Several weeks of foolish common viral illness. Flu, then head cold, then almost well but not quite, and so then bronchitis and some days of fearful bedrest imagining a lurking pneumonia (an old enemy from a former life). Now the lingering cough and return of the headcold double-blast. How much phlegm can the body of a stupid poet generate? Gallons, certainly, by now.
I have had to get substitutes for my this-week's shifts at the FriendsOfTheLibrary used book shop I coordinate so I can concentrate on really getting well. Although of course I spent every day here catching up housework put by in my bookshop frenzies elsewhere. On the weekend I drove to a remote ranch and bought many near-new and vintage volumes for my own business, and another canvasbagful from a sale in town. I had a fever but went out anyway - such opportunities are rare hereabouts - and I have paid for my folly healthwise while benefitting in terms of business: every purchase was a gem, worth its weight in dollar signs.
I've got to get well, though, and so today I'm back in bed with cough drops and lomatium tinctures and my trusty Vicks Vapoinhaler. And every cat and dog in the house, and brotherB frantically crayoning his colorbooks across the room. Last night as I got in bed he said, "Sore throat? Drink water ..." motioning at the same time with his big flat fingers in his peculiar pidgeon-sign language. His concern is worth worlds. And I take seriously his health advice, always. His instincts are good.
I do have a book to mail today, but maybe husbandSkip can take it to the post office for me later. Meanwhile I try to lower the flame on my hyperactivity and keep still, keep still, drink water, pet pets, read Robert A. Johnson's Inner Work on using dreams and active imagination, keep Eno on the headphones, and daydream that soon I will resume writing, soon I will make a garden.
1.01.2013
New Year's day
I move about chill digs in hungry morning,
feeding four-leggeds, feeding small
retarded brother, feeding me
too, porridge, & black faux coffee,
carrot and orange together juiced and diluted.
Out the big windows ice glitters on dazzlesnow
& morning temperature is 1 degree.
While water comes to kettleboil I try
an old routine on the yoga mat. Ugh.
My old body, long accustomed just to sit or lie,
incredulous. Just what, it wonders, am I doing?
I wonder it too - nothing stretches, nothing holds.
I shudder at shoulder, wobble at knee, I bend halfway.
I stand. I still stand pretty well.
Cagebirds mutter & peck. Old fed terrier snores in the corner.
Brought-in potted plants array glad leaves
receiving a.m. windowlight.
Out there, ice, ice.
feeding four-leggeds, feeding small
retarded brother, feeding me
too, porridge, & black faux coffee,
carrot and orange together juiced and diluted.
Out the big windows ice glitters on dazzlesnow
& morning temperature is 1 degree.
While water comes to kettleboil I try
an old routine on the yoga mat. Ugh.
My old body, long accustomed just to sit or lie,
incredulous. Just what, it wonders, am I doing?
I wonder it too - nothing stretches, nothing holds.
I shudder at shoulder, wobble at knee, I bend halfway.
I stand. I still stand pretty well.
Cagebirds mutter & peck. Old fed terrier snores in the corner.
Brought-in potted plants array glad leaves
receiving a.m. windowlight.
Out there, ice, ice.
12.30.2012
At last the opportunity, but pretty tired now. Just a note. Typed on the iPhone, so lots of typos probably.
Fine cold snow has fallen all day and falls still, now, well after midnight. Ted the cat is out in it somewhere, huge he is orange and alpha, doing reconnaissance on behalf of his clan before he can rest inside for the night. ... There he is now at the front door. Back in a minute.
... Skip and brotherB and I went into town to see Skyfall tonight, afterward crunching home in the old Mercury slow down the sparkleice white sidestreets all by ourselves in the frozen night and sifting snow.
***
Watched The Shining recently, my new official SamMills Christmas movie instead of the Wonderful Life of ignorant and innocent times when I thought we'd all love and respect one another forever. Now in these years post-personal-apocalypse it's strictly murder movies for the holidays, and so I dreamed last night of JackTorrance, deranged and relentless, pursuing me through a great house from room to room, and then through streets and parks and apartment buildings. People tried to help, hiding me, distracting him, but he stayed on the scent and never stopped, until at last I came to a dead end (ha! the punnings of dreams ...) in an elegant clifftop apartment with its glass far wall overlooking the sea, and waves crashing on rocks far far below, and I turned just as Jack rushed and embraced me and we crashed through the glass and down down onto the stones and were broken there and dead. And then we went at it again, like a video game - could I run faster? should I turn this way instead of that this time? and so on. But I could see it would end the same no matter how many times I changed my strategy. No escape. Clearly.
So, you know, I turned 60 years old two days ago, no biggie, but I guess some part of me wants me to start getting ready for the big finish.
***
I've been working hard at the Friends of the Library used book outlet, changing it all about, cleaning, gleaning, removing dead volumes to make room for titles a little more vital. It's fun and arduous and slow - slow because the main storage unit is unheated, and days lately start out near zero degrees. Ugh. But I've also been acquiring decent titles at rock-bottom prices (the semi-annual buck-a-bag sale lasted the whole month of December). We'll keep them bills paid.
Cats Lobsang, Ted, and Piffle, and dogApple, are here on the bed ready for lights-out. But where's Greta? I've saved her spot. Leo prefers the silence and solitude of the living room's comfy chair.
Fine cold snow has fallen all day and falls still, now, well after midnight. Ted the cat is out in it somewhere, huge he is orange and alpha, doing reconnaissance on behalf of his clan before he can rest inside for the night. ... There he is now at the front door. Back in a minute.
... Skip and brotherB and I went into town to see Skyfall tonight, afterward crunching home in the old Mercury slow down the sparkleice white sidestreets all by ourselves in the frozen night and sifting snow.
***
Watched The Shining recently, my new official SamMills Christmas movie instead of the Wonderful Life of ignorant and innocent times when I thought we'd all love and respect one another forever. Now in these years post-personal-apocalypse it's strictly murder movies for the holidays, and so I dreamed last night of JackTorrance, deranged and relentless, pursuing me through a great house from room to room, and then through streets and parks and apartment buildings. People tried to help, hiding me, distracting him, but he stayed on the scent and never stopped, until at last I came to a dead end (ha! the punnings of dreams ...) in an elegant clifftop apartment with its glass far wall overlooking the sea, and waves crashing on rocks far far below, and I turned just as Jack rushed and embraced me and we crashed through the glass and down down onto the stones and were broken there and dead. And then we went at it again, like a video game - could I run faster? should I turn this way instead of that this time? and so on. But I could see it would end the same no matter how many times I changed my strategy. No escape. Clearly.
So, you know, I turned 60 years old two days ago, no biggie, but I guess some part of me wants me to start getting ready for the big finish.
***
I've been working hard at the Friends of the Library used book outlet, changing it all about, cleaning, gleaning, removing dead volumes to make room for titles a little more vital. It's fun and arduous and slow - slow because the main storage unit is unheated, and days lately start out near zero degrees. Ugh. But I've also been acquiring decent titles at rock-bottom prices (the semi-annual buck-a-bag sale lasted the whole month of December). We'll keep them bills paid.
Cats Lobsang, Ted, and Piffle, and dogApple, are here on the bed ready for lights-out. But where's Greta? I've saved her spot. Leo prefers the silence and solitude of the living room's comfy chair.
12.19.2012
Many days, many many dreams later, I creep back in. Not knowing why.
Christmas and birthday and solstice and massive shift in world consciousness taking place all at once.
Over the weekend I tested for UPenn editing. An in-house position in Philadelphia. As if! such a miracle could happen. Husband tells me it's very humid there.
It was 7 degrees F. here at 7:30 a.m. They predict minus-9 for Sunday night, maybe sooner.
Attended my first Friends of the Library Board meeting last night in my capacity as Bookworm Coordinator. Acquitted myself well, I think. More and more work to do there - maintenance and PR/marketing issues, shelving shifts and shifts in mission. A lot of educating.
Work to do here, as well. Books have been selling at almost an alarming rate, 3+ per day average (which means that some days I sell seven or more), all or most in two digits (and a recent one in three). Bills are being paid. I had a tooth pulled. BrotherB gets a pair of reading glasses.
And today, for the first time in many years, I will bake Cow Cookies for Christmas and mail them to my loved ones.
Finally, 'tis a season I can hang with.
Christmas and birthday and solstice and massive shift in world consciousness taking place all at once.
Over the weekend I tested for UPenn editing. An in-house position in Philadelphia. As if! such a miracle could happen. Husband tells me it's very humid there.
It was 7 degrees F. here at 7:30 a.m. They predict minus-9 for Sunday night, maybe sooner.
Attended my first Friends of the Library Board meeting last night in my capacity as Bookworm Coordinator. Acquitted myself well, I think. More and more work to do there - maintenance and PR/marketing issues, shelving shifts and shifts in mission. A lot of educating.
Work to do here, as well. Books have been selling at almost an alarming rate, 3+ per day average (which means that some days I sell seven or more), all or most in two digits (and a recent one in three). Bills are being paid. I had a tooth pulled. BrotherB gets a pair of reading glasses.
And today, for the first time in many years, I will bake Cow Cookies for Christmas and mail them to my loved ones.
Finally, 'tis a season I can hang with.
11.29.2012
Dream from this morning: I lived with my brother on a property up a mountainside, a sprawling acreage littered with debris and machinery. Two roads passed through the place: one came through my neighbors' property and ended at mine, an easement we used to come and go. Another road came across from right to left out of the woods, passing through and continuing up the mountain. Heavy machinery used this road at all times of day for some development going on up there.
It's funny - early in the dream these properties were simply adjoining rooms with double doors closed between them. They evolved into neighboring acreages separated by a fencewall and great solid double gate.
Anyway, once a day an old maroon convertible full of town thugs drove up the easement road/driveway, turned around in my yard and drove out again. I thought nothing of it the first time, but when I realized it was a daily thing I knew they were thieves scoping the place out for antiques and machines to steal. I chased them out at one point.
