NOT ONE WITHOUT WATER

2 of 100

2 janvier 2023

Although I would prefer to sit and continue to gather my thoughts, plan my New Years' resolutions, or finish my not-very great book, Vertigo by Louise de Salvo, I am outside trying to make some sense of the mess on the patio so that I can move my freshly re-packed and sorted boxes into that space. Michael comes next Monday to take of care of Janet while I am getting knee replacement surgery, and then me for a day or so when I come home. (In re: de Salvo, while it is not a bad book, and I have read a couple of her non-fiction works about Virginia Woolf, she is not enough of a prose stylist to make this memoir really touching or memorable.)

For LA in January, it is quite cold and grey. The cats prefer to be indoors where it is warmer. Either that or there is something wrong with all of them. The patio is cold and damp and very dirty given that it is exposed to all the usual desert dirt as well as the constant exhaust and particulate matter from the 605 freeway that is maybe 1/3 of a mile away. It is a hellscape here for my relatives and friends who have allergies what will the dander and fur of six felines. Anyone want a slightly used cat? All guaranteed with a no questions return policy.

There are some significant frustrations and sorrows in my life, caused in part by some purportedly near and dear to me. Lashing out often feels like the option that will give me relief if not solution. Rather, I am trying to wade through some of it and seek another perspective that might allow a less confrontational outburst. 

4 janvier 2023

The rain puts a certain je ne sais quoi on trying to get 2023 in gear. I have a lot of work to do before my knee replacement surgery on Tuesday. It being wet, it makes washing clothes and hanging them out to dry a problem. I haven't had a working dryer in 18 months. I did, recently, have it looked at to see if it could be repaired but the answer was a resounding no. I think my father bought this dryer from a neighbor in the late 1960s. He also installed it himself (bien sur) so the installment is illegal and I will need to pay a technician to install properly once I can find one. That shouldn't be too hard, but it is just one more thing to try to get together.

I used to think I was lazy. Now I think I am just trying to cope with the burden of taking care of Janet. I had a couple of pre-op appointments today. No matter how I tried, I could not get Janet out of the house on time. If I don't police her, she can not be depended on to do anything in a timely manner. I know she isn't really doing it on purpose as she can't stay focussed and her short term memory is crap. And no matter that she thinks she is ready, she invariably needs to go to the bathroom or some other distraction before I can get her to the car.

My patience and understanding has improved greatly. I know she is no longer purposely trying to mess with me, although she sometimes slows down on purpose. Funny, she can follow the news pretty well, and often enough has a Jeopardy! answer herself, but she can't follow a narrative series. She still wants to and does play dominoes; that greatly enhances her cognitive skills at home. The other night, a friend from her past called her. She asks about this person more frequently than anyone else I can think of. She was on the 'phone with her for a long time (for her) and was buoyed by the chat. The next morning, she could only put a bit of the conversation together.

As discussed before, I despair that I have ended up here. So it is no wonder that I want to read or sleep or get involved in some multi-season narrative. As also noted before, I feel I have been lost for 8 years. I was lost when I got here and in bad straits, but somehow this became the convenient place and person for me to be. No wonder I grieve for the might-have been and the me that existed before. 

FIRST THINGS FIRST

Woken, I lay in the arms of my own warmth and listened

To a storm enjoying its storminess in the winter dark

Till my ear, as it can when half asleep or half sober,

Set to work to unscramble that interjectory uproar,

Construing its airy vowels and watery consonants

Into a love speech indicative of a proper name.

Scarcely the tongue I should have chosen, yet, as well

As harshness and clumsiness would allow, it spoke your praise

Kenning you with a godchild of the Moon and the West Wind,

With power to tame both real and imaginary monsters,

Likening your poise of being to an upland county,

Here green on purpose, there pure blue for luck.

Loud though it was, alone as it certainly found me,

It reconstructed a day of peculiar silence

When a sneeze could be heard a mile off, and had me walking

On a headland of lava beside you, the occasion as ageless

As the stare of any rose, your presence exactly

So once, so valuable, so very new.

This, moreover, at an hour when only too often

A smirking devil annoys me in beautiful English,

Predicting a world where every sacred location

Is a sand-buried site all cultured Texans “do,”

Misinformed and thoroughly fleeced by their guides,

And gentle hearts are extinct like Hegelian bishops.

Grateful, I slept till a morning that would not say

How much it believed of what I said the storm had said

But quietly drew my attention to what had been done —

So many cubic metres the more in my cistern

Against a leonine summer—putting first things first:

Thousands have lived without love, not one without water.

— W. H. Auden, The New Yorker, March 9, 1957