“More and more I have the sense of being present at a point of absence where crossing centuries may prove to be like crossing languages. Soundwaves. It’s the difference between one stillness and another stillness.” ~ Susan Howe, from “The Disappearance Approach”
Thursday afternoon, rainy, dropping temperatures, 75 degrees.
Thursday thoughts . . .
Not really sure that I have a lot to say today. I sit and stare at the quotes I have gathered for today’s post, hoping that some word or phrase will inspire me, but nothing happens. It’s as if words themselves have decided to take a hiatus in my brain; they do not wish to appear in cogent ways for me.
I had another’s doctor’s appointment yesterday, for my annual female exam, and I actually managed to get there on time. I asked the doctor doing the exam if she could take a look at my hand, which I injured the other day while trying to shoot a gun. Her response was actually quite witty: “Well, that’s not your vagina, and I’m here to look at your vagina.”
The office that I was in is set up with residents and two attending physicians, so I suppose as this particular resident was on vagina duty, she couldn’t really help with the big oozing gash on my hand unless the attending physician agreed. Ultimately, though, she looked at it as did the attending. As I had suspected, I should have gotten stitches when it happened, but it was the day after Max’s death, and I was in no shape to go anywhere or talk to anyone, so I didn’t go. As a result, the gash, which is about an inch long, isn’t really healing well. Yesterday I couldn’t touch my little finger to my thumb because of the swelling.
I was prescribed some doxycycline, but as we are more than flat broke, I cannot pick it up. Yet another case of being too poor to be healthy.
“Alone with wind. I came here
to tell you I have loved everything once.” ~ Gregory Sherl, from “How to Brave Night”
Anyway, today the wound looks better, or at least I’m telling myself that. It isn’t too uncomfortable to type, so at least there’s that.
Corey is working on a structure for the goats. Bobby looks like she’s going to give birth soon, and we are fairly certain that Ruby is pregnant as well. I really hope that she is so that we can have at least a piece of Max to hold onto.
The two female goats that we bought in Roanoke are quite a pair, mother and daughter. If they become separated by more than a few feet, the daughter, Bobby, begins to bray loudly. It’s sweet, but it also functions as an alarm. If I hear Bobby making noise, it usually means that Sylvia has come inside the kitchen door. I don’t know what it is about these goats that makes them think that they should live in the house, unless it’s that Roland is still inside with us; he is quite spoiled and has his own alarm system: if Corey leaves the room in which Roland happens to still be situated, Roland begins to bleat very loudly and then runs through the house looking for him. I’m not the only one who spoils animals . . .
The dogs have been quite good in the last few days, and I’m hoping that I’ve broken them of chasing the goats. We’re both keeping a keen eye on them while everyone is outside, and if I yell out the door at them, they all immediately stop what they’re doing. Nevertheless, we must be ever vigilant. I really cannot handle a repeat of what happened to Max, and neither can Corey.
“I find I get more and more disagreeably solitary; In fact I foresee the day when I shall have gone too far into myself that there will no longer be anything to be seen of me at all.” ~ Vita Sackville-West, from letter to Virginia Woolf
It’s supposed to rain here for the next four days, and I’m trying to talk Corey into doing some painting inside. It’s at times like these that I really wish that his brothers were closer so that they could help him with some of what needs to be done. The reality is that I could probably paint a bit, but it’s more than that: we need to move furniture and other stuff, lifting that I simply cannot do. I feel so useless.
Lately I’ve been experiencing spasms in my lower back once again. I told Corey that even if my back gets bad again that there’s no way that I will ever have another back operation, not unless it’s the kind that can be done with a small incision and no long hospital stay.
Speaking of backs and mobility and such, I’ve been pondering yet again whether or not I should try to go back to work. I miss working, but more, I miss the income. However, if I did try to go back to work, my disability would cease, and then if something happened again, I would have to start the whole process once more, and it took so long with social security in the first place—two hearings, a stupid judge, two appeals, years of waiting. Honestly, I don’t know what to do.
