I brought someone - three  someones - into this world through my body. Now I'm ushering someone out of this world through her body - the same one that brought ME into this world. Spirit flows to flesh and flesh to spirit, like a river running both ways always and forever.

Rest in Peace

Dorothy (Dottie) Pottle 

July 9, 1921

June 22, 2014

Milestones, Millstones

Well, so I haven't been to sleep yet.5:30 a.m., My son is graduating today at 1 p.m. after a 15 year slog through the swamps of special ed with only shreds of his self-esteem left. My daughter and I went to my mother's this afternoon so my sister could go to the grocery store - they moved a hospital bed in last night and my mother is now practically immobile, on morphine, confused, in and out of consciousness. She is disintegrating and turning into dust in front of our eyes. Her eyes light up when my daughter comes. She tells her how much she likes her boyfriend over and over - she forgets she said it - and tonight she told her how pretty she is and that she wants her to know how much she loves her. My mother is not a sentimental woman. We all cried.

And all of that is swirling around my head, making my skull ache and my foot jiggle and my mind dream dreams of death, my mother's, my own, my husband's (but I can't go there), my kids, even my 4 dogs. The terrible uncertainly of when these utter certainties will occur ... 

For my sister, it is normal that a daughter takes care of her mother unto death. It's what is done. I could never do that, even if I had a close sunny devoted relationship with my mother - which I don't. So that makes me, what. Selfish. My sister doesn't lay this on me - I draw my own conclusions. It is true, I am a very selfish person, because I am so vulnerable to being hurt. I am "unstable" and I have to safeguard my equilibrium and shelter myself from turbulence. I hate that about myself, but there it is. I'm a de facto narcissist. If I don't wrap myself up in myself I would just bleed through my skin when you touch me, and crumble. Now I am thinking, well, I'm just going to crumble now. This is maybe what real life is all about. Crumbling, Disintegrating. Turning to dust.
 

Letters

Miss Manners answered a letter today about how to react sympathetically to a Facebook post indicating someone's sad or has sad things going on. Clicking "Like" seems rude or callous. Her reply: "To express sympathy, it is essential to demonstrate that you are thinking about the person." The computer interface is designed to keep time spent on any one thing or one person to a minimum.

So, she says, write a letter. If you care deeply about the person, write a letter.

I have all the letters anyone has sent me since it became incomprehensible to sit down and write one. There are only a handful. Before that, I didn't keep them because I wrote and received so many I didn't realize they were precious - and it never occurred to me that one day they'd be like extinct exotic animals. They're more meaningful than photos even because the person's mind and soul are uniquely present in them.

I still write letters when my heart is very full or when someone else has written me with a full heart. I'm curious: When was the last time you wrote a letter?

Living in the World

Today was a beautiful day, outside my house and inside my head. I have been trying to spend a big part of each day in reality, the physical world where you clean stuff and hug your dogs and sit outside under the trees and possibly talk to another person, be present for other people, rather than walking the labyrinth inside my head and on my computer screen all day and all night. 

It feels good, I feel alive, and I'm relearning how to read. I thought I'd lost for good the ability to concentrate, because of meds, because of my bipolar brain, because of age, but actually it's still there. If I put down the Internet and open a book of printed paper instead of being held hostage and bombarded with 15 second flashes of "information" for hours and hours every day - I can still read! 

I'm alive in the world and I can read; that is most of happiness for me.

And now I'm going to walk my dogs and feel the moonlight.on my skin. Then I'll read in bed with a fan turning over my head, and another day will come tomorrow.

Just Puke on the Page

Matt Zoller Seitz’s advice to young people entering the field of TV and film criticism:

I believe that ninety percent of writer’s block is not the fault of the writer. It’s the fault of the writer’s wrongheaded educational conditioning. We’re taught to write via a 20th century industrial model that’s boringly linear and predictable: What’s your topic sentence? What are your sections? What’s your conclusion? Nobody wants to read a piece that’s structured that way. Even if they did, the form would be more a hindrance than a help to the writing process, because it makes the writer settle on a thesis before he or she has had a chance to wade around in the ideas and inspect them. So to Hell with the outline. Just puke on the page, knowing that you can clean it up and make it structurally sound later. Your mind is a babbling lunatic. It’s Dennis Hopper, jumping all over the place, free associating, digressing, doubling back, exploding in profanity and absurdity and nonsense. Stop ordering it to calm down and speak clearly. Listen closely and take dictation. Be a stenographer for your subconscious. Then rewrite and edit.

Spring's Here

Gardening is the best exercise I've ever done because it lets me forget I'm exercising. I put aside my monkey mind and wend my merry way among the blooms and branches, daydreaming and talking to myself, remembering last spring's gardening - saturated heat and the smell of rain coming, my son digging out root balls for me and pausing to watch some dirt run through his fingers like he'd never seen it before, laying out a whole new bed and planting flowers and strawberries at midnight.

The next day my muscles and joints berate me for forgetting them, but what a fine dream I dreamed.   ( ~ _ ~ )

The Rabbit Died. Happy Easter!

The Day Before Easter, 2014

This actually just happened. I sat down at my laptop and fell into the Internet. Two hours later, I see from the corner of my eye one of the dogs chewing on something next to my chair, making a lot of crunchy noises. After 5 minutes I pull my eyes from the screen and actually look at her, identifying the red-purple stringy thing she's got in her jaws as a really big plush toy our beagle has, or had. It's eviscerated.

So I went back to the Internet.

More chewing- crunching, same red-purple pulp noted from the corner of my eye, but I'm thinking, still lost in the Internet, how many plastic eyes and squeakers could that toy have? (And no, I didn't stop to think at that point - as a responsible pet owner would have - that too many plastic eyes and squeakers might not be good for a dog.)

Twenty minutes later, the first dog leaves but pretty soon another one takes her place - same spot next to my chair, same chewing-crunching noises, still something red-purple but considerably smaller than before. I'm briefly and vaguely puzzled, but - back to the Internet.

Then the second dog left.

My husband yells from the family room: "Godammit! Drop it! Get away!"

And I said, not looking up from the Internet "Oh yeah, it's that toy of Augie's - they're all chewing on it....."

"NO, ACTUALLY: IT'S A RABBIT AND THEY'RE EATING IT" he stated calmly, but in all caps.

So I put down the Internet and run out there, following a sad little trail of gray bunny fluff to the family room, where my husband and I stare at each other in horror (and in my case chagrin) over the nasty little scene before us. Then I mumble something like "buh, buh but it looked like the toy ...  I didn't see any bones... I was, well, I was on the Internet! "

My long-suffering husband sighed and turned to the task at hand, asking for a whole roll of paper towels to clean up the red-purple remnants in the family room, then he headed out to the backyard to find the rest of the carcass.

And I went back on the Internet to tell this story.

So. ..... Happy Easter, I guess? And go with the chocolate bunnies, they taste better and they're a breeze to clean up - no bones.