Among the discarded items lying on the ground all around were file cabinets on their sides and backs, drawers open or missing, contents blowing about. Earlier I had given a heavy tall filing cabinet to a friend. Now a truck arrived to deposit one exactly like it in the weeds with the others, stout greasy delivery guys fiddling with chains and pulleys to lower it off the flatbed. I ran to stop them - I thought it was the cabinet I'd just given up - but they continued unperturbed. I realized it was a gift from someone to replace the one I'd given away. Perhaps it had more value than I'd thought.
Atop a shelf or dresser pushed against the shared wall or fence between properties (or rooms) was something like a spice shelf in which several lizards were living, including a bearded dragon (again with the dragon). They weren't very large, and a little bird had befriended them and was nesting there, too. At one point I gave the shelf and its lizards to my neighbor on the property below, opening the gate and carrying it to to his porch, trying to keep the reptiles from running off. This was a large family and several members stood about watching as I handed it over to the indifferent old patriarch. Only then did I remember the bird and its nest, and peeking in I saw it standing panicked over an egg just hatched and two tiny pink moist nestlings bobbing about beneath her. I didn't know how to take the shelf back - did I manage to carry it home with me again? I worried about whether the mother bird would keep the babies alive after having been disturbed.
It's funny - early in the dream these properties were simply adjoining rooms with double doors closed between them. They evolved into neighboring acreages separated by a fencewall and great solid double gate.
Anyway, once a day an old maroon convertible full of town thugs drove up the easement road/driveway, turned around in my yard and drove out again. I thought nothing of it the first time, but when I realized it was a daily thing I knew they were thieves scoping the place out for antiques and machines to steal. I chased them out at one point.
Among the discarded items lying on the ground all around were file cabinets on their sides and backs, drawers open or missing, contents blowing about. Earlier I had given a heavy tall filing cabinet to a friend. Now a truck arrived to deposit one exactly like it in the weeds with the others, stout greasy delivery guys fiddling with chains and pulleys to lower it off the flatbed. I ran to stop them - I thought it was the cabinet I'd just given up - but they continued unperturbed. I realized it was a gift from someone to replace the one I'd given away. Perhaps it had more value than I'd thought.
Atop a shelf or dresser pushed against the shared wall or fence between properties (or rooms) was something like a spice shelf in which several lizards were living, including a bearded dragon (again with the dragon). They weren't very large, and a little bird had befriended them and was nesting there, too. At one point I gave the shelf and its lizards to my neighbor on the property below, opening the gate and carrying it to to his porch, trying to keep the reptiles from running off. This was a large family and several members stood about watching as I handed it over to the indifferent old patriarch. Only then did I remember the bird and its nest, and peeking in I saw it standing panicked over an egg just hatched and two tiny pink moist nestlings bobbing about beneath her. I didn't know how to take the shelf back - did I manage to carry it home with me again? I worried about whether the mother bird would keep the babies alive after having been disturbed.
11.28.12 Wednesday
Day of gloom and wind - lovely day. Black clouds glower and lower, lower and lower. Wind hollers wild and fraught with extremity - respite from the nothingness and blah we have confined ourselves to. Glory! it is, a day such as this. I miss the woodstoves of yore, but the brave little propane flame does its best.
I made turkey soup yesterday from the boiled Thanksgiving carcass, most honored feast-day animal sacrifice in this mostly meatless home. It was the best soup I ever made and I ate too much, and then carob-blueberry mug cake after that, so that I awoke every hour on the hour all night for no reason at all. Flitting bits of tatterdreams escaping.
Misunderstandings and miscommunications among the LibraryFriends I'll soon be "coordinating" with have started already, and I haven't even taken up my post. The week's been rife with confusion, and today I must spend 2 to 5 p.m. in their midst struggling to keep my emotional keel even. I don't get how neurotypicals think, even the relatively higher-on-the-spectrum-than-most-NTs folks likely to be involved with such library stuff. Everyone clings to their bit of perceived power and works it to prop themselves up.
I say one thing, another is heard. I don't know how to bend myself to the sideways-speak that communicates little but makes others comfortable. And because what I do say is so precise and information-laden, it is not heard by them, and so sometimes sounds to their ears like something untrue.
So there it is. I finally understand the mechanism. I'll adapt as far as I can. I'll try to become stronger. Maybe I'll even learn to keep quiet.
***
In dreams - from the other night:
I lived at the far eastern edge of the L.A. sprawl in a small calm desert suburb. In central L.A. my mother was dying of cancer. I decided to pack up the car with my two little sons and move to be closer to my mother. By the time I got there, though, she had died. (She did die of colon cancer, 1999.) I was hunting for a place to live, looking at apartment after apartment. I made friends with a hippie couple who were homeless, also. They wore their hair in dreadlocks. The man was bearded, the woman blonde, both were mindlessly jolly and affectionate with one another. Their clothes were colorful gypsy patches and tatters. Somehow I encountered JoeW, a man who in real life had been my mother’s lover. (He was, in real life, a Harvard-educated prosperous corporate lawyer from New England aristocracy, one of several lovers my mother took from the Los Angeles law firm where she worked as paralegal - all of them married. Joe was a practicing Catholic who had not divorced his first wife, who lived in Chicago with their son. He was thin and tall- 6-foot-4 - and wore horn-rimmed glasses and nice suits. He was even-tempered, witty, and colorblind. Recently I've learned he's been placed in a Massachusetts care facility because he has Alzheimers.) Perhaps, in the dream, he'd taken care of things after my mother’s death.
Joe allowed me to stay in his apartment, with my two little dream sons, while I searched for a home. Going up the steps of the spiral staircase to Joe’s apartment my sonJesse climbed and swung on the wrought-iron railing. I whispered urgent reprimand in his ear and he stopped fooling around and went to play quietly or perhaps watch TV. I found old newspapers strewn on a table. They had articles cut out of them and were riddled with rectangular gaps. The mastheads were intact; one was dated 1947 and the other 1938. I tore a page from one, and then I realized 1938 was Joe’s birth year—these papers were keepsakes—and I was embarrassed. I had to stop Jesse from wrecking them, as well. I raised my voice at him and then noticed Joe meditating in a chair just inside the doorway of his room (there seemed to be no actual doors). I felt awful about having disturbed him, but he gave no sign that it was a problem.
Out on the street the next day with the folded up classified ads. JoeW is with us (my family and the hippie couple), also looking for a new home. The three factions compete affectionately for a single vacancy in a fourplex, an upstairs apartment. Its rooms have no doors, and the bathroom is surrounded by a low wall you can look over into the home of the downstairs neighbors—specifically, an elderly gentleman with a white mustache lying in a reclining chair. I"m a little uncomfortable with this, but the place overall is very nice and we all want it. Downstairs I find that at least one of the four apartments belongs to the stout motherly landlady who keeps busy in her kitchen concocting meals for the residents, as in a sort of assisted living. At the other end of the kitchen I see people sitting at little tables as though it were a cafeteria or diner.
We all took a break from househunting and rested at a coffeehouse, like a Starbucks, located near a little recessed amphitheater surrounded by a low wall (much like the one near the creek at Chico State where I went to school in the '80s). I sat at an outdoor table with my snack but noticed JoeW sitting on the top step of the amphitheater: I could just see the top of his head on the other side of the wall. I got up and approached him, chattering happily, but when I stepped into the aisle and turned toward him I saw that he was deeply engaged in chanting namyohorengekyo with two robed Asian monks, young men with shaved heads, seated near him on lower steps. He held wooden prayer beads in his hand. Yet again I was mortified to have disturbed him. He got up then and walked with me, still even-tempered and unperturbed by my thoughtlessness, infinitely patient. I said to him, “I had no idea you were involved with Nishirin Shoshu.” We sat on a bench in the growing darkness. I straddled his lap and sat gazing into his eyes, which avoided mine all through the dream. Suddenly I realized something. “You’re grieving, aren’t you?” I said. “I’m so sorry. You’re still grieving for my mother." I said, “I have Asperger’s syndrome. We process grief quickly. Death doesn’t mean much to us.” I got up and stepped back from him respectfully. He stood and I embraced him with great love. But oddly somehow at that moment I was very small, like a child. ...
I decide then that JoeW should join us - we should move in together and share a big house somewhere. Then he would have family around him and it would be good for him, and maybe feelings would grow between us. (I thought he might feel love for me but was too shy or polite to express them.) He didn’t reject the proposal. ...
The following day, or perhaps later that same afternoon, we negotiated the downtown L.A. streets thronged with people and food carts and distractions. I was trying to keep up with the wild hippie couple and keep hold of my sons' hands, but then I lost track of Joe. I searched the crowd in panic. I spotted him standing perhaps 20 feet away watching me serenely as the crowds gradually engulfed him. I think I still could see his face when the dream ended.
Day of gloom and wind - lovely day. Black clouds glower and lower, lower and lower. Wind hollers wild and fraught with extremity - respite from the nothingness and blah we have confined ourselves to. Glory! it is, a day such as this. I miss the woodstoves of yore, but the brave little propane flame does its best.
I made turkey soup yesterday from the boiled Thanksgiving carcass, most honored feast-day animal sacrifice in this mostly meatless home. It was the best soup I ever made and I ate too much, and then carob-blueberry mug cake after that, so that I awoke every hour on the hour all night for no reason at all. Flitting bits of tatterdreams escaping.
Misunderstandings and miscommunications among the LibraryFriends I'll soon be "coordinating" with have started already, and I haven't even taken up my post. The week's been rife with confusion, and today I must spend 2 to 5 p.m. in their midst struggling to keep my emotional keel even. I don't get how neurotypicals think, even the relatively higher-on-the-spectrum-than-most-NTs folks likely to be involved with such library stuff. Everyone clings to their bit of perceived power and works it to prop themselves up.
I say one thing, another is heard. I don't know how to bend myself to the sideways-speak that communicates little but makes others comfortable. And because what I do say is so precise and information-laden, it is not heard by them, and so sometimes sounds to their ears like something untrue.
So there it is. I finally understand the mechanism. I'll adapt as far as I can. I'll try to become stronger. Maybe I'll even learn to keep quiet.