I think of Eliot’s “Prufrock” poem: “Do I dare? Do I dare?” I really loved that poem so much, one of my all-time favorites.
“One can sometimes
touch, in the distance between two people,
a moment of another person’s endless dream.” ~ Yves Bonnefoy, from “Les Arbres” (The Trees), trans. John Naughton
And speaking of dogs and goats, Roland and Bailey continue their friendship. Roland has taken to butting Bailey’s head gently as she lays sleeping, and oddly enough, Bailey does nothing. She allows him to do whatever he wants to her, and I am quite amazed. He also licks her ears. I swear that this goat thinks that he’s a dog, and I’m uncertain as to how he’ll adjust to living outside once he’s weaned, which will be soon.
The other day Corey and I went over to Dallas’s house to look at the horses. Dallas says that he’s going to let me pick out some horses to have over here, but he’s still claiming that Napoleon cannot come yet. I want Napoleon and Petra to be returned, but I’m trying not to pin my hopes on anything that Dallas says as we all know that what he says should be taken with a very small grain of salt.
A while back (cannot remember if I mentioned this), one of Dallas’s RVs and part of his storage burned down. He claims that someone did it during the night, which is definitely possible as his feud with his nephew continues, but there is also the possibility that Dallas was so drunk that he started the first himself accidentally, or maybe even on purpose; however, he has no insurance, so I cannot think why he’d deliberately commit arson.
I hate that I even think these things of him.
While we were there, though, we picked a bunch of cherries from his cherry tree in the front yard. I’ve never seen such a big cherry tree. He says that he planted it when he first moved onto the property, which means that it is several decades old. I had no idea that fruit trees could survive for so long. The cherries are quite small, but tasty, and apparently, his dogs like to eat them, which is good as they all continue to look very malnourished.
“But even so, every now and then I would feel a violent stab of loneliness. The very water I drink, the very air I breathe, would feel like long, sharp needles. The pages of a book in my hands would take on the threatening metallic gleam of razor blades. I could hear the roots of loneliness creeping through me when the world was hushed at four o’clock in the morning.” ~ Haruki Murakami, from The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
I suppose I did have a few things to say, surprisingly enough, although I’m not sure how much more I have in me.
Look. The dry spell continues. My ability to string together words creatively continues to elude me. The joy that I normally find in writing these posts simply isn’t there, and I cannot seem to find that wellspring that houses my spark or my muse or whatever it is that is missing.
I would dearly love to know how to overcome this block so that once again this blog provides me with a sense of accomplishment as opposed to feeling that it is a burden that I approach reluctantly each time I try to compose. This blog has served me well for many years. I began it as an experiment, and it morphed into a way of life for me. I have very fond memories of sitting at my desk on Benjamin and rapidly writing 1,000 words without a second’s hesitation. I want that again. I need that again. And I think that I deserve to have that again in my life again.
Am I kidding myself? I truly do not know.
More later, I hope. Peace.
Feeling nostalgic for the British countryside today.*
Music by Winona Oak, “Don’t Save Me”
You Ask Me to Talk About the Interior
it was all roadside flowers & grasses
growing over the cities
was made of wilderness & sky
with God washed out of it
was the foreign prayer-word
it was a list of missing persons
was the solid bronze charging
bull on the famous street
was like the Roman method for making bees
was its taken-down carcass
& its bed of apple branches & thyme
was a new anatomy, a beaten hide,
a skeleton sweetening to glowing fluids,
& the bee born out, & the grist of them born
glistening as coins
it was anthem
was the listening,
the way a searchlight listens over a lake
it was the prayer-word out of your mouth
your thousand-noun request
it goes up up to the florescent weather
was an ivory box,
was hurdle & burn, burning through
the infinite, your overbright comet
was made of stones, made of berries & box tops & eggshells
it was like the word having reached the ear
& the words pollinated the dark, there was darkness there,
like the after-hours inside a library
~ Carolina Ebeid
Lola's Curmudgeonly Musings 