In every book I read there is a line, sometimes two or three, that can’t be turned away from. I have to underline them, defile the book, because they are that revealing – they command something in me, in my heart, beyond me. If a book doesn’t have at least one sentence like this, I wonder if it was worth reading at all.
I think I found one or two in Zadie Smith’s On Beauty.
The greatest lie ever told about love is that it sets you free.About once a week I go to the post office. I have several packs of thirty seven cent stamps. I suppose I could walk in there with a whopping fourteen pennies or however many I need and get all those stamps to make the rest of lot legal, but I enjoy going to the post office. It's only a few blocks from my house, it's a nice to see the post ladies, tether the Honey Bee and watch her nervously through the window, maybe run into the random neighbor out doing their errands. But more than all that, there's something very satisfying about giving my two cents, quite literally, and getting that stamp. It's one of those rare times where my two cents are genuinely wanted - they're considered so valuable that I even get something in return!
There is precisely one perfectly clean room in the house - actually, between both cottages - just one. It's the mudroom. I cleaned it today. It was tremendously satisfying. Occasionally I go stand in it and pretend the rest of the house is equally shiny, dusted, windexed and smelling antiseptic - ammonia and laundry soap. Instead, I know in my heart of hearts that beneath the dishwasher lurks more rat poop. Rat poop I haven't been able to get at yet and sop up (SHIVER.) This preys on my neurosis like you can't imagine.
Today was a magnificent day because today LB and I went to Bon Tempe after she finished work and walked the Shady Side Trail with Secret Agent Dog and her best bud. It's been over two weeks and I'm not sure who enjoyed it more - me or her. I'll say me. She'll say her - or rather, she would say her if she could say her but she can't so she won't. Instead she says something like arf (but it comes out sounding squeaky.)
None of the workmen showed up today. What's up with that? They have been fastidious and fabulous and prompt and reliable. Today - not a word. Maybe they had premonitions about the rat poop and stayed away. I love them. I miss them.
I don't think I've taken the opportunity to say WAY TO GO, ITALY!!! That was a stellar World Cup match and no one, clearly, is more deserving. Shame on that brutish thug, Zindane.
Love is like war: easy to begin but very hard to stop. - H.L. Mencken
Firstly, *ding, ding, ding* ten points for Cassie! You know, she won the Why I Want Boris/Russian art contest too and has her own book of proletariat art from the Moscow Press (go Boris!) Cassie, you’re a WINNER!
I was so moved by responses to my last entry. They were all so sweet and real. Once, I risked my sense of self, my dignity, my self respect, for what I thought was love. I’m not so sure, in retrospect, that it was love at all that I was risking for. It was perhaps obsession and addiction, but certainly it doesn’t look like love in hindsight. I passed through many years where I risked little – but maybe that’s not entirely true at the core of it. I was thinking last night after pondering responses here that I feel like perhaps I’ve risked nothing, and thus everything.
I don’t think giving things up is the same as risking per se. I have to think about that. I certainly have not felt like I’ve given anything up for love – I haven’t given up my dreams, ambitions, goals, job, potentials – nothing. I feel, maybe, like I wish I would have given up something. I’m not sure why. Not because to me it’s some emblem, some proof – but because in retrospect there were paths I didn’t explore that I think I might have liked too – that required a kind of risk I couldn’t even understand. Once I read a poem called “Turning Thirty” and the author wrote, “Turning thirty is about giving up infinite possibilities.” I didn’t feel that way when I turned thirty. Maybe I’m feeling that way after having turned forty. And that maybe doesn’t have anything to do with love at all.
Zosia wrote that she risked her own independent career for love – being the one to nurture the family. I didn’t. I didn’t risk an independent career. I rose to the top of mine, made my mark, and at the end of the day the accomplishments, however noble, and they have been noble, feel somewhat empty. You know, after all, at the end of the day, what really matters? As I’ve matured (and it’s taken a long time for me to mature,) it seems for me to all come down to the quality of my relationships and not what I can accomplish. All I want to accomplish at my day’s end is a great deal of love – is the cultivation of meaningful relationships and joy and not a list of accomplishments. I don’t know.. this makes me ponder and it makes me wonder.