***
In dreams - from the other night:
I lived at the far eastern edge of the L.A. sprawl in a small calm desert suburb. In central L.A. my mother was dying of cancer. I decided to pack up the car with my two little sons and move to be closer to my mother. By the time I got there, though, she had died. (She did die of colon cancer, 1999.) I was hunting for a place to live, looking at apartment after apartment. I made friends with a hippie couple who were homeless, also. They wore their hair in dreadlocks. The man was bearded, the woman blonde, both were mindlessly jolly and affectionate with one another. Their clothes were colorful gypsy patches and tatters. Somehow I encountered JoeW, a man who in real life had been my mother’s lover. (He was, in real life, a Harvard-educated prosperous corporate lawyer from New England aristocracy, one of several lovers my mother took from the Los Angeles law firm where she worked as paralegal - all of them married. Joe was a practicing Catholic who had not divorced his first wife, who lived in Chicago with their son. He was thin and tall- 6-foot-4 - and wore horn-rimmed glasses and nice suits. He was even-tempered, witty, and colorblind. Recently I've learned he's been placed in a Massachusetts care facility because he has Alzheimers.) Perhaps, in the dream, he'd taken care of things after my mother’s death.
Joe allowed me to stay in his apartment, with my two little dream sons, while I searched for a home. Going up the steps of the spiral staircase to Joe’s apartment my sonJesse climbed and swung on the wrought-iron railing. I whispered urgent reprimand in his ear and he stopped fooling around and went to play quietly or perhaps watch TV. I found old newspapers strewn on a table. They had articles cut out of them and were riddled with rectangular gaps. The mastheads were intact; one was dated 1947 and the other 1938. I tore a page from one, and then I realized 1938 was Joe’s birth year—these papers were keepsakes—and I was embarrassed. I had to stop Jesse from wrecking them, as well. I raised my voice at him and then noticed Joe meditating in a chair just inside the doorway of his room (there seemed to be no actual doors). I felt awful about having disturbed him, but he gave no sign that it was a problem.
Out on the street the next day with the folded up classified ads. JoeW is with us (my family and the hippie couple), also looking for a new home. The three factions compete affectionately for a single vacancy in a fourplex, an upstairs apartment. Its rooms have no doors, and the bathroom is surrounded by a low wall you can look over into the home of the downstairs neighbors—specifically, an elderly gentleman with a white mustache lying in a reclining chair. I"m a little uncomfortable with this, but the place overall is very nice and we all want it. Downstairs I find that at least one of the four apartments belongs to the stout motherly landlady who keeps busy in her kitchen concocting meals for the residents, as in a sort of assisted living. At the other end of the kitchen I see people sitting at little tables as though it were a cafeteria or diner.
We all took a break from househunting and rested at a coffeehouse, like a Starbucks, located near a little recessed amphitheater surrounded by a low wall (much like the one near the creek at Chico State where I went to school in the '80s). I sat at an outdoor table with my snack but noticed JoeW sitting on the top step of the amphitheater: I could just see the top of his head on the other side of the wall. I got up and approached him, chattering happily, but when I stepped into the aisle and turned toward him I saw that he was deeply engaged in chanting namyohorengekyo with two robed Asian monks, young men with shaved heads, seated near him on lower steps. He held wooden prayer beads in his hand. Yet again I was mortified to have disturbed him. He got up then and walked with me, still even-tempered and unperturbed by my thoughtlessness, infinitely patient. I said to him, “I had no idea you were involved with Nishirin Shoshu.” We sat on a bench in the growing darkness. I straddled his lap and sat gazing into his eyes, which avoided mine all through the dream. Suddenly I realized something. “You’re grieving, aren’t you?” I said. “I’m so sorry. You’re still grieving for my mother." I said, “I have Asperger’s syndrome. We process grief quickly. Death doesn’t mean much to us.” I got up and stepped back from him respectfully. He stood and I embraced him with great love. But oddly somehow at that moment I was very small, like a child. ...
I decide then that JoeW should join us - we should move in together and share a big house somewhere. Then he would have family around him and it would be good for him, and maybe feelings would grow between us. (I thought he might feel love for me but was too shy or polite to express them.) He didn’t reject the proposal. ...
The following day, or perhaps later that same afternoon, we negotiated the downtown L.A. streets thronged with people and food carts and distractions. I was trying to keep up with the wild hippie couple and keep hold of my sons' hands, but then I lost track of Joe. I searched the crowd in panic. I spotted him standing perhaps 20 feet away watching me serenely as the crowds gradually engulfed him. I think I still could see his face when the dream ended.
11.28.2012
Day of gloom & wind - lovely day. Clouds glower and lower, lower and lower. Wind hollers fraught with wild extremity - respite from the ongoing blah we have been confined to. Glory it is, a day such as this! I miss my woodstoves of yore, but the brave little gas flame is doing its best.
I made turkey soup yesterday from the boiled Thanksgiving carcass, most honored feast-day animal sacrifice in this mostly meatless home. It was the best soup I ever made and I ate too much of it, and then carob-blueberry mug cake after that, so that I awoke every hour on the hour half the night for no reason at all.
Flitting bits of tatterdreams escaping.
Misunderstandings and miscommunications among the LibraryFriends I'll soon be "coordinating" with have started already, and I haven't even taken up my post. The week's been rife with confusion, and today I spend 2 to 5 p.m. in their midst struggling to keep my emotional keel even. I don't get how neurotypicals think, even the relatively higher-on-the-spectrum-than-most-NTs folks more likely to be involved with library stuff. Everyone clings to their bit of perceived power and works it hard to prop themselves up.
I say one thing, another is heard. I don't know how to bend myself to their sideways-speak that communicates so little but makes them feel comfortable and safe. And because what I do say is so precise and information-laden, they can't hear it at all, and so sometimes it sounds to their ears like something untrue.
So there it is. I understand the mechanism. I'll adapt as far as I can. I'll try to become stronger. I'll learn to keep quiet.
I made turkey soup yesterday from the boiled Thanksgiving carcass, most honored feast-day animal sacrifice in this mostly meatless home. It was the best soup I ever made and I ate too much of it, and then carob-blueberry mug cake after that, so that I awoke every hour on the hour half the night for no reason at all.
Flitting bits of tatterdreams escaping.
Misunderstandings and miscommunications among the LibraryFriends I'll soon be "coordinating" with have started already, and I haven't even taken up my post. The week's been rife with confusion, and today I spend 2 to 5 p.m. in their midst struggling to keep my emotional keel even. I don't get how neurotypicals think, even the relatively higher-on-the-spectrum-than-most-NTs folks more likely to be involved with library stuff. Everyone clings to their bit of perceived power and works it hard to prop themselves up.
I say one thing, another is heard. I don't know how to bend myself to their sideways-speak that communicates so little but makes them feel comfortable and safe. And because what I do say is so precise and information-laden, they can't hear it at all, and so sometimes it sounds to their ears like something untrue.
So there it is. I understand the mechanism. I'll adapt as far as I can. I'll try to become stronger. I'll learn to keep quiet.
11.24.2012
Nearly midday, the Saturday after Thanksgiving. Up since six, as I do nowadays, because in this period I am sleeping immediately and well. Night before last I fell asleep to a Youtube lecture by Gary Snyder at a Berkeley féte in his honor. Last night I slept to one by Robert Hass on Czeslaw Milosz. He preceded it with some tangential remarks about Tomas Tranströmer, who had won the Nobel Prize that day (“His poetry is drenched in Swedish weathers,” Hass said).
Ah! Husband is awake. The water runs in the upstairs sink, and now the TV comes on: horseraces are in progress. An announcer shouts with adrenalined urgency as the horses approach the wire. Next, the post-race commentary and analysis, a lower pitch and more considered velocity. Then a repeat of the race or maybe another race from a different track, narrated in excited chantrhythm as the animals pound the turf and vie for position around the turns.
He’ll want coffee. I’ll put the water on. But then I must turn here to last night’s dream. These dreams anymore seem like increasingly severe writing assignments, the challenges greater and greater - now see whether you can put this one into words, or make any sense of it ...
***
Okay, so here it is. Sort of cleaned up.
It was like several dreams stitched together badly, with figures common to each segment. I lived with a character played by turns by John Malkovich, by my most recent ex, and by a local poet of comically humorless and perfectionist personality who was briefly an acquaintance of mine when I had my bookstore. Mostly by Malkovich, though, channeling his sadistic dilettante persona from Portrait of a Lady.
After a single sexual encounter with him I become pregnant with a son. He became very excited about it and insisted I stay with him in his mansion. There was a dicey moment when it occurred to him that the child might not be his - why should he take my word for it? I was desperate to convince him I’d had no one else in many years. Because it was true.
The Malkovich man had an older friend, played by someone like ArminMueller-Stahl combined maybe with OssieDavis, kind, mature, concerned. This friend was always nearby to correct or repair or soothe anyone or anything that might have been harmed by the impatient Malkovich character’s outbursts of violent temper.
I was intimidated, almost cowering, terrified lest I trigger Malkovich's rage or even his disapproval. (In this respect it actually was quite like living with my ex ...)
There was at this point quite a bit of bleed-through from a simultaneous dream about Cleopatra. She was pregnant by Caesar and was confined to a slab-bed where she lay gestating a child while keepers watched. She was kept drugged lest she escape. It occurred to me that the historical Cleopatra had given Caesar a son against her will.
In the dream I was trying to resume my freelance writing career - was working on several articles and finishing them in good time. I was happy that my mind, no longer buffered and baffled and wrecked by kidney ailments, worked well and thought clearly. A woman phoned to give me further instructions about an article I couldn’t remember having been assigned. There were adjustments to make in my approach to the “dissection article," she called it, and how was it coming along? I thought I dimly remembered starting such a piece, but I’d forgotten all about it. I lied my cheerful response and then hung up. Panicked, I began a search through the premises for unfinished pages that might provide some clue. The work was due the next day.
