OUT OF TOUCH WITH THE BREAKDOWN

When the days are cool and grey, it is even harder for me to do anything beyond binge-watching something or other. And so it is today. Mom and I have already been out to her macular degeneration doctor and back, so it is not as if the day is completely wasted. I just want to pull up the covers and snuggle, no doubt with Butterscotch sucking up to me for warmth.

However, Mom's lunch people are having a Valentine's lunch somewhere so I suppose I will lug her over there. I think she is asleep right now, my having suggested a bit of shut eye between events.

And on and on and on ...

Waiting for Janet to get out of her CAT scan. I am encouraged because in the last couple of days, her cough cleared up significantly. Given that we both had colds back in January, this could be just a lingering bacterial infection or something. I suppose I will be holding my breath for the next few days anyway.

As I posted on FB, that slew of plants I was telling you about are all in actual dirt and homes of their own. That's unusual for me, but I did manage to get them dealt with. Of course, there is a high possibility of me killing them anyway, but for the moment, we can enjoy them. The cheap bulbs I planted are also doing their magic hopefully. I am stupid enough to think I should run over to the Home Depot that is just across the street to buy a few more good quality bulbs. Then again, if I need to spend some garden time tomorrow, I could just plant my sunflowers and work on weeding.

I know. I know. Giving up the gardening. However. I was stressed today and I did find it relaxing to have my hands in the dirt and shift my focus to repotting rather than worry. And as I did, some problem knots cleared up and a way forward was presented. Oh yeah. I still have the trailing lilac, the wisteria, and the two new roses to relocate so there's a fair amount of work right there.

And! And! And! I saw the first artichoke thistle.

Mom is on her way out of the CT scan, so I will check out for now.

So, in the spirit truth, justice, and the American way, I went to bed around 10:00 when I hit that desperately sleepy moment. I slept reasonably well, without benefit of an audiobook or podcast to lull me to sleep. But lo! if I did not sleep a solid 11 hours, save for Butterscotch's need to make bread on my bare shoulder. However, I am not moving very quickly today. Helas!

And then came coffee. Yum Yum Yum. I likely won't be moving much faster but at least it sets me on a path to enjoying parts of the day.

Saturday again, and dang if there isn't a neighbor mowing a lawn. I can also hear someone's bird bell out in the yard, but I don't see a kitty out there. Besides the tangelos still ripening on the tree, I can see a lot more work to do. I have the water running slowly in the area where I will plant the trailing lilac. Eventually, it is supposed to look like this.

It has been in its container for a couple of weeks now, and seems none the worse for it. The lilac likes the location I have chosen, so all systems seem go.

Having trouble (not again!) being motivated to do any of the myriad things I need to. Every where I look is a chore (and whose fault is that? mostly mine).

(I spy Vera out in the yard now, watching butterflies and looking for a sunny spot. And here comes Idris from her hiding place.)

Earlier this week, when I was feeling even worse, I washed all my bedding and hung the linens in the sun. I wash the restless nights, tears, worries, and those scary thoughts out. Getting into clean smelling sheets is always something of a comfort and a positive energy generator.

And hell, I can look out and see my carolina jessamyn flowering like crazy right there. It's happy.

I've been listening to various Joni Mitchell albums since I bought that nice British box set. This one was has been on repeat, although I don't quite understand it. Electricity. (Crappy sound quality.)

ELECTRICITY

The Minus is loveless
He talks to the land
And the leaves fall
And the pond over-ices
She don't know the system Plus
She don't understand
She's got all the wrong fuses and splices
She's not going to fix it up
Too easy

The masking tape tangles
It's sticky and black
And the copper
Proud headed Queen Lizzie *
Conducts little charges
That don't get charged back
Well the technical manual's busy
She's not going to fix it up too easy
And she holds out her flashlight
And she shines it on me
She wants me to tell her
What the trouble might be
Well I'm learning
It's peaceful
With a good dog and some trees
Out of touch with the breakdown
Of this century
They're not going to fix it up
Too easy

We once loved together
And we floodlit that time
Input output electricity
But the lines overloaded
And the sparks started flying
And the loose wires
Were lashing out at me
She's not going to fix that up
Too easy
But she holds out her candle
And she shines it in
And she begs him to show her
How to fix it again
While the song that he sang her
To soothe her to sleep
Runs all through her circuits
Like a heartbeat
She's not going to fix it up
Too easy

— Joni Mitchell, For the Roses

TIME FLATTENS

"My son had a brief meeting based on the fact that he thought whatever he thought."

