“I want to work in revelations, not just spin silly tales for money. I want to fish as deep down as possible into my own subconscious in the belief that once that far down, everyone will understand because they are the same that far down.” ~ Jack Kerouac

“Dahlias” (nd, oil on canvas)
by Joseph Henry Sharp

                   

“My brain hums with scraps of poetry and madness.” ~ Virginia Woolf, Selected Letters

Friday afternoon. Partly cloudy and warmer, 55 degrees.

“Cannas” (nd, oil on canvas)
Franz Bischoff

Honestly, I don’t know how far I’ll get today. I want to write, but I don’t know what to say. I’m sad, but I’m okay. In other words, it’s one of those days in which my mind and my heart are battling, and I have no idea if I’ll reach some kind of accord or if I will just have to give one over to the other and be done with it. In the meantime, I’m eating Junior Mints very slowly, making each one last for minutes as opposed to seconds, as if savoring such a sugary treat might help me to find my way, or perhaps, I’m just enjoying the chocolate.

At the moment, “When the Morning Comes” is playing, and its slow melody is working on my heart, leading me to believe more and more that this is not a good idea, this attempt to post, to write something coherent, to put something out here, this, here, now.

Perhaps I should put my playlist on pause and go take a shower . . .

“There is a silence into which the world can not intrude. There is an ancient peace you carry in your heart and have not lost. There is a sense of holiness in you the thought of sin has never touched. All this today you will remember.” ~ Helen Schumann, from A Course in Miracles

Sunday afternoon. Rainy and mild, 60 degrees.

“White Lotus” (1939, oil on canvas)
by Georgia O’Keeffe

So, no. I never did get back to this post on Friday, nor did I get back to it yesterday. I probably wouldn’t have gotten back to it today had I not been bored with playing spider solitaire. Don’t ask.

The roast is in the oven. My mother is making me cook Easter dinner. Truly. She bought a hen and a roast and then asked me which one I wanted to cook for Easter . . . both? Bear in mind that I did not ask her to buy either. I don’t really do Easter. Don’t ask me why. But today, I’m doing Easter. Whatever.

Perhaps my ornery outlook today can be traced back to my mother’s assumptions: she buys something, and I shall cook it. I do not remember entering into this agreement at any time . . . ever. What gives?

Don’t get me wrong. I can cook. Quite well, actually. And sometimes, I feel like cooking, but not often. Once I go through the preparation and cooking stages, I almost always have nothing left for the eating stage. I’m over it all by that point. Of course, with Corey gone, I do have to cook more than usual, but we are a very casual household, and more often than not, dinner is a catch-as-catch-can affair.

But not today.

“I said that the world is absurd, but I was too hasty. This world in itself is not reasonable, that is all that can be said. But what is absurd is the confrontation of this irrational and the wild longing for clarity whose call echoes in the human heart.” ~ Albert Camus

I got several comments on the Camus passage that I posted the other day. I don’t know a lot about Camus, and I don’t often use his words, but his “Falsely Yours” epistle touched something in me. Perhaps it was the absurdity of it, and his acknowledgement of the absurdity of it with his closing. I don’t know. “Should I kill myself or have a cup of coffee?” strike me as patently absurd, kind of like a poem I taught in one of my literature classes—of course the title and poet escape me now—in which the speaker, a woman is writing a massively long suicide letter. The poem ends with her watching her sleeping child.

“Roses” (nd, oil on canvas)
by Franz Bischoff

I used to present the poem to the class with the following question: Is it really a suicide note?

My answer was no, that the woman was writing to exorcise her demons, and the writing itself helped her to get past her feelings of despair. Watching her child sleeping peacefully reassured her that life was worth living.

I kind of saw Camus’s question in the same way. Who, in a serious contemplation of suicide, would reduce it to a choice between coffee or death?

“. . . the heart’s immortal thirst to be completely known and all forgiven.” ~ H. van Dyke

I’ve been watching “Game of Thrones” recently. Corey downloaded seasons 1 and 2 for me. I’m really enjoying the dramatization of Martin’s saga. My favorite character in the show is also my favorite character in the books: Tyrion, the dwarf son of Tywin Lannister. The actor playing the part, Peter Dinklage, has captured the essence of Tyrion so well.

“Delphiniums” (nd, oil on canvas)
by Joseph Henry Sharp

I’m on season 2. Season 3 premiers on HBO tonight. I don’t have HBO. Oh well. I’ll just have to wait until it’s available for download or there is a DVD set. But watching it does make me want to go back and reread, which is a sort of predicament for me. Martin is currently writing book 6. I finished book 5 a few months ago, and I felt then that I probably should have reread books 1-4 before embarking on book 5. So do I postpone rereading the books until right before book 6 hits the stands, or do I reread now and possibly reread then?

Decisions . . . decisions.

I did finish a really good book by Stephen Dobyns Friday night called The Church of Dead Girls. Dobyns is one of those rare writers who is equally proficient in prose and poetry. This particular book was one of my thrift store finds, and it was worth all of the pennies that I spent on it and many more. If you like murder mysteries like I do, it’s a definite must-read.

“How must sweeter life would be if it all happened in reverse, if, after decades of disappointments, you finally arrived at an age when you had conceded nothing, when everything was possible.” ~ Karen Thompson Walker, from The Age of Miracles 

Last night was quite a restless night. My little boy dog Alfie is having problems again. I’m giving him the pain medicine that the vet prescribed, but I really wish that he would let me put medicine on the sores on his face. Trying to do so is like asking to be bitten.

“Spider Mums” (nd, oil on canvas)
by Franz Bischoff

You know how some people can be around any dog without any problems whatsoever? My friend Mari is like that. I mean, I love dogs and dogs love me, but dogs who have any kind of finicky disposition can sense right away that I am conflicted about them. They know that they can take advantage of me, and they do. Alfie knows that if he growls and bares his teeth that I won’t come at him with medicine for his face, and I really don’t know how to go about it in any other way. After all, this is the dog that the vet diagnosed as having canine rage syndrome.

I need the dog whispering guy, you know, Cesar Milan? He is too cool. He would know what to do. And then after he whispered Alfie, he could whisper me and tell me how to calm myself, but I don’t think he people whispers.

Speaking of dogs, Tillie is beside herself because we haven’t gone outside to play yet, and no matter how many times I tell her that it’s muddy and rainy out, she will not desist. Seriously, this dog tries to climb into my lap when I’m sitting her at the computer.

Cheap thrills.

More later. Peace.

Music by The Civil Wars, “Kingdom Come”

                   

Days in Late March

Days move along in one direction
faces in the opposite.
Uninterruptedly they borrow each other’s light.

Many years later it is difficult
to determine which were the days
and which were the faces …

And the distance between the two things
feels more unreachable
day by day and face by face.

It is this I see in your face
these bright days in late March.

~ Henrik Norbrandt, trans. Thom Saterlee

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