An older woman servant or friend who stayed near and assisted me made a good-natured joke. The Malkovich guy turned on her and demanded to know what she meant by it. I cowered quietly, sensing the unfairness and grateful I wasn’t the victim this time. I almost spoke to defend her, but his angry glance silenced me. Then, to shift the energy, I abruptly handed him a pen. He became angry with me for interrupting him. I tried to defend myself, but he wouldn’t hear it.
He kept two monitor lizards as pets, one of each species - Komodo dragon and Nile. They were permitted to run freely in the house, and I was always trying to keep my bare feet away from them. At one point we rode around town in Malkovich’s fancy car, all of us, plus a housecat and the two dragons. M parked the car and left me alone in it with the animals. I tried to keep the reptiles from eating the cat. I tried to keep my bare feet out of their sight. The Nile monitor was very black and leathery and primitive looking, like a small fierce hungry T-rex wearing alligator skin (nothing like a real-life Nile monitor).
We returned to the house, where some children had left the back doors open, and I feared the lizards might run away. What I actually feared was Malkovich’s anger - at me. The older Armin-Ossie man quietly collected the reptiles, who hadn’t escaped after all, and closed them up in a small room. He carried the creatures lovingly in his arms, like babies.
Source:www.travelblog.org/Photos/245895.
It had been raining for days, the area flooded, chest-high in freezing gray water. The Armin character went out to explore a protected place near the standing foundation of a washed-away building, a sort of porch. He leaned to look underneath, and I called out to him to see whether my missing pages were there.
Two fat ruddy beerboisterous shirtless older men swam and hollered happily in the floodwater. One had forced his two small children or perhaps grandchildren to swim with them there. They were miserable and cold and frightened. The boy was hardly more than an infant, just able to walk. He was naked in the icy water, splashing and gasping in panic. I pleaded with the oblivious granddad to let me bring this one inside, and he finally agreed. (I stopped myself from feeling concern about the little girl, who was maybe 5 or 6.) I leaned from the back step and gathered up the naked baby and held him hard against me. He sobbed and shivered. His flesh was slick and cold in my arms. I found a puffy white blanket to wrap around him, and soon he was quiet, and I could feel him relax against me in relief.
Ah! Husband is awake. The water runs in the upstairs sink, and now the TV comes on: horseraces are in progress. An announcer shouts with adrenalined urgency as the horses approach the wire. Next, the post-race commentary and analysis, a lower pitch and more considered velocity. Then a repeat of the race or maybe another race from a different track, narrated in excited chantrhythm as the animals pound the turf and vie for position around the turns.
He’ll want coffee. I’ll put the water on. But then I must turn here to last night’s dream. These dreams anymore seem like increasingly severe writing assignments, the challenges greater and greater - now see whether you can put this one into words, or make any sense of it ...
***
Okay, so here it is. Sort of cleaned up.
It was like several dreams stitched together badly, with figures common to each segment. I lived with a character played by turns by John Malkovich, by my most recent ex, and by a local poet of comically humorless and perfectionist personality who was briefly an acquaintance of mine when I had my bookstore. Mostly by Malkovich, though, channeling his sadistic dilettante persona from Portrait of a Lady.
After a single sexual encounter with him I become pregnant with a son. He became very excited about it and insisted I stay with him in his mansion. There was a dicey moment when it occurred to him that the child might not be his - why should he take my word for it? I was desperate to convince him I’d had no one else in many years. Because it was true.
The Malkovich man had an older friend, played by someone like ArminMueller-Stahl combined maybe with OssieDavis, kind, mature, concerned. This friend was always nearby to correct or repair or soothe anyone or anything that might have been harmed by the impatient Malkovich character’s outbursts of violent temper.
I was intimidated, almost cowering, terrified lest I trigger Malkovich's rage or even his disapproval. (In this respect it actually was quite like living with my ex ...)
There was at this point quite a bit of bleed-through from a simultaneous dream about Cleopatra. She was pregnant by Caesar and was confined to a slab-bed where she lay gestating a child while keepers watched. She was kept drugged lest she escape. It occurred to me that the historical Cleopatra had given Caesar a son against her will.
In the dream I was trying to resume my freelance writing career - was working on several articles and finishing them in good time. I was happy that my mind, no longer buffered and baffled and wrecked by kidney ailments, worked well and thought clearly. A woman phoned to give me further instructions about an article I couldn’t remember having been assigned. There were adjustments to make in my approach to the “dissection article," she called it, and how was it coming along? I thought I dimly remembered starting such a piece, but I’d forgotten all about it. I lied my cheerful response and then hung up. Panicked, I began a search through the premises for unfinished pages that might provide some clue. The work was due the next day.
An older woman servant or friend who stayed near and assisted me made a good-natured joke. The Malkovich guy turned on her and demanded to know what she meant by it. I cowered quietly, sensing the unfairness and grateful I wasn’t the victim this time. I almost spoke to defend her, but his angry glance silenced me. Then, to shift the energy, I abruptly handed him a pen. He became angry with me for interrupting him. I tried to defend myself, but he wouldn’t hear it.
He kept two monitor lizards as pets, one of each species - Komodo dragon and Nile. They were permitted to run freely in the house, and I was always trying to keep my bare feet away from them. At one point we rode around town in Malkovich’s fancy car, all of us, plus a housecat and the two dragons. M parked the car and left me alone in it with the animals. I tried to keep the reptiles from eating the cat. I tried to keep my bare feet out of their sight. The Nile monitor was very black and leathery and primitive looking, like a small fierce hungry T-rex wearing alligator skin (nothing like a real-life Nile monitor).
We returned to the house, where some children had left the back doors open, and I feared the lizards might run away. What I actually feared was Malkovich’s anger - at me. The older Armin-Ossie man quietly collected the reptiles, who hadn’t escaped after all, and closed them up in a small room. He carried the creatures lovingly in his arms, like babies.
It had been raining for days, the area flooded, chest-high in freezing gray water. The Armin character went out to explore a protected place near the standing foundation of a washed-away building, a sort of porch. He leaned to look underneath, and I called out to him to see whether my missing pages were there.
Two fat ruddy beerboisterous shirtless older men swam and hollered happily in the floodwater. One had forced his two small children or perhaps grandchildren to swim with them there. They were miserable and cold and frightened. The boy was hardly more than an infant, just able to walk. He was naked in the icy water, splashing and gasping in panic. I pleaded with the oblivious granddad to let me bring this one inside, and he finally agreed. (I stopped myself from feeling concern about the little girl, who was maybe 5 or 6.) I leaned from the back step and gathered up the naked baby and held him hard against me. He sobbed and shivered. His flesh was slick and cold in my arms. I found a puffy white blanket to wrap around him, and soon he was quiet, and I could feel him relax against me in relief.
11.23.2012
Oh, the long slow descent is exaggerated, I think. It only seems long and slow. Don’t depressions always seem that way? Even the little ones. Anyway, yesterday I noticed that transiting Saturn, having finished up its second return to my own (these conjunctions with our natal Saturns happen only every 28-30 years or so, and are life-changers) - I noticed it had advanced to my Ascendant, is conjuncting - conjoining - currently, my Ascendant, and has been for a while, and will continue there for a while, and I realized it had brought on my heavy restless and despairing mood. Not so long, maybe. I felt better then because I knew it would end. It would be a period of soul-searching and hard work. And because I expect to see yet a third return, I don’t consider this period to be an end-of-life summing-up Saturn return, but another phase instead, a leveling-up of spirit.
I had some dreams. In one, Wednesday night, my elder son walked around with a big fat belly hanging over his belt. I called to him to please care about his body, that the imbalance would ruin his back, but he only rolled his eyes, as he is wont to do in my dreams.
And this morning I dreamed I was with Noam Chomsky and Malvina Reyholds and we were organizing a movement of some kind. People came to our venue, a social hall in one wing of a sprawling motel, to get literature, hear lectures, take part in discussions. One night the regional leader came to speak and the place was thronged with screaming fans as though he were a rock star. He was only a speaker, a middle-aged intellectual in a suit, but the crowd was wild. Part of the event included a sort of halftime entertainment. A flock of Monarch butterflies was released and they fluttered skyward in exquisite murmurations, beautiful rhythms of coalescence and dispersal, until, exhausted, they landed all together in a gorgeous pulsing swarm on a rafter and were gathered up again. Then the motel management descended and evicted us because they were hostile to our political views. They were angry. Soon low-flying Korean bomber planes filled the skies dropping bombs everywhere. I fled with two small children, helping them escape. Then I circled back to gather some belongings from my home. A large red fox bounded out of some woods and ran alongside me, fleeing also. At home I stuffed the front of my pants with books hoping to look pregnant and so smuggle them out. I was going to have to walk out with a child, a little dark-haired girl, and I was going to have to abandon my pets—my five cats and my little black dog. Mr. Chomsky told me to take books of information about our movement with me so its message wouldn’t die. I chose three from the shelf - volumes 1 and 2 of its basic precepts and a third about Native American rights. These were large heavy books I would have to carry everywhere in my arms. I understood I was going to be very tired carrying on this work. I decided to leave a big bag of dry cat food open in the garage for my housecats, and to crack a window open so they could get used to going in and out and become wild again without me. I was griefstricken to leave them. Mr. Chomsky said he would drive me out in his car. I begged him to let me take at least my little dog. He agreed reluctantly, fuming as he drove.
***
In this waking world we had a satisfying Thanksgiving day. Husband worked upstairs until 4 o’clock. I was alone in the kitchen all day and felt a little lonely there. I baked three pies and whipped both potatoes and yams, steamed asparagus and sauteed Brussels sprouts in caramelized butter. I’d cooked up the cranberries the night before. Roasted a small birdbeast and made the gravy. Thanksgiving is just a vehicle for gravy, in my opinion. I made one emergency trip to the store for a baster and some buttermilk and a new oven thermometer. We had some organic wine with the meal, a little on the young side but very nice. Then we took a walk in the twilight and blue chill. TheAlturas streets were empty and quiet. Hawks came home from the fields, soared low into the great trees around the football field, settling for the night. The three of us arrived back happy to be too warm in the oven-heated house, and then we had our pie together in front of the TV and watched The Last of the Mohicans.