Doesn't that sound like a poetry challenge, to write a poem based on those words? Or a logic problem? Or a philosophy problem? Maybe the shitgibbon IS a stable genius, we can't understand. Maybe dogs, with their heightened hearing, can get it.

I started this particular post with those particular words a month ago. Of course, by now, I have no clue what that was all about. 

As sad as I am about my sister's passing, I admit to being even more worried about my mother's cough and the x-ray showing some lung abnormalities. Janet having a significant illness besides old age is not something I had reckoned with. She is so healthy in other ways, that I just never never never imagined the end might be nursing her through cancer or some such thing. Tomorrow, I can call to get her radiology appointment and we can go from there. But, as my dear nieces know, this waiting and wondering thing is so so hard. 

Tolerate the uncertainty. That's what my first therapist, Peggy, said to me. Tolerate the tension of not knowing, not being resolved. 

I have so many "unresolved" issues around me, mostly in the form of chores and unrealized projects. I am just trying to get Monsterwood done as that has a pretty clear end if I just put in the time. And so, back to that for awhile.

Monday Monday ...

Mom's cough seems to be worse, which might, paradoxically, (I think) be a good thing. I don't think lung cancer in an old person would move that fast. Her CT scan is scheduled for Thursday evening. When you are in this position, you think of .... Lost that one. .... oh, you look for reasons for it to be something else. 

It's very isolating to be here alone, dealing with my emotions, her emotions and physicality, and, of course, my own struggles with depression. That I am not drinking anything, eating well, exercising, taking my meds and supplements and still I sink into death-contemplating despair is puzzling and even more depressing to me. 

I am in a bit of a late night cycle again, which makes the mornings tough. Fortunately, our schedule is a bit looser today so I don't need to chase around Mom. Or not that much. 

Butterscotch thinks she is my daemon. Or portable heater. 

This is one of the new rose bushes I bought. (Not a picture of my actual plant.) Now, I am reconsidering planting them here at all as I don't know how long I will be here. I'd probably return them if I could. 

Anyway, I ought to get dressed and get Mom to her lunch. It's very distressing to hear her coughing so much.

THE EDGES OF TIME

It is at the edges
that time thins.
Time which had been
dense and viscous
as amber suspending
intentions like bees
unseizes them. A
humming begins,
apparently coming
from stacks of
put-off things or
just in back. A
racket of claims now,
as time flattens. A
glittering fan of things
competing to happen,
brilliant and urgent
as fish when seas
retreat.

— Kay Ryan, THE BEST OF IT: NEW AND SELECTED POEMS, New York, Grove Press, 2010

A LITTLE WHILE AND THEN FLEW ON

There are those days when the baby dementors, the ones who come knocking on your door like Jehovah's Witness pretty sure they won't get any converts, are walking down your psychic street and you really aren't sure how to stop them from addressing you. Days when the neighbor's completely legitimate mowing of the lawn, taking less than 15 minutes, seems like hours of water torture at a Philadelphia Eagles' victory celebration. Even the birds singing closer than the mower, the sight of many nasturtiums popping up in the garden, and the view of the filthy white cat sleeping underneath the spicy basil plant do nothing to improve your outlook.

I, for some misbegotten fancy, decided that I was sleepy enough to tough it out without benefit of medication. And I did sleep, just not deeply. I didn't have anxiety dreams as much as uneasy ones. I woke up often. And then the day is overcast and cool. Might be partly that SAD thing.

Not drinking (35 days), not binge-eating or anything, getting three hours of exercise a week (no swimming, though, the pool is closed until the beginning of MAY! I will be starting all over to get back into swimming shape!). I made my health insurance deadline. I have been doing a bit of gardening every day (mostly clean-up). I'm even making progress with the belonging reduction. Why do I just want to sit and watch all eight seasons of The Gilmore Girls, a show that I don't even wholly approve of? (I could be watching the French movies I paid for!)

