FROM WHAT IS

I made it to the library today although I haven’t been reading much. I thought I had only two books (there were about five and two audiobooks) to pick up so I went looking for that New Yorker Book of Poems from 1969 that I had out a while ago. I knew no one else would have grabbed it. Now I have an anthology for perusal. Oddly enough, I opened it to a Mark Strand poem. It’s a long one, so I put it at the end of this post. The end of the poem is in keeping with the “chat” we are having about “what is.”

In my immediate world, "what is" is not much fun. Mom was loopy this morning, dizzy, mentally jumping around and then getting her preach on about getting along with the neighbor. This never goes over well with me. There are times when she sermonizes or philosophizes, rather excluding the person she is addressing. She talks a lot about "her beliefs" and "her belief system," at which time I counter with my tendency to rely on my experience. 

It's all so painful I scarcely know how to scratch the surface of the intensity. I will keep trying.

Off to her dentist for a teeth cleaning because she felt she could not drive herself. The hygienist took her blood pressure again and it was high. That might explain the dizziness and peculiar flight of metaphysics out of context. She wants to exert control and influence over me (others also, but me especially) in this realm. I grow impatient with her "lessons."

She talks about dying more than she ever has. When her comments are mentioned later, she either doesn't remember or shrugs them off, or both. Getting a consistent read on how she is, is very hard. And I just don't know what to make of it. 

So, I renewed my efforts to find a doctor who specializes in geriatric medicine and we have an appointment in 10 days. I also found a orthopedic surgeon to get a second opinion on a hip replacement. Researching doctors, forwarding charts from previous doctors, the all of it, all exhausting. And no outlet for my fear, my panic, my astonished pain, my skidding into loss.

Here are today's tomatoes with my first Thai red chili pepper. My tomatoes have spider mites. Other plants have some kind of mold. It's always something. But I did make progress on cleaning off my gardening bench. And, somehow, I made it into the pool for my half-mile swim. I cried while I swam. Coals to Newcastle? I should have imagined myself as Alice swimming in her own tears, chasing after the mouse.

THE MAP

Composed, generally defined

  By the long sharing

Of contours, continents and oceans

  Are gathered in

The same imaginary net.

  Over the map

The portioned air, at times but

  A pure, cloudless

Canopy of artificial calm.

  Lacking the haze,

The blurred edges that surround our world,

  The map draws

Only on itself, outlines its own

  Dimensions, and waits,

As only a thing completed can,

  To be replaced

By a later version of itself.

  Wanting the presence

Of a changing space, my attention turns

  To the world beyond

My window, where the map’s colors

  Fade into a vague

Afterimage and are lost

  In the variable scene

Of shapes accumulating. I see

  A group of fields

Tend slowly inland from the breaking

  Of the fluted sea,

Blackwing and herring gulls, relaxed

  On the air’s currents,

Glide out of sight, and trees,

  Cold as stone

In the gray light of this coastal evening,

  Grow gradually

Out of focus. From the still

  Center of my eyes,

Encompassing in the end nothing

  But their own darkness,

The world spins out of reach, And yet,

  Because nothing

Happens where definition is

  Its own excuse

For being, the map as it was:

  A diagram

Of how the world might look could we

  Maintain a lasting

Perfect distance from what is.

— Mark Strand

KEEP THE DISTANCE SHORT

Funny how some posts, some poems I post, are more resonant than others. It’s odd or interesting or curious to me that often the choices are very nearly random; I feel the post needs a poem and I root around in my paltry West Coast poetry library and see if anything nearly fits the mood of the post or anything I might have mentioned.

Such was the case with the Mark Strand selection. One friend reposted it on her FB feed. Another wrote me a sweet note:

Dear Sally Anne,

Your last bit reminds me of a thought from one of my teachers, paraphrased;

“the measure of our pain is the distance between where we think we should be and where we think we are.”

True.

The solution is implied in the statement.

Love, J

So that thought has been with me all day, as it is certain the path my thoughts are on quite a bit of the time. (I seem to be in slight remission today.) Not sure how one keeps the distance short. As I understand it, lots of good hearts and minds are working on that problem.

Mom went for an MRI today, to make sure none of her dizziness and "interesting lights" in her head were indications of a stroke. Trying to find a female doctor of geriatric medicine on this side of LA is also challenging. Making medical appointments, researching doctors, are frustrating and slow processes. Her new GP thinks she should get a second opinion on her bad hip as well. 

David, my co-gardener, came over to dig up the dying purslane and to clean out an area for a new little bed so that I could get my Fall crops going. I will likely miss their glory as I will be in New York in October but still ... Blue Lake string beans, more tomatoes, another cucumber, more lima beans, and more peppers. The garden looks a bit more bare now, but at least I can see where I need to deadhead and replant. I will try to get some photos tomorrow. By the time I finished tonight, I was gardening in the dark.

So, I will leave you with another Mark Strand. It's interesting to see how rough his early works are. This one was first published in 1964.

WHEN THE VACATION IS OVER FOR GOOD

It will be strange

Knowing at last it couldn't go on forever,

That certain voice telling us over and over

That nothing would change.