Anyways… a few updates. It’s likely the bathroom will be nearly done by the week’s end and yes, the week ends tomorrow. The rat infestation continues with a vengeance. I have an exterminator coming out today. I’ve appealed to the folks at the restaurant next store (again) to move their trash from the border of my property – for whatever reason, they don’t seem to want to do this (though they’ve agreed to put out electronic rat traps around the trash.) I’ve come to the realization that the reason they won’t move the trash away from residential borders is because they know it’s a problem and they don’t want to bring the problem any closer to the space that they work and play in. I’ve called vector control and we’ve had a nice long talk. They’re calling the health department and checking into what else might be done. I hate this.
Secret gets her stitches out (hopefully) tomorrow. Hmmm. Back to work with me.Do you want me to tell you something really subversive? Love is everything it’s cracked up to be. That’s why people are so cynical about it….It really is worth fighting for, being brave for, risking everything for. And the trouble is, if you don’t risk anything, you risk even more. - Erica Jong
Have I mentioned that I love Warren Buffet? I think I might have mentioned that before. And if I haven’t, let me go on record and profess my adoration - I love Warren Buffet! Among my many hopes and dreams is to one day have lunch with Warren Buffet. In that cosmic six degrees of separation thing, if someone can help me out here, I’d be duly indebted.
Despite the fact that I have these little hairclips that I got at some five and ten in a variety of pastel colors – that I’ve not seen worn by another adult other than, recently, in a bad tabloid pic, Anna Nicole Smith, my adoration for Warren Buffet is not like that. It is true platonic love. I love that he doesn’t have a computer on his desk. I love that he reads. I love that he trusts people, importantly the people who work for him. I love his professed relationship to money (that is, he’s not emotionally tied to it.) And most recently I love that on the eve of retirement he gave away thirty-eight BILLION dollars to charitable causes. Sure there must be some tax incentive, but who the hell cares. That’s thirty eight billion. It makes me contemplate a move to Seattle to try for some sweet job giving away Gate’s money. But I like where I live and I’m not really willing to compromise on that. And while I’ve never been all too fond of Bill Gates, I do have a great deal of respect for his decision to step down from Microsoft and dedicate his time to the family foundation.
Have I mentioned I love Warren Buffet? Okay, I love my Argentinean plumber/electrician too. And my American rocker foreman. And his girlfriend’s father. And his friend the carpenter. And I adored the Portugal v. Netherlands match the other day (wasn’t that just like a school yard brawl!?!) And frankly, anyone who didn’t just fall smitten with the soul, spirit, sportsmanship of Ghana this morning in the Brazil v. Ghana match just wasn’t paying attention.
And I love the twins who are turning four next week. They pull me into their magic and forget who I am. I really love them. And of course, Secret Agent Dog. And there’s Ed too (does it mean something that he falls this low on the list, below Warren Buffet and the Ghana National team? Let’s just say this list isn’t in order of priority…for now… so we don’t have to explain things.. heh. Kidding.)
I love Cassie and LB and Mom.. and Hell’s Angels. (Okay.. I don’t actually love Hell’s Angels at all, but ten points to anyone who can name the reference.. here’s another hint: He’s got golden chains on his leather jacket and on the back are written the names…)
I have a question for my gentle readers… what, if anything, have you risked for love?I know, I know, I’ve been terrible about updating here. Things have been going along swimmingly, yet quite busily as well. (Is busily a word?)
I love that when touched by Ithuriel’s spear, the true form of evil is revealed. So occasionally I pick the flower and hold it, waiting for something to change – wondering if the evil that lurks in me will suddenly become revealed in some striking form. As long as I look pretty much the same, at least we can assume I’m not cloaked – you get what you see – fangs and all (wink.)
