NO SHELTER FROM THE TONGUES

15 of 100

25 April 2023

I had a hell of a time getting that #14 post out. It has been so long since I have used my laptop and other devices, that I really had to work to remember how to use it all. I need to sit down and spend some quality time getting my devices to like one another again.

These days, I spend most of my online time on my iPad, either watching some tv-ish thing, or more likely working on Duolingo French lessons. That takes us quite a bit of time each day, especially if I get competitive. I used to play a lot of NY Times games (Wordle, Crossword, Tiles, Spelling Bee, etc.), but that time is now taken up pretty much by French. As I occasionally write a word in French when I mean English or vice versa, I guess it is setting in. I do need to branch out and to try to find the time to read French. Notwithstanding the piles and shelves of books, I am not doing all that much reading lately.

The Kermit Place Readers, my Brooklyn book club decided to read Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man as it is the 70th anniversary of that most amazing book. It is one of the hardest books I have ever tried to read. Seriously. It is a mindfuck. Brilliant. So violent and otherworldly in the first half that it is difficult to pick up. You are not reading this book for pleasure. Which is not to say that the writing, the plot, and whole damn thing is not breath-takingly original. But not easy.

At this point. I am going to check out and head for bed as I have an appointment with my knee surgeon. I get the first appointment so I am in and out of there. Hopefully, it won't be two months before I sit down to write again

Thursday, May 11

I think about you, about writing this every day. Somehow the days go by and I haven't had time to sit down to think and write. My new goal is to find two days a week to write and post. I am hoping that a more specific schedule will prompt me into making the time and doing it. My posting days were going to be Wednesday and Sunday as, in general, those are "more leisurely" days with no yoga classes and less Mom stress. Still all a work in progress, I guess. 

Yoga classes are going well. Right now, I have a core group of about five. Things have not picked up so much since my knee surgery notwithstanding having tried to bring former students back in. The ones who do come are just lovely and it is great experience for me even if it is not particularly remunerative. I am also doing online privates on FaceTime so send me a message or an email if you might be interested. Not sure how many more I can do, but worth checking it out.

French lessons take up a portion of my "free time"; I seem to have lost my ability to sit and read. I am still not finished with Invisible Man!! And now the Kermit Place Readers have move on to Chérie by Colette. In a not unusual spat of optimism, I bought a dual language edition, but I think I will just have to revert to English to power through. 

A close up of a longhorn beetle's face. Also, how I felt this morning.

May 18

Although the sun is not out, the birds are doing their part to encourage me to live, love, laugh, and be happy (nb "When the Red Red Robin" ... there was a Dion and the Belmonts version which was not tenable). 

I guess the good news is that I got out of bed and fed the cats and voila! here I am trying to post before I trudge through the day. 

I have been having some terrible, unsettling dreams. In one a couple of days ago, I was drunk and driving my friend Matt's parents brand new red boat-of-a car, careening into things and scratching it mightily. Why Matt's parents, now deceased, car? My current explanation is that Matt's dad was a banker and it was a family clearly comfortable and conservative with assets. I'm the car and in the car, careening around, witlessly, to some disaster (my life? I think yes). Wheeeee but not wheee.

In other car news, I got my first moving violation since 1975 or so (that one was me driving recklessly and fast up 5 to get to a game at Dodger's Stadium). The violation fee is $480. Ouch seriously. Not to mention the increase in my insurance. Which just adds to the general dread of trying to get by these days. I also went back and looked at my insurance premium in order to teach which is $600. I barely make that much in a year of teaching. To that end, I have applied to teach in the Silver Sneakers program at a local gym. 

I am going through some struggles as evinced in my dream. There was another in which cats I had unwillingly abandoned were thrown in my window as I was going somewhere in a house that moved. One was a beautiful mackerel orange tabby with glowing hazel eyes. I was glad to have him back although he was kind of foaming at the mouth, maybe. And how to pay for a vet? 

Yes, money worries.

Anywhere you go, it's the same cry
Money worries
Anywhere you go, it's the same cry
Money worries

Janet is deteriorating ... maybe that is just aging. It's the house that is deteriorating and no room in the budget to fix much of anything. I think my focus on gardening is for this reason. I can kind of control and afford it if I am careful. The results are right present. The garden is just beautiful. The first sunflowers and the poppies are winding down, the the delphiniums, cosmos, bachelor's buttons, and roses are jamming. I just go out and get lost in the dirt. About a week ago, on a Saturday, a neighbor was also working on his yard. Being a friendly fellow, Tony came down to kibbitz a few times. I was out there for about seven hours. He finally told me I need to stop. Then he started laughing because I was the dirtiest person he had ever seen. It's true, I did look like I was trying out for a part in Li'l Abner.

LILIES

I have been thinking

about living 

like the lilies

that blow in the fields.

They rise and fall

in the wedge of the wind,

and have no shelter

from the tongues of the cattle,

and have no closets or cupboards,

and have no legs.

Still I would like to be

as wonderful

as that old idea.

But I were a lily

I think I would wait all day

for the green face

of the hummingbird

to touch me.

What I mean is,

could I forget myself

even in those feathery fields?

When Van Gogh

preached to the poor

of course he wanted to save someone—

most of all himself

He wasn’t a lily,

and wandering through the bright fields

only gave him more ideas

if would take his life to solve.

I think I will always be lonely

in this world, where the cattle

graze like a black and white river—

where the ravishing lilies

melt, without protest, on their tongues—

where the hummingbird, whenever there is a fuss,

just rises and floats away.

— Mary Oliver, House of Light, Beacon Press, Boston, 1990