“That’s what the world is, after all: an endless battle of contrasting memories.” ~ Haruki Murakami, from 1Q84
Saturday afternoon. Partly cloudy, 51 degrees.
I should finish my cleaning, but I don’t want to. Last night I had really horrible dreams, two involving bad things happening to dogs. In one dream I had a puppy (not one of my real ones) who was attacked by a pit bull owned by a neighbor. The neighbor didn’t stop the attack and told me not to make such a big deal out of it, and I was vacillating between heartbreak and seething anger at the dog’s owner. My puppy was mauled and bloody and looking at me with such unbelievable hurt in his eyes. There was blood everywhere
In the second dog dream I had taken one of my dogs to work with me at the big department store where I used to be a manager. The store manager brought his puppy to work also. Both dogs managed to get outside, and this one woman who was leaning against the building kicked the puppy. I saw it happen through the glass and went to rescue the puppy, but then I got lost inside the store, and I was also trying to page the manager to let him know, but I couldn’t remember how to work the paging system, and my dog was lost, too.
The only good part was when I was looking at the night sky in my dream and I saw a meteor, and I was trying to point it out so that everyone could see how beautiful it was.
I woke up with a headache again.
“There are as many worlds as there are kinds of days, and as an opal changes its colors and its fire to match the nature of a day, so do I.” ~ John Steinbeck, from Travels with Charley: In Search of America
Corey is due in port on the 25th now. Apparently they’ve hit some bad weather and aren’t making good time. It will be so good to see him. Tillie will be ecstatic, and she’ll probably lie and say that no one has paid any attention to her, no one has played with her, her life has been bereft. Dogs do lie you know, especially when it comes to treats.
Anyway, I think they’re supposed to be in port for a few days, so I hope we actually get to spend a bit of time together. One time the captain didn’t change to in-port watches, so Corey spent most of his time sleeping and going back and forth to the ship. We’ll just have to see. Of course, now that he’s almost here I’m going into panic mode and thinking about doing stupid things like cleaning the ceiling fans. This always happens. I have to force myself to use restraint so that my back isn’t acting up when he arrives.
I’ll try to sate my OCD need to clean with scrubbing the floors and normal stuff. Brett will help because dusting and vacuuming are his household chores. Eamonn will not help because he’s not even here. Lucky for him, his father took him to Florida for a fishing trip for his birthday. I won’t even get started on how blatantly my ex shows favoritism among his children. What’s the point? Nothing will change.
“Off I go, rummaging about in books for sayings which please me.” ~ Michel de Montaigne
Yesterday, Brett, Em, and I went to a new thrift store in downtown Norfolk. It’s a great place for books, so I was thrilled. What was especially nice was that they have a bag policy, as in for $4 you can fill a bag with books. I brought in one of my shopping bags and asked if I could use it, and the woman in charge said yes, but since it was a bigger bag she would have to charge me $5. Then when I checked out she said that I hadn’t filled my bag, so she only charged me $4. Such cheap thrills.
Truth is I could have filled the bag twice, but my arms were tired, as was my back from sitting on the floor to look at the bottom shelves. I have absolutely no shame when it comes to searching for books: I will bend, stoop, pull things off shelves, whatever it takes. I found an old HBJ English grammar book and an old encyclopedia, which I grabbed just because they were in great shape. Then I got several board books for Olivia, and about seven hard bound books for myself. I also found this odd-looking mariner’s head mug that was carved out of wood, and the handle is a whale. It’s really wild looking, so I bought it for Corey.
We decided that we’ll have to go back there during their Happy Hour as everything except furniture is 50 percent off. The store uses its profits for abused and neglected children, so all-in-all, it’s a great find for a great cause. Now with the influx of new reading material, I can stop fretting because my reading pile was down to just five books.
Then we went to the international market where we all picked out our various favorites from around the world. I’ll have to take Corey there as he can get squid and stuff like that.
“Unless I write a few sentences here from time to time I shall, as they say, forget the use of my pen.” ~ Virginia Woolf, from a diary entry dated 13 May 1931
Another thing that I need to take care of before Corey gets home is the pile on the left side of my desk. I’ve been doing bills and correspondence, and I need to organize because I’ve just thrown everything into a pile. Of course, the pile is nothing like the pile that used to exist on my old dining room table when I was with my ex.
I have never liked going through mail, junk mail, flyers, bills, so I used to just grab everything out of the mailbox and then throw it on the table, which of course, was problematic with my ex. It was also during a time in which I was dealing with my grief via a shopping addiction, so the mail represented real life, and who wants that? However, that being said, did the ex ever take it upon himself to remedy the situation by opening and sorting? Enough said on that.
My ex showed up in a dream a few nights ago, and I know that it’s because I’m torqued out of shape about the Florida trip. It just wouldn’t occur to this man that perhaps his youngest son would like to go on a fishing trip out of state. The only compensation is that Brett just had his NYC trip, during which he had a great time. I suppose we must take our pleasures where we can get them and not rely on others to provide them for us.
Still torqued, though. Bâtard grandes.
Anyway, I saw a beautiful picture of a sailboat on my tumblr dash, which is what prompted my image theme for today. I haven’t been on a sailboat in years; I travel the water vicariously through my love.
More later. Peace.
Music by Sara Jackson-Holman, “Freight Train”
Flour and Ash
“Make flour into dough,” she answers,
“and fire will turn it into food.
Ash is the final abstraction of matter.
You can just brush it away.”
She tacks a sheet of paper to the wall,
dips her hand in a palette of flour and ash,
applies the fine soft powders with a fingertip,
highlighting in chalk and graphite,
blending, blurring with her thumb.
Today she is working in seven shades of gray.
Outside the door, day lilies
in the high flush of summer-
about-to-be-fall. Her garden burns
red and yellow in the dry August air
and is not consumed.
Inside, on the studio wall, a heavy
particulate smoke
thickens and rises. Footsteps grime the snow.
The about-to-be-dead line up on the ramp
with their boxy suitcases,
ashen shoes.
When I get too close she yanks me back.
She hovers over her creation
though she too has a mind
to brush against that world
and wipe it out.
~ Chana Bloch
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