For those who remember the Hell’s Kitchen saga of last year, what you mightn’t know is that the saga never ended. There remained a built-in dishwasher that never had a cabinet to build itself into. Without said cabinet, the dishwasher, when opened to be loaded or unloaded, would become front-heavy and tip. Hundreds of dollars of broken dishes later leaves me restless. The floor has never been quite finished, trim was never trum. And what’s gone unmentioned is that we haven’t had a bathroom – for the past year it’s been all sub flooring and a teetering toilet. To shower we go use the back cottage and the sink has been shut off for a year given a leakage problem. The little room can hardly be called a bathroom, and more suitably called a rather undignified toilet.
And there’s the problem of contractors/skilled labor in this part of the world being invariably (though not universally, as I’ve recently discovered) unreliable. Well, suddenly and without expectation a guy called me who’d gotten my name from a neighbor and through a rather whirlwind chain of events demolition began on the bathroom last Friday and has been proceeding at break neck speed ever since.
Sure, there was a trip to LA before that that failed to get mentioned here I believe, and last weekend a trip to DC. Blah, blah, blah. Whatever. What’s important is that this bathroom is finally coming together and every discovery has been great news! The walls and floor were ripped up to unveil NO dry rot! This is absolutely amazing (and what one gets for having a house built of precious woods!) An area that has been cause to suspect a roof leakage problem reveals itself to be a sink that drains under the house… as opposed to in a drain (!?!??!) It was easily connected to a drain and suddenly this likely means that there is/was no roof damage!
And all this news leads me to a notion called pronoia. It was first coined by a lyricist for the Grateful Dead. It means nearly the opposite of paranoia. It is a notion that there is a conspiracy by the universe to shower you with blessings. That by 10 am, an hundred things in the universe have conspired to go right, just for you. It really seems to be happening that way, if we pay attention.
There’ll be more later… but for now, if we touch ithuriel’s spear to Hell’s Kitchen it’s looking much better.. and the bathroom, the bathroom, the bathroom… ah.. what more can I say about that bathroom? It commences… love, love, love!I’m still working on those embarrassing moments. I’m on number three of five I suppose.
3) Before I had a good sense of how the internet and search engines worked, before I started this blog, I had another blog. I vented a rant called Independence Day in which I told the story of a failed first love with an aspiring comedian/actor. I mentioned his close friend, who has grown to be a rather successful comedian/actor. I mentioned these folks by their real names (thus it becomes important that I didn’t realize how search engines worked) and some of my remarks were visceral, blunt, personal and disparaging. In context, the piece was about betrayal and intimacy – deception and disease – and about removing the rosy glow of idealized first love to look at something in all it’s nakedness.
The piece was called Independence Day because it was about shuffling off the innocence and letting go the allusion. If you wrap your head around literary allusion it was about this:
we drove the car to the top of the parking ramp / on the 4th of july / we sat out on the hood with a couple of warm beers and watched the fireworks / explode in the sky / and there was an exodus of birds from the trees / but they didn’t know, we were only pretending / and the people all looked up and looked pleased / and the birds flew around like the whole world was ending
It was dramatic, yes.. what the fuck, I’m dramatic in my writing. Anyways… the subject was searching his own name and came across the piece. He was living in LA and tracked down my phone number and called to ream me out for putting such personal information on the internet and what if his future mother-in-law saw that!?! I have to say, I was mortified. I was embarrassed.
While there was nothing, technically, untrue, in what I wrote – in neither the actual events or in how I reflected on things –it also wasn’t the whole picture. But/and if you’d heard the Ani DiFranco song lyrics of the same name that inspired the essay you’d maybe get it.
so many sheep i quit counting / sleepless and embarrassed about the way that i feel / trying to make mole hills out of mountains / building base camp at the bottom of a really big deal / and did i tell you how i stopped eating? / when you stopped calling me / and i was cramped up shitting rivers for weeks / and pretending that i was finally free
Of course on the phone that day I couldn’t explain. All I could do was be embarrassed and mortified and apologize over and over. And within days I’d learned about meta tags that won’t allow for search engines to cache pages and I’d written personal pleas to search engines to remove this page. I was just mortified – I was so embarrassed.