Husband went upstairs after that to watch his TV alone, and brotherB was happy to go to bed and he fell asleep right away, full of Thanksgiving food, and I watched his beautiful face for a while as he breathed. It seemed every bit as angelic as it had the day he was born. He glows with a holy aura sometimes, especially now that he’s becoming healthier. I had an anxious thought about how he might die from his defective heart one day, just like that, and leave me. Caught my breath to keep from sobbing. The Saturn conjunction, remember. It’s a sad planet.
So I made up my bed with newlaundered ivory cotton linens and down comforter and crawled in after a hot scrub in the shower, sat up in bed so clean, in my T-shirt and flannel pants, trying to stay awake until my hair was dry.
I had some dreams. In one, Wednesday night, my elder son walked around with a big fat belly hanging over his belt. I called to him to please care about his body, that the imbalance would ruin his back, but he only rolled his eyes, as he is wont to do in my dreams.
And this morning I dreamed I was with Noam Chomsky and Malvina Reyholds and we were organizing a movement of some kind. People came to our venue, a social hall in one wing of a sprawling motel, to get literature, hear lectures, take part in discussions. One night the regional leader came to speak and the place was thronged with screaming fans as though he were a rock star. He was only a speaker, a middle-aged intellectual in a suit, but the crowd was wild. Part of the event included a sort of halftime entertainment. A flock of Monarch butterflies was released and they fluttered skyward in exquisite murmurations, beautiful rhythms of coalescence and dispersal, until, exhausted, they landed all together in a gorgeous pulsing swarm on a rafter and were gathered up again. Then the motel management descended and evicted us because they were hostile to our political views. They were angry. Soon low-flying Korean bomber planes filled the skies dropping bombs everywhere. I fled with two small children, helping them escape. Then I circled back to gather some belongings from my home. A large red fox bounded out of some woods and ran alongside me, fleeing also. At home I stuffed the front of my pants with books hoping to look pregnant and so smuggle them out. I was going to have to walk out with a child, a little dark-haired girl, and I was going to have to abandon my pets—my five cats and my little black dog. Mr. Chomsky told me to take books of information about our movement with me so its message wouldn’t die. I chose three from the shelf - volumes 1 and 2 of its basic precepts and a third about Native American rights. These were large heavy books I would have to carry everywhere in my arms. I understood I was going to be very tired carrying on this work. I decided to leave a big bag of dry cat food open in the garage for my housecats, and to crack a window open so they could get used to going in and out and become wild again without me. I was griefstricken to leave them. Mr. Chomsky said he would drive me out in his car. I begged him to let me take at least my little dog. He agreed reluctantly, fuming as he drove.
***
In this waking world we had a satisfying Thanksgiving day. Husband worked upstairs until 4 o’clock. I was alone in the kitchen all day and felt a little lonely there. I baked three pies and whipped both potatoes and yams, steamed asparagus and sauteed Brussels sprouts in caramelized butter. I’d cooked up the cranberries the night before. Roasted a small birdbeast and made the gravy. Thanksgiving is just a vehicle for gravy, in my opinion. I made one emergency trip to the store for a baster and some buttermilk and a new oven thermometer. We had some organic wine with the meal, a little on the young side but very nice. Then we took a walk in the twilight and blue chill. TheAlturas streets were empty and quiet. Hawks came home from the fields, soared low into the great trees around the football field, settling for the night. The three of us arrived back happy to be too warm in the oven-heated house, and then we had our pie together in front of the TV and watched The Last of the Mohicans.
Husband went upstairs after that to watch his TV alone, and brotherB was happy to go to bed and he fell asleep right away, full of Thanksgiving food, and I watched his beautiful face for a while as he breathed. It seemed every bit as angelic as it had the day he was born. He glows with a holy aura sometimes, especially now that he’s becoming healthier. I had an anxious thought about how he might die from his defective heart one day, just like that, and leave me. Caught my breath to keep from sobbing. The Saturn conjunction, remember. It’s a sad planet.
So I made up my bed with newlaundered ivory cotton linens and down comforter and crawled in after a hot scrub in the shower, sat up in bed so clean, in my T-shirt and flannel pants, trying to stay awake until my hair was dry.
11.21.2012
Better today, as long as I don't think about writing projects.
Outdoors the weather is still grim. Still gray. And drizzly to boot.
But I'm paid today, and soon brotherB and I will shop for feastfood. In the afternoon pumpkin and pecan pies will be baked, cranberry sauce concocted, to prepare for tomorrow. Just us three at tomorrow's table, and the creatures, but I am so thankful for us. So very very grateful.
For heat in the stove, propane in the tank, gas in the car. House payment covered.
For online friends. For flesh-and-blood humans - they exist - who listen to my words and attribute no sinister subtext, but understand them for what they mean. Which is all I ever mean.
The world at large gets better and better, it seems obvious to me, even if my own puny world collapsed long ago. I love this world very much, and I love the vast vibing void we drift in.
blessings
Outdoors the weather is still grim. Still gray. And drizzly to boot.
But I'm paid today, and soon brotherB and I will shop for feastfood. In the afternoon pumpkin and pecan pies will be baked, cranberry sauce concocted, to prepare for tomorrow. Just us three at tomorrow's table, and the creatures, but I am so thankful for us. So very very grateful.
For heat in the stove, propane in the tank, gas in the car. House payment covered.
For online friends. For flesh-and-blood humans - they exist - who listen to my words and attribute no sinister subtext, but understand them for what they mean. Which is all I ever mean.
The world at large gets better and better, it seems obvious to me, even if my own puny world collapsed long ago. I love this world very much, and I love the vast vibing void we drift in.
blessings
11.20.2012
I have resisted writing sort of stubbornly these past days and weeks. I think it may be impossible for me, for my mind, to focus, when in a relationship, on anything but the relatee. Even in Beloved Husband's considerate absence he is ever-present to me, as my attention fixes on encounters and confrontations past and to come.
I find myself, for three-and-a-half years now, in a slow, steady descent into a soft, shallow, nonclinical depression - a resignation. From time to time I fight it, I rise up and toss off a flurry of verbiage, but it all goes nowhere. As do I.
It's no one's fault. It's the byproduct, I suppose, of my ADD - which requires an unnatural and absolute isolation for any project to approach completion - and our poverty, which renders impossible most obvious solutions - separate residences, a retreat, help with housework and meals.
If before my 58th year I'd known about my neurology - my high placement on the autism spectrum and concomitant attention deficits - I'd have avoided most of my life's pain and suffering, avoided inflicting most of the pain and suffering others endure because of me. No marriages, no children, no partners. I might have known better than to risk them. For all the joy and wonder I have known because of these, I have given joy to no one - not intentionally, but because I only perplex. Strange person in an alien world, a creature everyone misunderstands. Especially myself.
I whine like a teenage girl today. Must be the weather. Grim, gray, with ferocious winds.
Dim memories of dreams from overnight. I do remember that the worlds were vast and acutely detailed, as they have been for several such vague nights in a row. I lived on a mountainside, in the midst of evergreens, under snow. Children ran about. Eight-year-old neighborDeaven was there. He stood at the side of a busy road and peed in the shoulder snow.
In real life, book sales have been booming. As an adjunct to this business, I volunteer at the local FriendsOfTheLibrary thrift outlet. Most of my stock comes from there. It's heavy work. My health seems to be holding up, though, although handling so many books aggravates the arthritis in my hands. For this, I find quercitin-and-bromelain supplements sovereign.
I find myself, for three-and-a-half years now, in a slow, steady descent into a soft, shallow, nonclinical depression - a resignation. From time to time I fight it, I rise up and toss off a flurry of verbiage, but it all goes nowhere. As do I.
It's no one's fault. It's the byproduct, I suppose, of my ADD - which requires an unnatural and absolute isolation for any project to approach completion - and our poverty, which renders impossible most obvious solutions - separate residences, a retreat, help with housework and meals.
If before my 58th year I'd known about my neurology - my high placement on the autism spectrum and concomitant attention deficits - I'd have avoided most of my life's pain and suffering, avoided inflicting most of the pain and suffering others endure because of me. No marriages, no children, no partners. I might have known better than to risk them. For all the joy and wonder I have known because of these, I have given joy to no one - not intentionally, but because I only perplex. Strange person in an alien world, a creature everyone misunderstands. Especially myself.
I whine like a teenage girl today. Must be the weather. Grim, gray, with ferocious winds.
Dim memories of dreams from overnight. I do remember that the worlds were vast and acutely detailed, as they have been for several such vague nights in a row. I lived on a mountainside, in the midst of evergreens, under snow. Children ran about. Eight-year-old neighborDeaven was there. He stood at the side of a busy road and peed in the shoulder snow.
In real life, book sales have been booming. As an adjunct to this business, I volunteer at the local FriendsOfTheLibrary thrift outlet. Most of my stock comes from there. It's heavy work. My health seems to be holding up, though, although handling so many books aggravates the arthritis in my hands. For this, I find quercitin-and-bromelain supplements sovereign.
11.10.2012
9 November 2012 2 a.m.
I’ve semislept for an hour or so to the stammering drone of the Carl Sandburg documentary poorly relayed via the iPhone’s PBS app, which starts and stops, rebuffers and reverts to audio, and restarts restarts restarts until when it finally halts altogether only 20 minutes of the program has been got through after an hour of trying. I wake all the way up then and kill the app and roll over to find catGreta moved close to my body in her sleep. I extend an arm and she chirrups extending her own alongside it, claws gently grasping at the tips of my fingers in her contentment. But I can’t get comfortable and finally I realize the light through the long high uncovered window above us is uncharacteristically bright, even for the damned orange street lamp that will invade. Could it only be the new snow reflecting? I climb to my knees and blink out through the glass. And it dawns on me that I’ve left the rear porch light on, cruel into the back neighbors’ windows, surely. And wearily I pull my heavy body on its swelled bones to my feet and around the bed to the bathroom to relieve my bladder and then around and down the narrow hallway to the back door to flip the switch and give darkness its due. Back in bed I hunt for something to write with lest I forget an inspiration dawning in my restless mind, but I find no pen, no paper at hand. I won’t be angry with myself this time. I have come to accept that this just happens, however many pens and spiral journals I stockpile around myself: when the time comes that I need them, none will be at hand. I return to the living room and my desk there, find nothing in the dim light. On with the floor lamp and even on my desk find no writing pen, only felt-tip Pilots that will not serve. At last I locate a flowerpot that holds three gel pens of a type I favored three years ago, and I grab them all, and a journal notebook, and return to bed. The first two of the three pens are dry and I toss them to the floor in disgust. Thankfully though the last pen will write and here I form these words.
