Ruminations

Twilight, Cat Basie raced out of the yard—the gate hadn’t been shut—pursuing a small black cat, and, for over an hour, he tormented us, hiding in fat bushes at the edge of the forest, wouldn’t return and, when at last he did, walking home casually, entering the yard, Basie flopped down on the cool grass, cats don’t care.

*

I set three echinacea plants into the soil, orange, red, yellow, escaping my futility, and, after an hour of gardening, I looked at the plants and thought they looked really happy, anthropomorphizing plants, deciding they were happy struck me as hilarious, but still I felt I had accomplished something, which I rarely feel, and this must be why people love gardening.

*

No rude awakenings over three days except the realization, or fact, that I’ve sent apologies to three people whom I hurt years ago, who will never forgive me, yet I did it, but nothing changes that ugliness for which I had my reasons though I was wrong, so I have been wondering about the place of human beings in the natural world, so-called, and that people are not considered part of Nature, and some would argue we have none in us, but since Homo sapiens descended from apes and other creatures, also came from the ocean onto land (someone told me that’s why people like salty chips), I’m wondering about our exclusion from it, but humans named Nature, maybe to be separate from it, so as to propose themselves better than animals, and is it because I can apologize, though I know people who exist outside the reality of others’ reality, in worlds of their own, and they do not feel they owe anyone an apology, nothing touches them, they forget quickly, and is that natural or unnatural to human beings, and how can I avoid forgetting in the future.

*

The anniversary of my father’s death, and naturally or not I’m thinking about his loss, because I loved him, and also thinking about when I love an object very much, like a ring I had fashioned from a 14-karat gold crown once in my mouth, placed there by a London dentist—Mr. Price—I often lose it, and I remember vividly that ring and its loss, remember exactly how it happened, when, after having had three glasses of red wine at my favorite café, I wanted a massage, walked toward the Chinese parlor I liked, and, as I was walking took off a necklace, which one I don’t remember, then my precious ring, knowing that it was tricky to do that while walking, knowing that I shouldn’t, and still did it, when halfway down the block, I realized I didn’t have my ring and ran back to the place I took it off, but it was already gone, and searched and searched, then went for the massage, disconsolate, feeling like an idiot, which I was, and now think often about that brief moment in time, wondering if I had loved the ring too much and threw it away, unconsciously, because I didn’t think I should love it, because I object to American materialism, though that’s too rational, and sometimes I hope to recall losses I don’t remember, because they may have been important, since over the years many things I loved have disappeared.

*

It’s time to be more honest in friendships, I tell myself, to say what I feel and think, since usually I don’t when people say harsh things to me, in anger, and it’s also not the time because everyone feels threatened or suspicious, but hope to stay honest in writing, even though being honest in writing is complicated by an author’s ego; subject matter; style, and what I mean by this kind of honesty is writing not only to write and by not protecting yourself as the writer, though that’s hard to explain except I’d suggest necessity functions profoundly in style and content in work, say, by Denis Johnson, Natalia Ginzburg, Jean Rhys, Zora Neale Hurston, Virginia Woolf, Edith Wharton, James Baldwin, Kafka, and more, whose material was essential to them, essential to write, not manufactured only to write a book, and I suppose I’m being harsh in harsh times, but honest and frank for what it’s worth, though probably not worthy, so little is.

*

Reading about squirrels, I learned there are 200 species, they don’t live in groups except sometimes when it’s very cold, have one or two pregnancies a year, gestation of 22–46 weeks, and, after two months or so, their babies, called kittens, leave the nest, never see their mother again, so then I considered us humans, who have simple and complex needs, mostly live indoors, don’t gather in groups because of the cold, except when there’s no electricity and a neighbor has a generator, because humans are, to a degree, flexible, especially when it’s in their self-interest, have varieties of living arrangements, single, in couples, extended families, as roommates, sharing or not sharing food, which acknowledges the shift in families after the second women’s movement, though shade is still thrown at single people, especially females, even with so much divorce, so the nuclear family holds sway, reinforced in all media, especially Christmas movies, when the desire to get home overwhelms everyone, in which the family always comes first, though people complain incessantly about their families who damage them, so it should be plain by now that, for one, the capacity to love and be loved is hindered by early experiences in families, and that being related by blood is overrated.

*

John Lewis has died, what a terrible summer, no relief in sight.

