Mnemosyne
You don’t know me well enough to know if I’m doing this to be ironic or not.
You don’t know if I’m humming the old song we used to sing because I want to remember or because I can’t forget.
Oh, how maudlin we’ve become in our twenties.
There’s a few things I think are memorable about this gray, odd, awkward day. I’ve made a plan to make a new life plan. This plan is currently in only the outline stage, but it involves me shedding lame old habits and picking up fresh, tremendous, dynamic new ones. Like this dear haunt, for one, and the dressing I am sewing for its windows. Apparently, the plan involves purchasing a vibrator. And lots of water glasses being ticked off a very large chart. And it involves me cooking – which I seem to avoid like the plague of late and I don’t know why. Which is to say, I know exactly why, the kitchen’s a mess and I really can’t be arsed to clean it. Because I only have have the desire and ability to do one thing well and if I give it to an apple green kitchen, I can’t be giving it to you. So, really, aren’t you happy with my choice?
I don’t know why I’ve given up on the question mark. Another way I’ve failed the English grammar, I suppose.
The plan will go into effect whenever it will be most efficacious or whenever I feel the strongest longing for a greater happiness that outweighs my natural sloth and terror. Soon, I hope, probably when I feel my tether slip. I’ve already been clocked about the head about the need for the plan by people I both love and loathe, so we’ll have to see what becomes the trigger. I’m getting myself open to it. I’m counteracting the inertia. Clever!
I have no idea how I ever got to 500 words ever before. This is a sort of agony tonight, but I will soldier on. It’s cooler, anyway, and the rain has stayed the grievous heat that has made its way under my skin and would not give me peace. What else?
The man in hospice was sitting up today. It’s not disappointment, or even awe that he’s still alive that I feel, it’s more a sort of feeling that you know that someone’s playing hooky. It’s not your business, and you won’t tell, but you wonder if someone’s waiting on him, tapping their feet. But I don’t think he’s the one keeping him there. I think he’s got every limb tied to someone who loves him and can’t manage without him, even though they have to. Even though one of his best friends told us about the plans for the service, the cremation. Even though he was sitting up today. So they increase the morphine, he turns yellow and corpse-like, and we talk about what we’re doing for the fourth of July and how much we’re looking forward to the fireworks.
Also, as a post-script, I may have flashed a woman today by accident. Sorry, it’s a horrible shirt!
Three Wishes
Home alone and happy – nothing brings me down.
Emiliana Torrini has the perfect end of the day music. Makes me feel like the stress is packing up and going on a 10-12 hour vacation. A little popcorn and some planning for tomorrow makes me feel quite Jean Pargettery and by that I mean quite lovely and domestic and cozy.
A different day. Sort of betterish, I feel. But I’m still dodging punches that seem to come out of nowhere. I am trying to keep the sense that I might be okay and don’t have reason to come home sobbing in control. That not everything from Billy Mays to a returned check to a man laying in hospice is my fault.
When not one of those things has even a tertiary connection to anything I’ve done. I just feel it. Might have something to do with this whole feeling crazy thing as an excuse to disengage. If I were to spend my free hours doing something as wanky as self-analysis.
I didn’t go see the man in hospice. He wasn’t close to me though I knew him, met him several times, liked him. I was just an employee of an organization he belonged to. And so many people were going, he was going to be loved up until his very last minute. It was just strange, to be working all day and glancing at the clock and aware of all the laypeople who had decided that he wasn’t going to make it 24 hours. That his wife who had been so by his side for the past 3+ years of his illness was already headlong, almost wildly careening into grieving him. That I will go to bed and make the assumption he can no longer make: the sun will meet me in the morning and dreams will keep me safely bound until I rise. I’m listening to the very apt Loreena McKennitt.
I don’t feel like I need to cry for him or for her, but perhaps for them. This broken thing that kept them safely bound until this moment. This planned for, promised, but still uncertain moment when they part. When those vows are released as he is from whatever earthly pain wracks him. There’s something powerful in watching a woman become a widow before your eyes. In watching a man go beyond the trappings of the physical. It’s hard not to think of myself, this single voyager with this gift of strength I might be cheated or cheating someone out of.
That said, I got a letter from someone who wants to get to know me better. I am not as open to it as my best self would like. I am very protective and this one future is clearly precious to me given everything I’ve forgone to maintain its integrity, and this feels forced to me. I think I know very well I’d do what I’ve done before. So I kinda have to buck up and say that I don’t want to waste his time. That I’m more than willing to write letters, share writing, but I don’t want to give a litany of myself and read one of him and huzzah, we’re so in like that we should meet. I feel beholden already. Not excited. Not pleased. Not with this little curl of desire in my head. So I have to buck the fuck up.
Yes, I’m a mishmash. I’m a troubled creature. I do not behave in ways that would best bring be happiness.
I just want what I want, okay?