Now, whenever I think of that relationship I don’t remember the good or the bad times, the deception or betrayal, the pain of lost love or innocence. All I remember is the entry in my blog and how sorry I was that he’d seen it. I have to admit that it feels better to just feel sorry than it did to carry around baggage filled with lost valuables.
and i don't think war is noble / and i don't like to think that love is like war / but i got a big hot cherry bomb, and i want to slip it through the mail slot / of your front door
Kaboom. Ouch.
Now the most interesting thing is that while that entry has long since been deleted from the internet, I still have it as a word.doc and to refresh my memory I just went back and read it. While I still regret that I used his real name and am embarrassed that he read it, etc. - man he so totally missed the mark. What an idiot.I love Valentine’s Day. I don’t feel the pressure that accompanies other holidays. I sent a bouquet of sweetheart roses to mom. When we were kids she made it the best holiday – a special dinner in the dining room on good china. Cherry cheese pie for dessert.
I bought Ed a Treo, which for those less tech among us combines several features in a single hand held device. You can send and receive email from it (it has a tiny keyboard), synchronize it with your work or home calendar and keep your schedule and contacts handy. It’s a cell phone. It’s a digital camera. It’s got a little video recorder. It’s an MP3 (music) player. You can get full internet access – so you can browse the internet, instant message, anything you can do while you’re online. You can take a picture or a video, for example, and immediately email that to someone from the device, no matter where you are. It can act as a wireless port and enable internet connectivity for your lap top. You could be on a boat on the Bay, for example, with your lap top and the Treo would enable internet connectivity and you could ruin a perfectly beautiful leisure day by being able to work. (How lovely.) On some level it sounds dangerous. He loves it.
I, on the other hand, received a fabulous new digital camera. This was a combined present for several holidays and probably makes up for errant gift giving behaviors of the past. It’s a Canon EOS 20D. I am so stoked!!
So yes, of course, these material gestures don’t actually signify love. They don’t mean that we love each other, that our relationship is going well, that we hold one another in a state of mutual regard and respect or that we’re happy. I’m not suggesting that things are going poorly, rather, merely, that these gifts don’t necessarily signify anything to the contrary. But maybe, you know, things aren’t always going perfectly and I won’t notice so much because I’ll be distracted with my frill’n awesome new digital camera.
Happy Valentines Day to you and yours! May the gifts you give and receive be glorious distractions from the imperfections of your lives and loves. If you find yourself in a single state this most perfect of holidays, it makes you no less in need of distraction – just go buy one of your own (you know, if you’re not with the one you love then love with one you’re with – even if you’re alone.. maybe, especially if you’re alone.) We’re all imperfect and we all need a little sugar.It’s strange. When I leave home, almost instantly, I become inspired. It’s as though the spectrum of pain and discomfort it takes for the artist within to be stirred is as benign as walking the jet way. It’s always been this way. Leaving home, familiar things, removing the distraction (and comfort) of most days moves something. I wax poetic and the world expands - ideas, dreams, sounds and images flood in a montage of mixed media. Of course it’s easy, a cop out of sorts, like being brave in a bubble. Somehow, returning home, all those ideas become like a dream I vaguely remember, spend all day trying to recall, and yet it never surfaces – a profound truth, the answer, the meaning of everything, allusively out of reach.
At home, perhaps, it’s this blinding love of things that gets in the way. Love, this ravenous monster – passion devouring passion. It’s a good time to reflect on these things, with greater time to further reflect and indulge around the corner.
You can safely assume that you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do. - Anne Lamott
To every heart love must come, but like a refugee. - L. Cohen
Puck is going to slap my hands. If you feel you can’t resist cutting your own hair, he’s said, time and again, just call me. I didn’t call him. It was in my eyes. It was just bothering me. In Berlin, one year, I took out a pen knife and sawed off my bangs. It was a tragedy – it looked absolutely terrible. Yesterday I was more careful. I used a scissors and a razorblade to soften the blunt edges. Jeez. He’s gonna be mad. But he’s only working Sundays and Mondays now and I leave for DC on Sunday morning, early and don’t return until late Tuesday night. I surely would have done something more drastic if left to my own devices in DC with hairs dangling in my eyes while I’m trying to focus and take notes at the meeting. I have to look at it like damage control. If he gives me that sideways look and sighs heavily, I’ll pretend I don’t know what he’s talking about. No, I didn’t cut my hair. You’ve always told me to call first. I wouldn’t do that.