Maybe it is just that part of the cycle. I don't think I have complained much of depression of late. And  it isn't really full-on depression, just a season of the down. I have stopped reading much of the news as I just, as they say, I just can't.

Pervading sense of loss. And disappointment. Life, the parade (not Trump's), travel, adventure (did I want that),  I would like to recapture some sense of possible opportunity.

My sister still lingers, at least of this writing. I came across this silly rattan cat purse thing (these people say it is worth $500). Carole had one that was a monkey. She had painted it white. I thought it was the coolest thing ever. I wish I could share this with her. She would get a real kick out of it. Funny how some small moments with people still blaze.

Since I have been on a steady exercise/sobriety/low food intake regime for about six weeks, maybe I should get crazy and have some pizza.

A couple of hours and a lot of sorrow later.

A week or ago, I noticed the remnants of a funeral arrangements out by the trash next door. I finally happened to see one of the neighbors, Gus, and asked him if there had been a recent loss in the family. He said that his wife, also named Sally, had lost her younger brother recently. Her older brother had died five years ago.

Sally and I ran into one another at the trash cans this afternoon. I expressed my condolences and spoke to her of Carl's passing and how hard that had been, and continues to be. We hugged and cried. Not exactly a light encounter out by the trash.

Then, my mom went to take a nap. I was sitting here, as ever, trying to write. My mom wanders in without her glasses and says something along the lines that the doctor called while I was out and that they told her to go to the hospital.

Yeah.

Well, it is Saturday and unlikely that they called today as I haven't been any farther away than the aforementioned trash cans. I somehow thought to call the doctor's office to see if I could get any more information, even given the weekend. Fortunately, they did have someone there to look at her chart. She has had a cough for quite awhile now so they gave her a chest x-ray. They saw something and have requisitioned at CT scan. Nodules ...

So, now I am sitting with this, trying to get a read on the awfulness of it all and the relentless cool and grey out there. And then my brother David calls to tell me that my sister has passed away.

I don't even think a DiFara pizza could help me at this point. My niece who has also not been eating or drinking due to health reasons during all this time her mother was passing away still had the humor to share a food and alcohol fantasy with me.  Pitcher of margaritas and nachos.  No.  Tequila and ceviche.  Or amazing Chardonnay and linguine with clams.  All things that would help right now

I agree with that. I might settle for pizza and maybe a gin and tonic.

Three slices and several hours later.

The gin and tonic doesn't even appeal all that much. I want to crawl into a ball and descend deep into unconsciousness. I can't tease out all the parts of my sorrow. It's a rather free form depth here.

After posting a word about this on FB, I received many sweet sweet condolence notes.

One FB acquaintance, a Princeton lit professor, offered me this poem when I asked.

NEVER AGAIN WOULD BIRDS' SONG BE THE SAME

He would declare and could himself believe
That the birds there in all the garden round
From having heard the daylong voice of Eve
Had added to their own an oversound,
Her tone of meaning but without the words.
Admittedly an eloquence so soft
Could only have an influence on birds
When call or laughter carried it aloft.
Be that as may be, she was in their song.
Moreover her voice upon their voices crossed
Had now persisted in the woods so long
That probably it would never be lost.
Never again would birds' song be the same
And to do that to birds was why she came.

— Robert Frost

Which also reminds me of the Hunter-Garcia song for Janis. (Forgive them, for they sing off key.)

BIRD SONG

All I know is something like a bird within her sang
All I know she sang a little while and then flew on
Tell me all that you know
I'll show you
Snow and rain

If you hear that same sweet song again, will you know why?
Anyone who sings a tune so sweet is passing by
Laugh in the sunshine
Sing, cry in the dark
Fly through the night

Don't cry now
Don't you cry
Don't you cry any more
La da da da

Sleep in the stars
Don't you cry
Dry your eyes on the wind
La da da da da da

All I know is something like a bird within her sang
All I know she sang a little while and then flew on
Tell me all that you know
I'll show you
Snow and rain

THE SAME SMALL TABLE

 the tea leaves
of some dream will be stuck
to the china slope of the hour —

Evening, hallway hazard.

