCoy out in back, trying to chase down a bird or a butterfly without success. The backyard is a crazy jungle.

Despite my mother's constant assertion that there are no birds anymore, they are quite noisy in my backyard. I do hope they are enjoying the greenery as much as the bees, who are in abundance in my yard. Lot of food for butterflies, bees, and hummingbirds. 

It is getting up to 95 this week. That will be good for drying clothes as we still don't have a dryer. I took Janet for a walk around 11:00 and the heat was uncomfortable for her at that hour. I guess I will have to wake up earlier to get her out. She's pretty tired when she gets home from dominoes, so it could be hard to motivate her then. However, we knew the heat was coming.

The flies are back. Damn.

When you get back from sitting in a public place for a long time only to find your clean t-shirt has an oil stain right about where your nipple is. Great feeling.

7 April

I should be writing my class for tonight. It is another hot one here, 93 now and expected to get up to 97 in the next two hours. It is raining in New York. I have to keep my trees from drying out. I am pleased to report that my Japanese maple, which I thought I had killed, is coming back. I believe I already told you that the forsythia, the black tulip magnolia, and the fig were all doing well.

Quite often on a day during which I am writing my yoga class, Fox will try to sleep on my small desk, which I need for my reference book. Since my friend Debee, in an act of amazing kindness, took it upon herself to take most of the odds and ends and half-empty boxes all over my studio floor and pile them in a corner, I can actually lay out my mat and try things on as I work through them. That sentence did not go as planned. Fox can lay on the floor was my point. Not as good as sleeping on my desk and creeping limbs onto my keyboard, but something.

I remarked on FB that had I a gun, I would like fire it into the air in celebration of Justice Jackson!! Best news any one has had for an age. Now, if we could only get Thomas replaced we would be getting somewhere. He can, at least, be close enough so that when I get up to go into the kitchen, he can quickly try to trip me. It's a good thing Janet doesn't move around quickly nor terribly often nor without her cane as he can be hazardous. His nefarious behavior is mostly centered on me.

I ran across an Emmylou (it hurt to write that name as I so miss my Emmylou) Harris compilation. Her version of the Loretta Lynn hit, Blue Kentucky Girl, has been my earworm. Could be worse.

IT IS ALMOST UNBEARABLE

that people are so different from us

whenever we lift the veil

on which lilacs are shifting

and their eyes are still there

among the gyrations and flattened

slantings of their spirits, as if

spiraling upwards through time

until they hit us and our cups

runneth over, though clear

is the liquid and bitter its taste

to our narrow tongues. And

we rejoice only for a moment

and joke for the eternity in which

we know we will never dart about

happily, for the view we lift is

our own skin, a tarp in the wind.

— Ron Padgett, How to Be Perfect, Coffee House Press, Minneapolis, 2007