*

I once was sure I owned a painting by Giorgio Morandi, somehow it had come into my possession, maybe given or even stolen when I lived those seven years in Europe, but I’d misplaced it, moving around so much, so I believed the Morandi must be somewhere and was positive that, one day, when I sorted through all my stuff, I’d find it tucked away; it was my secret, I’d think if only I could find it, it must be somewhere, and though I might tell myself the Morandi had only appeared in a particularly vivid dream, or it was a fantasy, sometimes I see the painting, four bottles of different shapes, grays and browns, though now it’s rolled up, not in a tube, so I worry it’s been damaged, and have other subterranean thoughts of things that must be somewhere, that don’t surface, or are more like torn pictures, a past I can’t put together.

*

Blue jays go shopping in their manner, not like people, and some people like shopping, I dislike it, comparing this with that, wanting to find some thing that will... what? Make them feel better about themselves, and when I put out a row of peanuts on a ledge, a blue jay will take one in its mouth and seem to judge it, hop to the next, put the next nut in its mouth, testing it, then hops to all the peanuts, doing the same until the bird makes a decision and hops back to the one it liked best, and I’m supposing it’s the weight of the nut that determines choice, but I don’t know, though now I know that the bird is discerning, as squirrels are, also, but maybe they are like people, because when people shop for fruit, say, they hold an orange in the hand and weigh it, since smart fruit shoppers have learned that a thick skin can mean scant fruit, and I think this may be a metaphor.

*

Is facing reality a kind of progress? Because, for that I’m told, I have to get dressed.

*

It’s the day that will live in infamy, though it doesn’t seem to be living, there’s too much infamy around, but it garnered a brief mention on the news, and don’t know why inattention to the past and grave historical events bothers me, though maybe it intimates, since I’m not of historical importance, most everyone I know is not, what will come, that we will all be forgotten sooner than later, that amnesia about the past allows future lives to live without conscience, because what is conscience without memory, is it possible.

*

The post office is never crowded, just four clerks on rotation, usually only one behind the glass, but someone must have complained because the postal workers are wearing masks, I hadn’t said anything, didn’t want to cause trouble, I value mail and like going to the post office, especially when there are no long lines, though many friends hate having to mail a letter, and I don’t get it, and hate writing checks, but on this day I could see that one of the two women postal clerks was harried, so I said, It must be hard working now, then she looked at me and said, It is, I’m so tired when I get home, I just want to sleep, and I worry about getting it, so I said, I’m sure you do, you work with the public, then she said, I’ve never mentioned that to anyone before, it makes me feel better to say it, and I said, I’m glad, then I wondered why she had never mentioned it to anyone before, and still do.

*

Last summer, I wrote her that I was sorry for what had happened many years before, what I said or didn’t say over lunch—everyone suddenly discovered they had been abused, everyone—and now I have found out she died a little while ago, but in her last years suffered from Alzheimer’s, was not herself, so even if she had been willing to forgive me, she probably couldn’t have, might not have remembered the incident or me, might not have received my apology, and I will always regret my brash incredulousness; this past quietly tumultuous year with its enforced changes may be teaching me something, though I’m not sure what or if it is, and when this is all over, which is what we say, though I’m never sure of what will be over, or returned to me, when it’s all over. . . . but it’s Valentine’s Day again, and I’d like to love you.

*

I hope to get out of bed earlier, do the writing I’ve agreed to do, but don’t know if I’ll succeed, so I’m wondering how others handle this attenuation of regular life as it’s often called, though the irregular is also regular, and time can feel like a long, narrow tunnel—days and nights unbroken and repetitive—and though there is as much as time as there was, and experientially relative, now it is also negligible.

*

March marches in like a lion, wind gusting, a dark gray sky appears furious, the air wet and cold, and that phrase has been embedded in memory since I was a child, and what else has been, the Ides of March, which I do beware, thinking about Julius Caesar and Oedipus and others who have been warned to beware something in the future, not just death, but also death, and most beliefs contain elements of irrationality, although to believe that something can or will kill you, so there is a need to take care, to take precautions, may be your only defense against Thanatos who will come when it wants, anyway.