I certainly don't know about any of you, as we polite people don't talk about money, we polite Americans, but I, for at least one, get very stressed out about making those (too few) dollars stretch. This was a big expenditure month with some bigger bills falling due, as they are wont to do. Insurance! Insurance! Insurance! I guess I won't be purchasing that new wisteria for the front yard. (As if I had planted the trailing lilac I bought a couple of weeks ago. Well, hey, I am keeping it watered, yo.) Plus, a couple of extra meals out for Janet's birthday.

And going to the movies! We saw The Shape of Water. Mom didn't like it very much and said she was never going to the movies again. After a lifetime of going to the movies, that experience didn't seem like a good one to end on. Fifty Shades Forever? (Or is that Fifty Shades Free?) She was name checking George Clooney, Irene Dunne, and the like (I know those two are not contemporaneous.) I enjoyed going to the movies, and I think it is good for her to get out of her comfort zone, so we will go again.

And so many projects. Just doesn't slow down much. The sleep and motivational issues can really smack up against one another. Last night, I made the homemade chicken-turkey breakfast sausage that has been on my to-do list. And one would rather not let 3 pounds of dead animal get thrown out. . Well, the sausage was made but goes to waste anyway as I accidentally used a reactive saucepan to reduce the apple cider. When I had put everything anyway and was doing the dishes, well, there was a lot of paint missing from the bottom of the pan. And my best guess is that that paint is now in that sausage. As I was cooking, I realized I would not be able to sleep if I did not clean the kitchen floor. A late night and a late morning. And we know how that goes.

And so it goes (in the trash, next trash day).

In better news, I just saw my first monarch of the season, checking out a calendula. There's a sweet flowery smell in the garden, faint but discernible, that just might be the Carolina Jessamine that is really blooming for the first time this year. I might even be inspired to do some gardening, if I can just get a better handle on the writing that MUST BE DONE. (Not this.)

Well, I best go round up LaMaMa and take her to the therapy gym before it gets much later. Sigh. Note to self: Progress was made.

Before I go, I have to recommend a movie to those of you who 1) like French language films, (2) have a few extra dollars, and (3) can stomach a sad movie about women under constraints due to religion. Every year about this time is the online French film festival. I know there are plenty of French films on Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime (oh that renewal was another extra cost this month) that I have yet to watch, but I enjoy seeing some newer releases. Of course, I never remember before the fact and always have to "cram" in a bunch of them before the deadline. At any rate, you can rent this one film from iTunes for $2.00 (the whole festival is about $9). (Here are some reviews: http://www.artitute.com/2017/02/08/a-wedding-you-shouldnt-miss-film-review-of-noces-a-wedding/,
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/review/a-wedding-noces-review-938714.) The movie is A Wedding (Noces). I watched after coming back from seeing The Shape of Water. Noces is the one I can't stop thinking about.

The next day ...

A) There are many windows open that you did not personally open and iTunes has stopped playing.

Q) What is your cats were walking on your laptop?

Also, was feeling a bit blue, not sure what to do with my sad energy. I have the usual piles of stuff, plus a deadline on health insurance tomorrow. And then, gardening occurred to me. I planted some of those plants you saw a week ago or so, as well as trimming some plants with stickers in bare feet with no gloves (bougainvillea, roses, boysenberries). Now I need to take a bath and see if I can't soak out the stickers.

I've been trying to finish this post for a few days. Couldn't find a poem or anything to share or was too tired to proofread. Time to let this one go.

A PORTRAIT OF THE READER WITH A BOWL OF CEREAL

"A poet ... never speaks directly.
as to someone at the breakfast table."
— Yeats

Every morning I sit across from you
at the same small table,
the sun all over the breakfast things —
curve of a blue-and-white pitcher,
a dish of berries —
me in a sweatshirt or robe,
you invisible.

Most days, we are suspended
over a deep pool of silence.
I stare straight through you
or look out the windows at the garden,
the powerful sky,
a clouds passing behind a tree.

There is no need to pass the toast,
the pot of jam,
or pour you a cup of tea,
and I can hide behind the paper
rotate in its drum of calamitous news.

