work, work
To: ms_allthat@hotmail.com, loveisarose11@hotmail.com, mystree_1@hotmail.com, lorelis@hotmail.com, someone_new1@hotmail.com, tynidncr@hotmail.com, cassandra-24@excite.com, patty757@aol.com, _denae65@excite.com, decafi@hotmail.com, charma@leaco.net, ip253406@ip.pt, ladyelan@angelfire.com, jcbinks@msn.com, sierra34@angelfire.com, lighthouse75@hotmail.com, darcysmail@yahoo.com, tlfie@groupz.net, chart13@excite.com, clavonec@excite.com
Subject: work, work
Date: Mon, 11 Oct 1999 23:21:34 CDT
A weekend of work, of hauling and measuring, cutting, hammering, screwing. The latter not to be confused with anything sensual, believe you me, but Dickens on the business end of a screw gun, doing it to the wood.
A deck somehow began to emerge from all that bustle, of thighs pumping up and down, haunches near to the ground, squatting, and rising yet again, so that I am sore, sore, sore and thighs feel like things on fire. Ohwell. $ now jingles in the pocket for the nonce.
I bought: a watch (analog, can read w/o glasses), a travel alarm clock w/o batteries, deodorant (the Universe cries hosannah), razors, mirror for the bike, and untold amounts of coffee. Thus it went.
My daughter Kathleen informs me in one of her most welcome but infrequent letters that her band just won some kind of all-city contest of da bands in Vancouver, B.C. She is immensely talented not to mention beautiful and should any of you desire to see what genetics I have passed on take a gander at http://www.geocities.com/sunsetstrip/garage/4237. My youngest is Kathy, the hapa (half) Japanese lovely who plays a gadzillion instruments and continues to love me in spite of myself. Sign the guestbook and tell em Grouchy sent ya. Dickens, that is.
A sad kind of day, one bearing that sense of being bereft. Everything flows, nee? So tomorrow will be better--or worse. A lovely, lovely poem sent to me by Carol who writes marvelous verse.
I continue to remain mute at the meetings. This is starting to irritate certain people who think to remain silent is to remain sick. Amazing how they can psychobabble their way into my soul without so much as a by your leave. I simply cannot, at this time, mouth the cliches, talk-the-talk, and let's forget about walking-the-walk. I am doing the best I can which of course is never quite good enough for the watchdogs we have always with us.
A bit giddy tonight. Too much coffee. An upsetting letter. That sense of mortality stealing in. I turn 55 within a week and it gnaws at me. At least I have survived to tell you this. So many I have known and loved have not.
I had a go at writing a poem called "The Machines" which is about my late beloved grandmother (Grammy) who was tormented for so many years by schizophrenia until finally the correct dosage of stelazine or thorazine was found which dismantled the machinery of transmission of the voices. The poem falls into sentimentality which will never do. There was such a field of emotion surrounding her illness: all of us were affected. She died at peace in 1970, one of the last times I was back home.
I saw her just before she died and asked her to tell me once again the story of Flossie Greene, which she did. A mythic story from her childhood, I was the last to hear it. Such a dramatist she was! Who wrote doggerel which to this day touches me with the sincerity of her feelings, her yearning to be of some value on this earth.
Am feeling very tiny just now. Shrinking. It's just past 11 P.M. and I cannot, just now, ride the bike across the bridge and wend my way home. Monte will be there, yes, but I have no need of his company tonight. Just a few words here to catch you up on what is happening.
Tomorrow evening we go out to finish the flooring of the deck. It's about a third done, and I suspect we should be able to finish it up in one marathon session. It will be there long after I've passed on. That is what kept coming to me as I measured, sawed, hammered, screwed. Building something which will survive me, but yet which has no eternal value.
And what does?
I read the other day, "I had reached an age where I found it necessary to pray." Don't recall where I read that or the author, but it struck me, the sense of it. That atheism is a young person's luxury, for the most part. And is certainly not something I can any longer embrace. Without that spiritual connection, I would be utterly lost. (And I do not mean to offend anyone by my musings along this line.)
I am very much a sensual being, yes, but just as equally spiritual, if not more so. And the spiritual grows. I see the holiness in Bukowski. I read tonight, "Poetry prepares us for death." And of late the notion that "Poetry is God" has been whispering.
Tonight I am having an attack of insecurity. It will pass, it will pass.
And how are all of you?
Lorelis, how are you? Why haven't you written?
Rebecca, I bounce when I walk. I think of you.
Carol, your poem pierced me.
Barbara, you make me smile.
Cassie, in some ways the Circle has a feeling of eternity, although it was formally inaugurated about a month ago.
Kathleen, I save every letter you write. I will never stop talking with you, Precious One.
It's late. A dip into the Cafe, trying to keep my critical mouth shut. Just a jaunt, a stroll, and then down the hill, across the town and bridge, the silver river beneath, and home.
Write?