Today is the day – or at least one of the days. It’s the staff meeting where preliminary proposals will be debuted and discussed for their feasibility and viability - proposals for staff reductions and down sizing.
It would indeed by a tragedy if the history of the human race proved to be nothing more noble than the story of an ape playing with a box of matches on a petrol dump. - David Ormsby-Gore
I already know what the proposals are. As I alluded to yesterday, they’re not enough to convince me. I’ve been told more surgical tactics are yet to be employed – and those are the ones I’m raising my eyebrow skeptically and waiting for. We shall see. We shall see.
Secret is particularly needy today. While the entire house and yard are at her disposal, all fifty pounds of her has climbed up on my study chair, shoved herself behind me, curled into a bean shape and her sleepy head is draped over the arm rest. She’s so adorable when she makes herself bean-shaped, despite the inconvenience I can’t bring myself to disturb her. Besides, she’ll spent the lion’s share of the day alone.
And if I merely make room, rightly, love will come.. albeit like a refugee. I need to muster being through this day rightly and make room for the unknown, infinite possibilities and the future. It’s not really about who is right it’s just about the way it’s gonna be. Bad hair day or not…My grandmother had a stroke on Sunday night. My mother flew to Minneapolis to be near her, to be with her, on Monday. She died this morning. Firstly, do not apologize. Secondly, don’t offer condolences. To do either of these things would denigrate her life.
My grandmother is a wonderful woman. The mother of my mother, she gave me the most precious gift. She is perhaps with me today in far keener state of mind than she has been for years. She is laughing and growing more youthful and vivacious as the seconds draw on and my grandfather’s arm wrap warmly around her, free of the burdens of flesh – as she grows more accustomed to this business of being dead and gets on with it.
As Rilke wrote:In other words, she doesn’t recognize me as alive and I refuse to lament these distinctions. To lament her death is to lament her life. What is death but a pause, a form of punctuation, in our lives? Death is the final proof that we have capacity to continue to grow and change. Death maybe isn’t our final act, but it’s often an awkward chrysalis for the living to behold. Don’t count me among them - those that view the becoming as awkward or untoward, that is. Do count me as among the living, however.
I am clear that my grandmother’s death is not about me. And I won’t try to step in and steal her center stage through some erroneous display of grief. This was her gesture - the last attached to this flesh that I’ll have the luxury of savoring. I am grateful and humbled and honored in the face of that.
I love the sound of rain. It’s dancing on the roof like a huge chorus of showgirls, tiny dancers, with little feet - little fairy showgirls with wings and pink and blue and yellow tutus. I imagine the gutters will be filled with glitter and fairy dust and I’ll be sweeping out the sparkly things far into summer.
She’s healing, though I dote on her endlessly and love her mercilessly – she’s surviving nonetheless. In an attempt to get back on the proverbial bike we’ve toured the local bike shop twice thus far. Her ears go back and she flinches when she sees the wheels turning - a grand set back from where she’d been. Several mountain bikers had heard the news and stopped during our daily sojourns to offer their sympathies and were kind enough to let her reacquaint with the bikes. Her breathing is sometimes labored, likely due to the damage to her sinuses, which are clearly still suffering irritation. Perhaps the blood clots are loosening. It will take some time, but she’s speeding toward recovery.
The Neighbor is gone. Can you believe I didn’t pounce like a cat on my opportunity to announce this? It’s been over a week, nearly two now, and they are gone! There are lingering remains like dog urine soaked carpet, which she doused with so much ammonia that four days later it was still dripping (not merely damp) and leaving pools on the floor beneath carpet and heavy matting. Three years of dog urine and seemingly some kind of ritual ammonia use (?!?!?) destroyed the oak floors beneath the carpet. The floor guy complained of the smell and rolled his eyes, I hope you kept her deposit.
