I SIMPLY ACCEPT THE POSSIBILITY

November 12th


I feel as if I am writing a wartime diary. That remains to be seen. 

I managed to get up early this morning, as someone was coming by to speak to me about possible problems with my new electrical panel. I mostly wanted the contractor to be aware of it. So now, I am sitting at the (messy) dining room table looking at a softly breezy sunny day. Idrisse is on the table alternating between looking out the window and devoted hygiene, 

I know you don't deserve to be CAPITALIZED SCREEDED AT. My frustration and sorrow just got the better of me. Don't really know how I would be making it through this without this blog and my friends, particularly Karen H, who shares so much of my sorrow and rage. We speak at least once or twice a day.

My agita is abating somewhat, not because things are not already getting worse (appointing absolutely incompetent and inexperienced people to critical cabinet jobs makes me shiver already), but because I have been able to express and sort out some of my feelings. 

November 13

As I remarked to my friend Wendy, I am so distracted and unfocussed that I cannot focus enough to get focussed. Perhaps a double dose of Adderall will help.

November 14

Sitting on my bed again, overwhelmed by the cleaning/sorting/deaccessioning that I have started. Being a person with pretty severe ADHD, I spend so much time wondering exactly what to do and how to do it, and not being able to predict a beginning and end-point as there are so many steps in-between, I sometimes just step away. I tell myself that any progress is progress.

I also forgot my Adderall this morning. I had to get Janet to her PT appointment and was then pulled into other directions. 

I can hear that tv loudly down the hall. I can't quite tell what it is, but I think it is that game show with Téa Leoni. Janet will want to eat before I go teach, but the microwave is inaccessible due to the stuff that is out of the cupboard.

My vacuum cleaner was so dirty, I am amazed it didn't start on fire. I tried cleaning it with the Dyson mini-vac I had purchased for real money. It is a crappy crappy machine and only works about half the time I use it. The return window has probably already closed. 

Karen H and I had another chat about downsizing ... well, it is actually a constant and open discussion. I was trying to analyze the acquisition of objects as well as their meaning. I am drawn to things I find beautiful, and sometimes cool, and I have difficulty not wanting to own them. A lot of things were purchased as I tried to define myself in the world. There are plenty of things, lots of cookware, that were for all the dinner parties and gatherings I had imagined.

That is certainly not happening here, and it is unlikely that most of these things will happen in the future. My tiny counterspace is so crammed with things incoming and outgoing that there is no place to prep. And after a trip to the grocery store today, I know that I won't be able to afford much going forward. 

Wish it were easier to give up aspirations, "dreams," and my Own Private Idaho. 

This is one of my favorite Grateful Dead songs, Black Peter

All of my friends come to see me last night
I was laying in my bed and dying
Annie Beauneau from Saint Angel
Say "The weather down here, so fine"

Just then, the wind
Came squalling through the door
But who can
The weather command?
Just want to have
A little peace to die
And a friend or two
I love at hand

[Verse 3]
Fever roll up to a hundred and five
Roll on up
Gonna roll back down
One more day
I find myself alive
Tomorrow
Maybe go
Beneath the ground

See here, how everything
Lead up to this day
And it's just like
Any other day
That's ever been
Sun going up
And then the
Sun, it going down
Shine through my window and
My friends, they come around

Come around
Come around

[Verse 5]
The people may know but
The people don't care
That a man could be
As poor as me
Take a look at poor Peter
He's lying in pain
Now, let's go
Run and see
Run and see
Run and see
Run, run, and see
Hey, hey
See

When people say, “we have made itthrough worse before”

— Clint Smith

all I hear is the wind slapping against the gravestones
of those who did not make it, those who did not
survive to see the confetti fall from the sky, those who

did not live to watch the parade roll down the street.
I have grown accustomed to a lifetime of aphorisms
meant to assuage my fears, pithy sayings meant to

convey that everything ends up fine in the end. There is no
solace in rearranging language to make a different word
tell the same lie. Sometimes the moral arc of the universe

does not bend in a direction that will comfort us.
Sometimes it bends in ways we don’t expect & there are
people who fall off in the process. Please, dear reader,

do not say I am hopeless, I believe there is a better future
to fight for, I simply accept the possibility that I may not
live to see it. I have grown weary of telling myself lies

that I might one day begin to believe. We are not all left
standing after the war has ended. Some of us have
become ghosts by the time the dust has settled.