And remembering too,

Because by then it will all be done with, the way

Things were, and how we had wasted time as though

There was nothing to do,

When, in a flash

The weather turned, and the lofty air became

Unbearably heavy, the wind strikingly dumb

And our cities like ash,

And knowing also,

What we never suspected, that it was something like summer

At its most august except that the nights were warmer

And the clouds seemed to glow,

And even then,

Because we will not have changed much, wondering what

Will become of things, and who will be left to do it

All over again,

And somehow trying,

But still unable, to know just what it was

That went so completely wrong, or why it is

We are dying.

— Mark Strand, Selected Poems, Knopf, 1990

This was likely a response to the Cold War and the nukes and all, but it sure feels like it fits in our global warming and the wingnut conservative jihad today.

LIKE TOMORROW, LIKE YOUR LIFE

In the case of ye olde kitteh, Cooder, absence does make the cat heart grow fonder. In the week that I have been back, she has spent a good deal more time hanging out on the bed with me, sitting on my lap for extended petting and shedding, and generally being friendlier. She must feel pretty well, if she can do this in this crushing heat. She even has a good appetite, if mainly for ... not Greenies anymore, kids ... kitty crack or Temptations. I do need to get her to the vet, however, to get her nails clipped, some hydration equipment, and a B12 shot. But it is a comfort to me that she is hanging in so well at 17.5 years.

Gosh, there's so much to catch up on, it is difficult to know where to start. 

Okay, here's some here and now. Stupid-hurt-me-now-disorienting heat, but the only air conditioner is in my current bedroom, so that's a plus. It's hot enough that it is tempting to run it now, at 9:00 pm. On the positive side of the street, the city pool is open for lap swimming in the evening. It is only a 3 minute drive ... too hot to walk or bike ... as opposed to going to Whittier to the YMCA. Also, no Jesus propaganda! And the pool is outdoors, which is as it should be, and pleasant. Mom sprang for a new swimsuit, flippers, and hand paddles, which are all fun for me. The flippers make the 1/2 mile swim go SO MUCH FASTER. Unfortunately, this pool only offers lap swimming hours through August, but I am going to take advantage whilst I can.

Gardening is lovely, although somewhat overwhelming, given that I was overly ambitious to begin with. My tomatoes are producing beautiful fruit, but they were not spaced and caged properly, me never having done this before, so now I am trying to stake them. And it is hot hot hot in the backyard. I need to get some shading materials for my lettuces as we are at the beginning of a heat wave and they are getting hammered. Always something to do ...




Still unpacking and sorting, although it is too hot to be active in any way, including making decisions. I do need to keep working, though, as there is too much chaos in the house with my belongings strewn about. I do like some order but creating it is not always the MOST FUN.

It's 73 degrees at 10:15 and it feels much hotter. The alarm for the FIOS back-up keeps going off, reminding me I need to get a new battery. See? Something else.

Well now, another two weeks have passed, and I cannot say the world, my world looks any cheerier. Despondency is doing better than my tomatoes which were sloppily planted and not doing as well as I would like. I cannot tell if I am going to lose a few of them, although I have been trying to clip off the dead stuff, mulch, and fertilize. My mother cannot quite believe how much work there is to do in the garden. As with so many other things, the tasks seems never ending.

This is so out of date, but I'm going to go with it. 

I went to a work reunion party this past weekend and had a number of interesting conversations about the states of our lives. Many people are not where they thought, hoped, or worked to be at this point. I came across this poem and, in a moment of uncharacteristic optimism or good will ...

THE GOOD LIFE

You stand at the window.
There is a glass cloud in the shape of a heart.
The wind's sighs are like caves in your speech.
You are the ghost in the trees outside.

The street is quiet.
The weather, like tomorrow, like your life,
is partially here, partially up in the air.
There is nothing you can do.

The good life gives no warning.
It weathers the climate of despair
and appears, on foot, unrecognized, offering nothing,
and you are there.

— Mark Strand, Selected Poems, Knopf, 1990

SMOOTHES THE STRANGE WORLD

Although it is quite late and if I don’t get to sleep soon, tomorrow will be a rough one, I need to get back on the “writing horse” and giddyup. 

The two months since I last posted have really flown by. The memorial for Stuart took up quite a bit of my focus and energy. The event was beautiful and all the attendees seemed moved and appreciative. After recovering from that labor of love, I got busy with emptying out my Berkeley storage space. Amazingly, I did manage, with the Herculean help of FMB, KDC, MPC, and transportation assists from MDS and AG. 

Back in Southern California now, dealing with the awful hated heat, the flotsam and jetsam I saved from my Berkeley storage, the garden that is now a jungle, and a changed situation with my mother, I am rather stunned and gasping. All of this warrants more reflection and description, yet I find myself dumbfounded and foundering.

So, herewith, I begin to get in touch with myself and you all.

PRISMS

What is beheld through glass seems glass.

The quality of what I am

Encases what I am not,

Smoothes the strange world.

I perceive it slowly,

In my time,

In my material,

As my pride,

As my possession:

The vision is love.

When life crashes like a cracked pane

Still shall I love

Even the strange dead as the living once.

Death also sees, though distantly,

And I must trust then as now

A prism—of another kind,

Through which one may not put one's hand to touch.

— Laura Riding Jackson