I’ve started working on pulling the weeds, an endeavor I anticipate will take a week or two (not constant) of labor. A day’s effort got me less than a quarter of the way through the wilderness of weed and I’ve filled one and a half large yard waste buckets thus far. The prickles from the thistle are lodged in my forearms – but somehow the sting feels merely like a symptom of progress.. in a good way.
The broader and deeper our capacity for love, so the breadth and depth of our capacity for hate. It’s like an expanding universe with two interdependent elements, each growing (and shrinking?) in direct proportional correlation.
An asshole on a mountain bike collided with Secret Agent Dog. He and people like him are the reason why responsible cyclist are now banned from using trails. He collided with her while riding his bike across a playing field. The incident occurred about ten feet from a posted sign saying that bikes are to be walked across the playing field. Bikes are to be walked across the field because dickheads like him don’t grasp the concept that they need to yield to people (and their pets, which ARE allowed to be off lead in this particular field.) The egotistical, materialist dickwad with his four thousand dollar mountain bike (because he needed to announce this several times – you know.. “I’m an asshole with warped priorities”) felt that while he saw the dog that the dog should have gone around him.
While blood spilled from her nose and nostrils, the jerk wants to chat about his bicycle and how wronged he felt… as he stood spitting distance from the sign instructing him to STOP and walk his bike. Everyone, hate him with me.
She moved off to the distance and sat with the patience of a saint while he complained. She waited her turn and when I finally left him chattering on about his four thousand dollar bike, she rolled on her back and cried, trying to scrunch her body into a ball and climb all fifty pounds of her into my lap. She’ll be okay. Everyone… hate with me. It’s because I love her so much that I’m able to hate this man so deeply, profoundly and fiercely.Death twitches my ear. “Live,” he says. “I’m coming.” - Virgil
I was home for a day and a half and then off to Cleveland. That was nearly a month ago now… has it been that long since my last confession, regression, reflection? I don’t think I’d ever been to Ohio before. I can’t really say I was in Ohio. I was for a day and a half. And it snowed. I sat in the meeting and stared out the windows from time to time, musing at the courtyard as the first snow descended. What a magical time to be anywhere, during the first snow.
It was clean and white and relentless. I’d been reading Alice Sebold’s new book Lovely Bones on the airplane and it begins with a little girl lamenting the fate of a scarf-clad penguin in a snow globe. Not to worry, her father assures, he’s just trapped in a perfect world. And I’d laugh a little to myself as the day progressed, thinking about how we’re all just trapped in a perfect world. I need to remember that.
The day I left Cleveland, I’ve decided, is among the worst days of my life. Which is a testament to how my life hasn’t really been that bad and perhaps also a sad commentary on my yardstick of personal suffering. The meeting went just a bit long and the taxi was just a bit late. I needed to go to the bathroom. I needed to pee, but I figured the airport was a mere fourteen miles away and I didn’t want to risk missing the first taxi and logic informed that I should wait. I waited and indeed got in the first taxi which promptly was stuck in traffic due to that perfect world of a first snow. It took two and half hours to make that sojourn. The taxi stopping and starting, vibrating and the cold making me shiver even more. My bladder ached – it’s all I could think about for two and half hours… counting the seconds which crawled on their belly. Talk about the notion of ever lasting life. If every two and a half hour segment of time moved as slowly as that one I’d say it would feel like we lived forever. Maybe salvation is living wholly in the present in excruciating discomfort.
Trapped in a perfect world…
I think it is interesting that indeed I’ve experienced the loss of those I love, the death of those who died young and terrible deaths. I think it’s interesting that I don’t count those losses as paramount to the discomfort of sitting in a taxi cab for two and half hours whilst needing to pee. I reflected on this and muse that perhaps those losses are still happening on some level. Or maybe, in fact, they have stopped happening on some level. When someone we love dies, although the act of their dying may take place in a split second, we divide the grief of their death up over time. It’s like it’s not an acute event for us, the living. That needing to pee had a beginning, a middle and an end, like a short story. But death and loss is not. It’s more like a marsh - there are no clear borders where one world starts and the other stops.