But some days I may notice
a little door swinging open
in the morning air,
and maybe the tea leaves
of some dream will be stuck
to the china slope of the hour —

then I will lean forward,
elbows on the table,
with something to tell you,
and you will look up, as always,
your spoon dripping milk, ready to listen.

— Billy Collins, Picnic, Sky, Pittsburg, University of Pittsburgh Press, 1998

 the tea leaves
of some dream will be stuck
to the china slope of the hour —

ONE DAY I WENT

I hardly know what to do with myself, now that I don't have Moby Dick on my ever present, psychic to-do list. Of course, that list is long, and likely endless, but that is one large thing done. Given that I didn't sleep and am feeling pretty down, the temptation toward sitting in bed to watch many more episodes of Get Shorty is quite compelling.

Last night's lack of sleep uncomfortably skirted genuine insomnia. The reasons for such sleeplessness aren't at all clear to me, as at about 4:00 while driving on the freeway, I could scarcely keep my eyes open. And when you really need a purring, cuddling cat to soothe you, where are they? Cooder's finest quality was her curling up in my arm every night, next to my head, purring me to sleep. None of this current crop seems so inclined.

I broke rules yesterday, buying (quite inexpensive) yarn at a thrift store, and coming home with MORE BOOKS! And cookbooks and novels at that. If only I cooked or read novels these days. That's where the ennui kicks in hard. I just like that rush of thinking I am going to do things, not actually doing them.

Oh, and a couple more plants.

Is it physiologically normal to be so addicted to consumption or have we just managed to condition ourselves? As I was saying yesterday, or meant to say, why am I so, at the moment of seeing them, enthusiastic about plants for instance? It's not as if I spend a lot of time outside here doing anything BUT gardening (and swimming when I am into that). Would my life be diminished at all without plants and gardening? I know the physicality of gardening is good for me, but I do tend to lose interest or be intermittent about keeping things going. Yes, I let them die.

I have always had a surfeit of enthusiasm and energy at the outset of things, excited to think of projects, and have not found follow through to be one of my shining virtues. Like many of us, I am overwhelmed with stuff, and the stuff of others around me. Blah blah blah. Perhaps slowing down, even-ing out, smoothing out that energy surge to take me through completion.

Wait. Am I endorsing consciousness and awareness here? A refocus from just the beginning and the end? Interesting that one of the activities at which I am most successful is reading. I don't like beginning or finishing books. I prefer to be thick and deep into the process of the narrative. Hmmm ...

In the interests of generating energy, I think I will put this aside for now and see if I can't get a few things off of my to-do list. Maybe even plant some plants.

Stay tuned.

Almost anything carried to its logical extreme becomes depressing if not carcinogenic.
— Ursula K. LeGuin

I feel that way about Saturday afternoon. Saturday afternoon feels like time running out, not enough time to do ? to be ? I realize it is a different animal when the rhythms of family and work are swinging along. Maybe Saturday afternoon feels the loneliest. This is likely another artifact of my romanticizing the life I don't have. I could revel or even just enjoy not feeling particularly pressured, feeling a bit in the nap mode, feeling I got some things done today ... I took my mom to get a haircut and for a threading facial.

I suppose I am in between compulsions and those many tasks that are weighing on me. I haven't paid this month's bills yet, picked out a health care provider, wrapped some presents left over from Christmas, made the homemade chicken-turkey sausage for which I have already procured the ingredients, or planted those nice plants I showed you the other day. Or continued my Monsterwood edit/re-write. Or begun to knit the new scarf with the yarn I bought the other day. Or started reading our next book group book, The Left Hand of Darkness. So, see? Lots to do, but I feel anxious, drifting, and in some kind of free fall.

The next morning.

Going out with the cousins to have a birthday lunch for Janet in a bit. Also have to give a shout out to two Debs. D. Hammond is having a birthday. D. Molina saved my ass last night by having sent a book a while back that I happened to pull out of the pile. Furiously Happy: A Funny Book about Horrible Things had me laughing into tears and changed those brain chemicals that were getting stagnant.

Be grateful, am grateful for friends.