The inspiration is this—a memory of my forgotten project, the need to return to those semitrance states that gave access to my childhood as I lived it, to return and remember on the page the magic of it before I drown in misperceptions inflicted by a new comprehension of my inborn maladapted neurology. I want to remember innocent. What was the memory, exactly, that caused my start just now? It was so sweet and green. The animals sleep here oblivious to my wakefulness. Greta curled now tightly in to herself. Ted and Piffle, Apple and Lobsang occupying the bed’s lower two-thirds. Obese Ted’s asthmatic wheezing like a concertina rhythm every night all night. I hope I can remember to give him acidophilus. What was it? The memory is gone, now. After all that, the impulse fades, the certainty and the handful of perfect words propelling - all sunk into oblivion.
Regardless, I must write this thing and not forget. I won’t start tomorrow—I’ll be up all night, now, and too sleepy. Then errands and Skip’s flu shot tomorrow, and Deaven will sleep over tomorrow night, so I’ll have him to feed and entertain. Saturday, then—if I have slept tomorrow night.
Where are my pages? Where have I put them?
I’ve semislept for an hour or so to the stammering drone of the Carl Sandburg documentary poorly relayed via the iPhone’s PBS app, which starts and stops, rebuffers and reverts to audio, and restarts restarts restarts until when it finally halts altogether only 20 minutes of the program has been got through after an hour of trying. I wake all the way up then and kill the app and roll over to find catGreta moved close to my body in her sleep. I extend an arm and she chirrups extending her own alongside it, claws gently grasping at the tips of my fingers in her contentment. But I can’t get comfortable and finally I realize the light through the long high uncovered window above us is uncharacteristically bright, even for the damned orange street lamp that will invade. Could it only be the new snow reflecting? I climb to my knees and blink out through the glass. And it dawns on me that I’ve left the rear porch light on, cruel into the back neighbors’ windows, surely. And wearily I pull my heavy body on its swelled bones to my feet and around the bed to the bathroom to relieve my bladder and then around and down the narrow hallway to the back door to flip the switch and give darkness its due. Back in bed I hunt for something to write with lest I forget an inspiration dawning in my restless mind, but I find no pen, no paper at hand. I won’t be angry with myself this time. I have come to accept that this just happens, however many pens and spiral journals I stockpile around myself: when the time comes that I need them, none will be at hand. I return to the living room and my desk there, find nothing in the dim light. On with the floor lamp and even on my desk find no writing pen, only felt-tip Pilots that will not serve. At last I locate a flowerpot that holds three gel pens of a type I favored three years ago, and I grab them all, and a journal notebook, and return to bed. The first two of the three pens are dry and I toss them to the floor in disgust. Thankfully though the last pen will write and here I form these words.
The inspiration is this—a memory of my forgotten project, the need to return to those semitrance states that gave access to my childhood as I lived it, to return and remember on the page the magic of it before I drown in misperceptions inflicted by a new comprehension of my inborn maladapted neurology. I want to remember innocent. What was the memory, exactly, that caused my start just now? It was so sweet and green. The animals sleep here oblivious to my wakefulness. Greta curled now tightly in to herself. Ted and Piffle, Apple and Lobsang occupying the bed’s lower two-thirds. Obese Ted’s asthmatic wheezing like a concertina rhythm every night all night. I hope I can remember to give him acidophilus. What was it? The memory is gone, now. After all that, the impulse fades, the certainty and the handful of perfect words propelling - all sunk into oblivion.
Regardless, I must write this thing and not forget. I won’t start tomorrow—I’ll be up all night, now, and too sleepy. Then errands and Skip’s flu shot tomorrow, and Deaven will sleep over tomorrow night, so I’ll have him to feed and entertain. Saturday, then—if I have slept tomorrow night.
Where are my pages? Where have I put them?
11.08.2012
The cold is here. Rain and snow alternating today. CatGreta, who spends her days outdoors, is perplexed. Wanting out, rushing back in, wanting out again. This would be a good day to bake cow cookies, now that I have a stove, if only I had chocolate chips. I'll have to get some when I go out to mail my book orders.
Oh! here's the sun, and even though it still isn't 40F degrees Greta is OUT, and peacefully ensconced in the vacant-lot weed field near her favorite ground squirrel burrow. I suppose "peacefully" isn't the right word ... "Alertly," then.
Halloween came and went. I carved two big pumpkins. BrotherBrian was a vampire, as he is every year since I bought him rubber vampire teeth he has no other excuse to wear. I made up his face with the pointy eyebrows and hairline and the pallor and the bloody mouth. All evening every few minutes he trotted off to the bathroom mirror to admire himself and I trotted outdoors to watch my jack-o'-lanterns glow in the dark. We had five trick-or-treaters, including the neighbor kids (three) and a pair of sisters aged maybe 7 and 9 dressed as a fairy princess and a Greek goddess, respectively. I suppose no one wants to walk all the way down an empty vacant-lot-lined street just to get to the one little house at the end of it. Plus it was raining.
***
I dreamed this morning of Charles Olson. That is, the dream was not about Charles Olson, but rather he was in the dream, toward the end of it. I had moved to a cheap ugly flatroofed house off the beaten track. It was brown. Looked as though it had been cobbled together from old paneling. But it was roomy, three bedrooms, three baths. Sort of dim. And trashy. It was on low ground by itself next to a cornfield, directly behind a high hill that shielded it from a busy highway. I lived there with my brother. In real life here in town there is a violent little man who wanders about in camo clothes raving about conspiracies and survival. I know his mother, who never has been strong enough to get him to leave home. He used to visit my bookstore and harangue me there for hours. This little man was a character in my dream. I let him stay in my house in a back bedroom of his own. I worried a little about my friends thinking that I always bring home crazy people. Thinking I'd done it again, and getting discouraged with me. The house was full of people for some reason, visiting because of some occasion. Crashing there because it was near the college and it was free. One of the overnighters was Charles Olson. I was in awe of him, afraid to speak to him. He strode about the place being large, ashes dropping from his everpresent cigarette, pontificating to his young male minions, who followed him around like so many pilot fish. He was preparing a manuscript. He needed to make copies of it. I had a small copier and offered to make the copies for him, but he preferred to use his own, a large and complicated machine I was unfamiliar with. As he placed the first page of his manuscript under its lid he was called away. He told me to finish the job and then rushed out of the room, in too much of a hurry to explain to me how his copier worked or to hear my stammered questions. I went to the machine, which was engaged in slowly scanning the page. The buttons were numerous and tiny and placed closely together. I carefully lowered the tip of my right pinky finger onto what I thought was the correct button - "start," perhaps - but instead it depressed the button next to it, weirdly labeled "wash." To my horror I saw little jets along the length of the copier glass issue sudsy water under the lid, drenching and removing the type from the page. I fumbled desperately trying to find some button that would reverse the process. Olson turned up then and was, yes, angry with me. I tried to explain my mistake, said I couldn't find a way to make it stop. "You turn it OFF," he replied. He never looked me in the eye, so disgusted was he, and he grabbed his papers and bolted from the room. There was more to the dream. In one bathroom the doors sealed tightly, and one filled the entire room with water in order to bathe. I was upset because a man had drained it before I could use the bathwater; refilling it was time-consuming, and who knew when there would be more hot water? The house had a narrow hallway that was crowded with academics moving quickly back and forth as they got ready for their symposium. My bedroom was off this hallway and wide open to it, having a wide space where double doors were meant to close but missing the doors. I tried to pull a scrap of curtain across the gap, but it was far too small and my room remained exposed to everyone.
Oh! here's the sun, and even though it still isn't 40F degrees Greta is OUT, and peacefully ensconced in the vacant-lot weed field near her favorite ground squirrel burrow. I suppose "peacefully" isn't the right word ... "Alertly," then.
Halloween came and went. I carved two big pumpkins. BrotherBrian was a vampire, as he is every year since I bought him rubber vampire teeth he has no other excuse to wear. I made up his face with the pointy eyebrows and hairline and the pallor and the bloody mouth. All evening every few minutes he trotted off to the bathroom mirror to admire himself and I trotted outdoors to watch my jack-o'-lanterns glow in the dark. We had five trick-or-treaters, including the neighbor kids (three) and a pair of sisters aged maybe 7 and 9 dressed as a fairy princess and a Greek goddess, respectively. I suppose no one wants to walk all the way down an empty vacant-lot-lined street just to get to the one little house at the end of it. Plus it was raining.