*

It’s raining, it will rain all day, and the blue jays are particularly agitated, flying around, sitting on wet, black branches of the big tree in the yard, also flying onto the small balcony outside the bedroom where I’m writing, still on the bed, reluctant to start the day, though the day has started without me, time being its own god, and I’m writing and watching blue jays swoop for peanuts, and one has performed something unusual, at least I’ve never seen it done; because it’s raining hard, instead of placing peanuts on the railing as I usually do, I am throwing them onto the floor of the balcony, and just now a blue jay flew onto the railing, saw there were no peanuts on it, then swooped down to the floor, chose a peanut, after doing a bit of shopping, weighing two in his beak, selecting one, then flew to the railing and set that peanut on it, and flew away, which was generous and thoughtful, leaving it for another bird to eat, otherwise I don’t know why the bird did it, and I have mentioned this small event, because Lydia once suggested to me that, when I feel empty of ideas, I have fewer compunctions about what I write and write about whatever interests me, and the way, I’m thinking, birds have no compunctions about shopping, though I do.

*

I don’t throw out much, I also keep my dead friends close, but of daily life’s clutter, hardly anything leaves my life, or room, I keep scraps, postcards, letters, clippings, photos, manuscripts, luckily, there’s an archive for their housing, since I believe many objects are precious, not worth money, but they hold thoughts, histories or stories, the same thing; yet many friends tear things up easily, rip rip, it’s all clutter, and wish I could, no, wish I had rooms and rooms and an archivist living in one of them who would disinterestedly figure out what should or should not be kept, who would discipline my flagrant ways, would make a file for every piece of paper on the floor, and make sense of everything I keep or want to keep, and that person would also stand at the gates of this massive palace of memories, keeping from it malevolent spirits who would hurt it and me, so I’m composing a fairy tale, who can forget them. I wish I could contact a dead friend, and while I don’t believe it’s possible, still I hope to hear her voice, I miss that voice and mind; Houdini and his wife tried, failed, and, in all things, I want to live differently, think differently, I suppose, and though trying to make up my mind, a newer mind, defeats what life is, provisional, accidental, unplanned, unruly, like new diseases, maybe I’ll use time differently, because I have been doing that, learning from involuntariness, which I found exciting in a way, suddenly to be acted upon, no choice but to obey the science as it came along, though many Americans believe in a misguided idea of freedom, without responsibility to others, and that gnaws at me, but putting that aside, as well as the use of guns and automatic weapons that destroy human organs, along with domestic terrorists’ mass shootings—I wonder how much anyone can think entirely differently.

*

Charlie Watts died today, and I once read he punched Jagger in the face afterJagger referred to him as “his drummer,” when Watts told Jagger, “I’m not your drummer. You’re my singer,” and this equation, that kind of subjectivity, when the king is displaced by the commoner, is a more equitable distribution of ego.

*

Another 9/11, another clear, blue sky, and I listened to the victims’ families read the names, some spoke about their pain and loss, and a writer is at a loss to describe loss, to find words, but grief isn’t words, so we’re stuck in approximations, and, as usual I’ve been thinking about language, what word, why this one, that one, is the diminishment of vocabulary, slimmer than a slim book, a grave problem, do speakers of American English lose in imagination by this diminishment, fewer words to describe the world, and with 9/11 the word “appall” came to mind, some never use it, too fancy, and then came pall and pallbearer, which I’d never put together before.

*

I can understand not wanting to be a man, as culturally defined, and not wanting to be a woman, as culturally defined, and I’m supposed to be a woman, while faithfully resisting and uninterested in proscribed roles, so neutrality of gender seems the way, though the older you become, the more neutral or neutered you become, since no one cares what you are if you’re not sexually attractive, an older woman often isn’t, men, the wealthy and famous, are sexy for that alone, old men regularly support their younger wives, though that is changing, reversing, too slowly, and it can be disconcerting when suddenly your neutering starts, no darts of lust sent your way, but also a new freedom since your body doesn’t define you, though it starts to cause more pain, which is unfair, and, yes, life is unfair, grotesquely unfair, and a little pain is nothing, not really worth noting.

*

Dreams, Freud wrote, register not only psychological issues but also the social and political events in anyone’s day, and while I don’t use my dreams anymore in my writing, I want to be in touch with you after a long while of no contact, and offer my most salient unconscious message in which the young Marlon Brando of his Streetcar Named Desire days loves me passionately, he’s holding me close to his chest, his body hard and massive against my smaller one, while he tells me, over my dream-time, about his psychological problems, and while holding me tight, I feel wonderful in his arms, and forget what he’s said his problems are, so to retrieve some of it without letting him know I haven’t been listening, I ask, “But what do you think is your biggest problem,” and Brando says, without hesitation, “Totalitarianism.”