Trapped in a perfect world…
It’s sometimes hard to hold, isn’t it, that these things are all constituents of a perfect world? I find this interesting about me too. Some of the things that people enjoy about me are my insights, my perspective and the way(s) that I articulate these things. It’s also these same things that people want to shut up and down. But it’s the same people. They at once want and don’t want, love and loathe, my gifts. As though we can all have it both ways. The double edged sword – it can cut the vines to clear the view and your heart all at once.
Trapped in a perfect world…
Are you following my metaphors? Sliding down my similes to a perfect sibilant yes? There are things beneath the things, hiding snuggly under the covers.
Trapped in a perfect world…
I got a library card yesterday. I leafed through an Annie Liebowitz picture book called Women with a forward by Susan Sontag. A woman I once knew was photographed for the book. I cannot begin to express how dissed I feel by this woman. How insignificant and invisible in history some people can make us feel. And I wonder, does it matter? Does it change anything, what is spoken and what remains silent? As I look through the mirror, darkly, I see myself lurking in time and I see time lurking in me too.
Trapped in a perfect world…
We have no right to ask, when sorrow comes, “Why did this happen to me?” unless we ask the same question for every moment of happiness.. - Source Unknown
I arrived back from St Louis last night and leave for Cleveland in the morning. I sat on airplanes and in airports and waited with the patience of a saint to make it back here to be among the things I love. What a strange and sad statement that I don’t carry these things more steadfastly in my heart. How desperate and lonely I will be when Death takes them and I failed to find a way to love them rightly and deeply enough such that nothing, even Death, can take them from me.
Death twitches my ear. “Live,” he says. “I’m coming.” - Virgil
She looked at me with her big brown eyes and all she felt was that for reasons she couldn’t comprehend she was enduring relentless punishment.
On the day she was got her stitches out I’d planned a celebration in the park with a cadre of her pals. Within an hour and a half of the sutures being removed the wound had re-split and we were starting all over again with the restriction, the cone and the pills. She’d just finished the course of antibiotics for the Lyme’s disease as well. All this bum luck plopped in her paws at once. I was in the vet office when they re-cut the skin to make rough edges for healing and held her while they sutured her again – that is until I felt faint and sad and asked the vet tech to step in.
And then Ed slammed himself in the head with a tire iron – a huge Harry Potter-style scar runs the length of his forehead (now showing some kinship with Secret whose own scar has now acquired a heel and looks suspiciously like Italy.) He achieved a concussion and to top off a stellar week his car exploded on 19th Avenue and he had to spend near $100 for a taxi home. (This would turn out to be a small blessing as I found him a new vehicle on Craigslist – a fabulous Isuzu Rodeo. I make him drive me about and I say things like, “Whoa.. did you see that cow!?” or “Hey there now, be careful for that horse.” These things happen in the Rodeo you know…. Or “Did you know you have the most dangerous profession on land – you know, a rodeo clown…” It’s been a few weeks, he’s not so amused anymore.)
Lisa is in Oregon at a job interview with the kids and the dog. I did a Haz Mat clean up on the yard so that we could perch up front and pass out Halloween candy to children and wine to adults. I picked up an entire kitchen trash bag of shit and I didn’t get it all. I was ready to call the humane society and CPS myself – it seems like there ought to be something reportable about it.
Halloween would have been quite fun had it not been for the mishap that left me distracted. It all began as an innocent walk in the park – as usual. Exactly what happened is a little unclear, though we all agree that she tried to jump up the cliff because the log in her mouth was too wide for the pass, which was flanked by the hillside and a tree, causing her to attempt an alternate route. There had been a sighting of paws on the ledge of the 12 foot rise - proof of a valiant attempt to achieve the impossible – and then she disappeared out of site. She reappeared at the bottom of the waterfall and without a peep or any sign of injury ran with grace and fury to rejoin us.