***
I dreamed this morning of Charles Olson. That is, the dream was not about Charles Olson, but rather he was in the dream, toward the end of it. I had moved to a cheap ugly flatroofed house off the beaten track. It was brown. Looked as though it had been cobbled together from old paneling. But it was roomy, three bedrooms, three baths. Sort of dim. And trashy. It was on low ground by itself next to a cornfield, directly behind a high hill that shielded it from a busy highway. I lived there with my brother. In real life here in town there is a violent little man who wanders about in camo clothes raving about conspiracies and survival. I know his mother, who never has been strong enough to get him to leave home. He used to visit my bookstore and harangue me there for hours. This little man was a character in my dream. I let him stay in my house in a back bedroom of his own. I worried a little about my friends thinking that I always bring home crazy people. Thinking I'd done it again, and getting discouraged with me. The house was full of people for some reason, visiting because of some occasion. Crashing there because it was near the college and it was free. One of the overnighters was Charles Olson. I was in awe of him, afraid to speak to him. He strode about the place being large, ashes dropping from his everpresent cigarette, pontificating to his young male minions, who followed him around like so many pilot fish. He was preparing a manuscript. He needed to make copies of it. I had a small copier and offered to make the copies for him, but he preferred to use his own, a large and complicated machine I was unfamiliar with. As he placed the first page of his manuscript under its lid he was called away. He told me to finish the job and then rushed out of the room, in too much of a hurry to explain to me how his copier worked or to hear my stammered questions. I went to the machine, which was engaged in slowly scanning the page. The buttons were numerous and tiny and placed closely together. I carefully lowered the tip of my right pinky finger onto what I thought was the correct button - "start," perhaps - but instead it depressed the button next to it, weirdly labeled "wash." To my horror I saw little jets along the length of the copier glass issue sudsy water under the lid, drenching and removing the type from the page. I fumbled desperately trying to find some button that would reverse the process. Olson turned up then and was, yes, angry with me. I tried to explain my mistake, said I couldn't find a way to make it stop. "You turn it OFF," he replied. He never looked me in the eye, so disgusted was he, and he grabbed his papers and bolted from the room. There was more to the dream. In one bathroom the doors sealed tightly, and one filled the entire room with water in order to bathe. I was upset because a man had drained it before I could use the bathwater; refilling it was time-consuming, and who knew when there would be more hot water? The house had a narrow hallway that was crowded with academics moving quickly back and forth as they got ready for their symposium. My bedroom was off this hallway and wide open to it, having a wide space where double doors were meant to close but missing the doors. I tried to pull a scrap of curtain across the gap, but it was far too small and my room remained exposed to everyone.
10.23.2012
I dreamed about an orphan boy who had been crippled with polio. He was perhaps 7 or 8 years old, black hair, olive skin, thin bent over and walked with difficulty. No one would adopt him, so he was due to be shipped out to the big concrete orphanage forever warehousing place. The social worker in charge of finding him adoptive parents, in her desperation to save him and as a last resort, took him up the hill to the vast rambling shack of a thin overworked motherwoman, black, who already had adopted 14 children. She agreed, resignedly, to adopt the boy, too, and add him to her brood. She stood at a stove stirring soup in a large pot as they talked. I think she resisted at first but finally was convinced to accept him.
I dreamed about many other things. In memory I see faces and have impressions of places and clothes and movements. And I can't articulate any of it.
***
The world is gray and white today and very cold. Some snow fell overnight and continues now midday to fly sideways across the block of yellowdeadweed vacant lots we look out on from our big windows here at the Old Same Place. I am sleepy. My bones hurt and there is a catch in my back from having slept funny.
Hot shower. Bufferins. Grab brotherB and head out for groceries and bookscouting. Over the weekend we brought home all our winter clothes from storage, so I have many warm sweaters to choose from.
I dreamed about many other things. In memory I see faces and have impressions of places and clothes and movements. And I can't articulate any of it.
***
The world is gray and white today and very cold. Some snow fell overnight and continues now midday to fly sideways across the block of yellowdeadweed vacant lots we look out on from our big windows here at the Old Same Place. I am sleepy. My bones hurt and there is a catch in my back from having slept funny.
Hot shower. Bufferins. Grab brotherB and head out for groceries and bookscouting. Over the weekend we brought home all our winter clothes from storage, so I have many warm sweaters to choose from.
10.22.2012
A little snow overnight, turned to rain by 7 a.m. I heard the big wind start up around 1, pounding the house, Figured that cold front was sliding by.
Good sleeps lately, good sales, good homemaking. Writing, not so much. Now that we have a real stove it seems almost like a real home here at the Old Same Place. Hotplate & microwave don't really work, hearth-wise. Goddess has no place to hang.
Goldfish in the trough out back are slowing down some. I noticed when I fed them yesterday they'd grown a lot in the last couple of weeks. Ravenous, they are, packing it on for the Big Sleep. Amazes me how the troughwater can freeze but somewhere a little pocket of not-ice exists for the fishies to hunker down in 'til the thaw mid-Spring.
Pages to keyboard this morning, mending to finish and iron, books to wrap and mail. Quiet. Grimgray & chill. Winter's dipping a toe in.
Good sleeps lately, good sales, good homemaking. Writing, not so much. Now that we have a real stove it seems almost like a real home here at the Old Same Place. Hotplate & microwave don't really work, hearth-wise. Goddess has no place to hang.
Goldfish in the trough out back are slowing down some. I noticed when I fed them yesterday they'd grown a lot in the last couple of weeks. Ravenous, they are, packing it on for the Big Sleep. Amazes me how the troughwater can freeze but somewhere a little pocket of not-ice exists for the fishies to hunker down in 'til the thaw mid-Spring.
Pages to keyboard this morning, mending to finish and iron, books to wrap and mail. Quiet. Grimgray & chill. Winter's dipping a toe in.
10.18.2012
The propane fireplace, our only heat source, came on for the first time this season on October 17 at 4:55 a.m. The smell woke me. Stench of burning dust - acrid smell of old dead skin accumulated in the iron interstices. Ugh.
October 18. Frost on the lawn. Orange morning light slants across the yellow weedlot, goldbrown poplars behind: it's almost a caricature of autumn, impossibly perfect, best fall ever.
Is it fall because we hurtle from solid safe green bright summer into the dimfreezepit of winter?
We're ready, I think. I think there are down comforters and big white pillows at the bottom.
Yesterday and the day before the local propane purveyors plumbed a T'd pipeline under my house and ran a connection up through a hole in the kitchen floor. Now, where never there has been one before in this tiny former office building, a (very used) secondhand gas stove sits in its kitchen, and last night I cooked our first meal ever here sans hotplate and microwave. I was cookin' with gas. You're all invited here for Thanksgiving.
October 18. Frost on the lawn. Orange morning light slants across the yellow weedlot, goldbrown poplars behind: it's almost a caricature of autumn, impossibly perfect, best fall ever.
Is it fall because we hurtle from solid safe green bright summer into the dimfreezepit of winter?
We're ready, I think. I think there are down comforters and big white pillows at the bottom.
Yesterday and the day before the local propane purveyors plumbed a T'd pipeline under my house and ran a connection up through a hole in the kitchen floor. Now, where never there has been one before in this tiny former office building, a (very used) secondhand gas stove sits in its kitchen, and last night I cooked our first meal ever here sans hotplate and microwave. I was cookin' with gas. You're all invited here for Thanksgiving.
10.14.2012
An interesting week behind us here at the Old Same Place. Some disappointments, some confusions, but much accomplished and a lot of love thrown into the bargain.
It was a record-setter for sleep and dreams. I slept easily (hooray!) and woke early to write down several every morning - vivid, detailed, atmospheric dreams that all the same (and in the maddening way of dreams) defied description except in skeletal particulars.
In a lengthy one from last night my Grandma Erma grudgingly bought me a queen-sized bed with stereo and TV built into the foot of it. When the policemen (?) delivered it to my room they wondered how I could live in such a decrepit joint - ancient-of-days linoleum bits clinging to exposed weathered wood, peelingwallpapered walls full of holes that let the weather - and wildlife - in. I laughed and said I'd grown up in just such a room and found it comforting. I especially liked the little lizards who visited: I greeted a little green gecko poking his head in high on the wall.
In other dreams I moved to New York again and again, and again and again was ripped off by scamming real estate agents and scheming thieves. I took hikes along dusty trails and encountered soldiers playing war games. Walked a gauntlet of loitering menaces alone in a latenight city park. Phoned Billy Idol while on a date with James Marsters (Spike!), who teased my hair into a beautiful bouffant.
Anyway, I do not want for material this week.
In the brick-and-mortar world, the bookselling business is great. I have almost 500 titles posted online and sales have made possible little improvements: I got a filling in a molar, and the exposed plywood on the roof of my house has been shingled over, and the propane guys are going to plumb for a stove on Monday. (A stove! No more hotplates!) On the other hand, Husband had to rescue me from an unpaid water bill, and I argued with the storage people to have their lien-lock removed. All our winter clothes are in there and my payment wasn't that late.
I gave up on the garden tomatoes and pulled the plants up, heavyladen with green orbs as they were. The nights were down in the 20s F. all last week and there was no hope. They ripen in the trailer now, slowly slowly on the vine. We have yet to taste one. It was a weird year for tomatoes.
I leave you know. Time for work.
It's very very autumn out there.
It was a record-setter for sleep and dreams. I slept easily (hooray!) and woke early to write down several every morning - vivid, detailed, atmospheric dreams that all the same (and in the maddening way of dreams) defied description except in skeletal particulars.
In a lengthy one from last night my Grandma Erma grudgingly bought me a queen-sized bed with stereo and TV built into the foot of it. When the policemen (?) delivered it to my room they wondered how I could live in such a decrepit joint - ancient-of-days linoleum bits clinging to exposed weathered wood, peelingwallpapered walls full of holes that let the weather - and wildlife - in. I laughed and said I'd grown up in just such a room and found it comforting. I especially liked the little lizards who visited: I greeted a little green gecko poking his head in high on the wall.
In other dreams I moved to New York again and again, and again and again was ripped off by scamming real estate agents and scheming thieves. I took hikes along dusty trails and encountered soldiers playing war games. Walked a gauntlet of loitering menaces alone in a latenight city park. Phoned Billy Idol while on a date with James Marsters (Spike!), who teased my hair into a beautiful bouffant.
Anyway, I do not want for material this week.
In the brick-and-mortar world, the bookselling business is great. I have almost 500 titles posted online and sales have made possible little improvements: I got a filling in a molar, and the exposed plywood on the roof of my house has been shingled over, and the propane guys are going to plumb for a stove on Monday. (A stove! No more hotplates!) On the other hand, Husband had to rescue me from an unpaid water bill, and I argued with the storage people to have their lien-lock removed. All our winter clothes are in there and my payment wasn't that late.
I gave up on the garden tomatoes and pulled the plants up, heavyladen with green orbs as they were. The nights were down in the 20s F. all last week and there was no hope. They ripen in the trailer now, slowly slowly on the vine. We have yet to taste one. It was a weird year for tomatoes.
I leave you know. Time for work.
It's very very autumn out there.