In the pile of books I shouldn't have bought was New American Poets of the '90s.

HOW I HAD TO ACT

One day I went and bought a fake fur coat
from two old ladies in a discount shop
no young woman should have walked into: taupe

fluff with leopard spots for four hundred bucks
which I charged — no cash till my paycheck —
admired by the two old saleslady crooks.

Five minutes later I was at my shrink's
casually shoving the bag by a chair
one arm flopping out synthetically. Trinkets

all belonging to my crooked grandmother,
floated across the wall already filled with the shrinks
trinkets. Afterwards, among the minks

on the street, I caught sight of my grandmother
in a shopwindow. The wind was howling.
I wore the fake coat with a babushka. Another

possibility was: that was me. I didn't
have four hundred dollars and felt humiliated
by what I had acted out and berated

myself for buying a blazer in the size
of my sister the week before! You MESS!
I called myself a lot of names. Eyes

on the bus looked up when I barrel on
in the coat I couldn't return to the store.
I refuse to go shopping alone anymore.

My rich friend said, "A fun fur . . . how daring."
How daring to become my clever, lying
grandmother and before that my sister, whose loved,

dirty stuffed leopard Gram craftily destroyed.
I had promised myself a real fur coat
which I wanted as I did a real self, employed

with real feelings. Instead I bought a fake
which I couldn't afford. "What a mistake!"
I chortled to my shrink, who agreed,

though I did not want her to. How terrible,
I wanted her to say, How terrible
you have to act this way.

Molly Peacock, Take Heart, New York, Random House, 1989.

LET A SPLINTER SWERVE

Well, kids, today isn't looking much better here in the pre-noon hour. Even with a comfortably sunny day, the Kermit Place Readers discussing Moby Dick this afternoon, and a teeth-cleaning on the horizon, I just want to melt into the ground like the Wicked Witch of the West. Although she didn't really want to melt.

Mom was pretty good this morning. She had no complaints of spaciness or light-headedness which has not been the case for a couple of days now. Her arthritic pain points weren't giving her any trouble. I had a probably bad idea that I was going to get her to the gym to restart her physical routine, but I didn't have it in me to hustle us. I will try again tomorrow.

The weights of fear and despair are pulling on me. Mourning for my sister and my mother. Feeling sad for both of my nieces being in pain, confusion, and uncertainty for one of them. The alienation and loneliness of the long distance caregiver.

This is when the impulse buying can settle in. I impulse bought a bunch of plants at the 99 Cent store as they had a fresh shipment of Iceland poppies, African daisies, primroses, dianthus, and pansies. I would probably feel better if I were out there gardening. Another year where I have sworn to less gardening. Maybe "less" gardening isn't the answer. Maybe less ambitious gardening (Martha, I can hear you chuckling) is a better idea. Gardening does get me outside and amused. I did put back a good looking tomato plant. I have volunteer tomatoes all over which need to be pulled out. And a bit more garden planning is probably in order.

The tangelos are coming along nicely. They are still too hard to pick, but it won't be much longer. The tree is sprouting branches like crazy. I hope the next owners don't tear out the trees and the bougainvillea. The Meyer lemon tree has just a bit of fruit left. The lime tree in the container is also putting out some fruit.

Okay, just writing that soothed some of my sadness, so no, I am not giving up gardening. I am just going to stay away from the nursery where I tend to spend lots of money.

Later.

Been an up and down kind of day.  A few hours ago, while driving back from the library, I thought "I am like a boil that needs to be lanced to get the pus out, or I have an emotional pimple to be squeezed." That's not pretty, right? I wished that I were drinking or binge eating. But I stuck to edamame and Diet Coke ... and some tv ... (watching the EPIX production of Get Shorty, which is pretty good).

And there's Butterscotch all curled up asleep as if she didn't upchuck on some clean pants and some beautiful wool I was winding into balls. Now it will be lots of fun to untangle.

But hey! Daffodils and freesia and all of this to get planted.

XXVI

The brain within its groove
Runs evenly and true;
But let a splinter swerve,
'T were easier for you
To put the water back
When floods have slit the hills,
And scooped a turnpike for themselves,
And blotted out the mills!

Emily Dickinson