I was just being my doting self when in the clearing at the top of the hill, before the truly strenuous part of the hike commenced, I decided to check her from head to toe. That’s when I saw it - a gash, a chunk missing really, quite large on the left hind leg. At that point there wasn’t any blood – though by the time we walked the mile back to the car there was plenty of blood. She never limped and she’d never made even the slightly sight or sound of injury.
I think her heart stopped after I got home and I was in the shower – because suddenly she felt very far away and frightened and I was overcome with grief. But then she felt closer and I knew she’d be okay.
We were up most of the night tending to her after we brought her home from surgery. She was afraid and whimpering and not at all liking the cone she will wear for the next twelve days. She urinated on herself and the sofa in her delirium and she was afraid.
Today she woke up timid and disoriented but as the day wears on her eyes look clearer and sometimes she resembles herself. Ultimately she’ll be okay but these next two weeks don’t promise to be her most joyful. She has this look about her, as though she wonders what precisely she did to deserve this punishment. It feels like no amount of love can explain things to her and set it right.Here I sit, on the other side of that moment I talked about in my last entry. I’m a little dizzied and dazed. When I arrived home yesterday I went to see the lovely Tatiana – she’s magical. An hour and a half massage later I felt all wiggly and right. Then I cozied up on the sofa with Ed and Secret Agent Dog, which is where I awoke this morning – san Ed.
Secret Agent Dog smushed up against me all night and we vied for the pillow whilst ensconced in fleece and down blankets. It was a happy way to sleep and a happy way to wake up.
I must pause and give thanks. It was unexpected. It was perfect, I mean the most perfect thing anyone could have done for me yesterday.
The world has been spinning around, I can’t seem to catch my breath and then out of the blue there’s this amazing food, made with love and it’s not only the nourishment – it just saved me over an hour I would have spent cooking and there just wasn’t a better gesture of kindness, friendship or even help anyone could have extended. It was just perfect, at the right time and it filled me with tears and joy all at once. She’s the bomb.
I don’t love her because she makes the best lasagna on the planet – but let’s just say it doesn’t hurt (grin.)
((Thank you so much, honey. I love you dearly!))
The wedding was quaint. The bride wore a bright orange Chinese silk print dress with slits up to there, hair died to match, a flaming sea of orange offsetting a bright blue flower. Her daughter, the beautiful Ute, in a complimenting blue silk two piece, looked almost ornamental – like jewelry – between the two. It was her day too. The wedding reception would double as her first birthday party.
We arrived fashionably late, which was right on time. We took a row boat onto Stow Lake and Ed complained about the ballast of the boat and rowed as Secret Agent Dog and I diligently spied ducks and harbored knowing thoughts about the nearness of the reeds and our captains steering abilities. While I was told to provide steering direction he resisted instruction. We arrived, however, as I say, fashionably late, which was right on time.
They were wed in the Chinese Pagoda on Stow Lake – some constellation of guests convened with their string quartet to watch and serenade from inside the pagoda. Other’s like myself, Ed and Secret Agent Dog arrived by row or paddle boat and were aquatic onlookers to the event.
The reception and birthday party was celebrated as pot luck barbeque in a field with a tent in Golden Gate Park. The entertainment was an accordion player, dressed in a rainbow colored house dress, doing very bad drag in tribute to Julia Childs, who’d occasionally burst into Aerosmith covers. Ed manned the grill, taking great pride in cooking the groom’s steak.
We sat on the big green fleece blanket I’d taken from the sofa, along with Secret’s Mustard-colored fleece throw, ate food, played with Ms. Honey Bee, and chatted with the various guests who’d come our way. It was much warmer there on the lawn than it was under the big white tent which housed the lion’s share of the guests and the wedding party. There was a handful of us who scattered across lawn and took in what warmth the sun offered through the fog which hung high over the City, which means it wasn’t so damp or cold as a typical summer day in San Francisco.