10.09.2012
Long time no speak. The tenterhooks I hung from pierced deep. Mute nostril anxiety.
The publisher requested I take a third test last Wednesday using an actual chapter from an actual manuscript currently in production - "one of our better ones," they said. The edit must be light. I had 24 hours.
Except I really had far fewer, because the request arrived midafternoon Tuesday and I wouldn't begin the edit until the next morning: my wordmind is uncooperative late in the day; by evening it is all but absent. 'Twas ever thus.
So instead I prepared for the edit by whipping through a printout of the chapter to get a sense of it, make some marks, and to research the quotes and sources for accuracy. If this was one of their "better" manuscripts, I was loath to imagine what the problem submissions must look like. The work was turgid, flabby, meandering, almost unreadable. Several quotations contained errors. It would be a drag - or an adventure. Surely the latter.
I was able to sleep that night (a miracle!) but awoke at 4:30 to record a dream. My gut said get up and edit now, so I did. And good thing - I worked until 25 minutes before deadline at 1pm my time (3pm theirs), with time out to feed animals, breakfast my brother, take a walk midmorning to clear my head.
I changed out repetitious words lest they enrage or hypnotize the reader, changed the voice from passive to active when it seemed warranted. I removed detritus and tightened the language (I had been told "judicious pruning" was OK to keep the book length within bounds). To preserve the colloquial tone I relaxed the few sentences that were arch and academic. And of course I caught every error and corrected for style.
A moderate edit of bad writing, with fact-checking and a spit-shine thrown in for good measure.
And from Wednesday through late yesterday afternoon I heard not a word back. Until, in response to my gentle inquiry, I was told they'd gone with another candidate. That my editing was heavy-handed, the extent of the rewriting unacceptable (although "excellent"), and if they ever came across a manuscript so bad it needed a "complete re-do" they'd let me know.
I was stunned. I had simply edited. I had not done anything substantive, no developmental reorganization, no rewriting whatever. It wasn't a light touch - I am not accustomed to let embarrassing writing stand, for both author's and publisher's sake - but it was far from heavy. It was a moderate line edit of the kind I spent thirty years doing before dropping out due to illness in 2002.
I did shed a tear for the loss of anticipated income, but I did not feel sad. I know I am good; I know I knocked that infernal chapter out of the park. (I also know I was a physical wreck by the end of the series of tests: am I really up to resuming this work?) But publishing has changed a great deal in ten years. It was revealing that, when I searched for correct spelling of a name in the test "Acknowledgments" in the first test, I found the final version of it in a scan of the book page at Amazon. It was rife with errors (including the dreaded possessive "it's") - in the published book!
Publishing really is broken. And I'm still out of work.
The I Ching tells me to write a book, instead. I'll keep sending resumes (help! I need a paycheck!), but for now it's back to the projects for me.
The publisher requested I take a third test last Wednesday using an actual chapter from an actual manuscript currently in production - "one of our better ones," they said. The edit must be light. I had 24 hours.
Except I really had far fewer, because the request arrived midafternoon Tuesday and I wouldn't begin the edit until the next morning: my wordmind is uncooperative late in the day; by evening it is all but absent. 'Twas ever thus.
So instead I prepared for the edit by whipping through a printout of the chapter to get a sense of it, make some marks, and to research the quotes and sources for accuracy. If this was one of their "better" manuscripts, I was loath to imagine what the problem submissions must look like. The work was turgid, flabby, meandering, almost unreadable. Several quotations contained errors. It would be a drag - or an adventure. Surely the latter.
I was able to sleep that night (a miracle!) but awoke at 4:30 to record a dream. My gut said get up and edit now, so I did. And good thing - I worked until 25 minutes before deadline at 1pm my time (3pm theirs), with time out to feed animals, breakfast my brother, take a walk midmorning to clear my head.
I changed out repetitious words lest they enrage or hypnotize the reader, changed the voice from passive to active when it seemed warranted. I removed detritus and tightened the language (I had been told "judicious pruning" was OK to keep the book length within bounds). To preserve the colloquial tone I relaxed the few sentences that were arch and academic. And of course I caught every error and corrected for style.
A moderate edit of bad writing, with fact-checking and a spit-shine thrown in for good measure.
And from Wednesday through late yesterday afternoon I heard not a word back. Until, in response to my gentle inquiry, I was told they'd gone with another candidate. That my editing was heavy-handed, the extent of the rewriting unacceptable (although "excellent"), and if they ever came across a manuscript so bad it needed a "complete re-do" they'd let me know.
I was stunned. I had simply edited. I had not done anything substantive, no developmental reorganization, no rewriting whatever. It wasn't a light touch - I am not accustomed to let embarrassing writing stand, for both author's and publisher's sake - but it was far from heavy. It was a moderate line edit of the kind I spent thirty years doing before dropping out due to illness in 2002.
I did shed a tear for the loss of anticipated income, but I did not feel sad. I know I am good; I know I knocked that infernal chapter out of the park. (I also know I was a physical wreck by the end of the series of tests: am I really up to resuming this work?) But publishing has changed a great deal in ten years. It was revealing that, when I searched for correct spelling of a name in the test "Acknowledgments" in the first test, I found the final version of it in a scan of the book page at Amazon. It was rife with errors (including the dreaded possessive "it's") - in the published book!
Publishing really is broken. And I'm still out of work.
The I Ching tells me to write a book, instead. I'll keep sending resumes (help! I need a paycheck!), but for now it's back to the projects for me.
10.03.2012
I awoke at four twenty-two
in time
to write my dream down
and start work by four-thirty
My dream
I bought my grandparents' farm at auction
Everyone remarked
about the vigor of my bidding
but I had the resources
every cent I'd need
in my pockets
Then, landowner, I
set about repairing
the land - the great smooth bog
at the back of the property
wetland for wildness
I fed with my presence
They hailed my arrival there
galloping to the gate
or swimming
flying, even
The wild animals loved me
even when the cropless farm failed
and the mortgage fell behind
At the crossroads
I organized
pluck every leaf
and label it for sale
my children frantic
filling the little bags
I must make a sign to place
along the highway
in letters large enough
for the passers-by to read
"lemon leaves" "parsley"
"artemisia"
Awake now I remember
the good parts
the animals, the blue ponds
the pocketsful of money
but down to work now
It's late here in California
when they await your product
in the East
a snuck silent breakfast in the small house
browned banana
from the basket, and o.j.
and a great bowl of almonds
The cagebirds shriek
at my lamplight (shhhh!)
cats and dog soft little snores
from the blanketbed
I switch the machinery on
This is Test Number 3
the whole farm
is counting on me
in time
to write my dream down
and start work by four-thirty
My dream
I bought my grandparents' farm at auction
Everyone remarked
about the vigor of my bidding
but I had the resources
every cent I'd need
in my pockets
Then, landowner, I
set about repairing
the land - the great smooth bog
at the back of the property
wetland for wildness
I fed with my presence
They hailed my arrival there
galloping to the gate
or swimming
flying, even
The wild animals loved me
even when the cropless farm failed
and the mortgage fell behind
At the crossroads
I organized
pluck every leaf
and label it for sale
my children frantic
filling the little bags
I must make a sign to place
along the highway
in letters large enough
for the passers-by to read
"lemon leaves" "parsley"
"artemisia"
Awake now I remember
the good parts
the animals, the blue ponds
the pocketsful of money
but down to work now
It's late here in California
when they await your product
in the East
a snuck silent breakfast in the small house
browned banana
from the basket, and o.j.
and a great bowl of almonds
The cagebirds shriek
at my lamplight (shhhh!)
cats and dog soft little snores
from the blanketbed
I switch the machinery on
This is Test Number 3
the whole farm
is counting on me
9.25.2012
Last Tuesday morning I awoke from a vivid dream. A gentleman asked me, "Would you like a job? "Oh yes!" I said, and he led me to a spartan room containing only a table and chair. "I will need a computer," I said. He glanced at his colleague. They seemed to think this was unreasonable. "It will have to be a Mac, though. I never understood DOS." They left me there with some papers. Was it a test?
Wednesday morning I awoke from another dream: I was newly employed, late for my orientation as new employee, entering the small company headquarters, settling into my seat in the small auditorium where the talk was in progress already.
Thursday morning, in what passes for my reality, I received in email an inquiry from a publisher who wants to give me editing work (I had sent round a volley of resumes about six months ago). Two dreams of new jobs two days in a row, and then my first offer of work in 10 years.
But, inasmuch as it has been 10 years since I felt well enough and competent to do editorial work, I have lost all my contacts and references from the decades before, and I have no recent work to point to other than an edit I did last year for a friend who self-published her book. Thank heaven for that, because I was able to show that edit to the inquiring publisher. They responded with two elementary tests they said were being given several candidates, from among whom they would choose one to offer work. After three sleepless nights and days laboring in a state of mild panic, I turned in the tests. Now I wait.
I reassure myself: even if they do not choose me, this proves my resume can get a response, and so I must prepare another volley. It's autumn, when publishers must gear up to get their titles in print before the holiday season. They're panicking, too.
Wednesday morning I awoke from another dream: I was newly employed, late for my orientation as new employee, entering the small company headquarters, settling into my seat in the small auditorium where the talk was in progress already.
Thursday morning, in what passes for my reality, I received in email an inquiry from a publisher who wants to give me editing work (I had sent round a volley of resumes about six months ago). Two dreams of new jobs two days in a row, and then my first offer of work in 10 years.
But, inasmuch as it has been 10 years since I felt well enough and competent to do editorial work, I have lost all my contacts and references from the decades before, and I have no recent work to point to other than an edit I did last year for a friend who self-published her book. Thank heaven for that, because I was able to show that edit to the inquiring publisher. They responded with two elementary tests they said were being given several candidates, from among whom they would choose one to offer work. After three sleepless nights and days laboring in a state of mild panic, I turned in the tests. Now I wait.
I reassure myself: even if they do not choose me, this proves my resume can get a response, and so I must prepare another volley. It's autumn, when publishers must gear up to get their titles in print before the holiday season. They're panicking, too.
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