quake

The Napa quake woke me up (ca. 3:20) but I thought maybe it was a rolling 4.0 sort of thing. Nanci texted me about 5 minutes later and the phone lighting up was enough to rouse me fully. I thought I should get up and go around smelling for gas. Nanci said she felt it and I would guess that's because she's right above the garage. Anyway once I had gotten out of bed it wasn't easy to go back to sleep.

I took my time getting over to the community garden but worked steadily for three hours, helping put in some new plants. I enjoyed working with Claire -- it felt companionable. Carrying the buckets of water knotted my shoulders and my neck. I'm on the couch now getting ready to get up so I can make dinner. But it is so very pleasant in here, watching the wind and the light on the curtains and listening to the Hable con Ella soundtrack.

what are artists?

Is this true?

Artists are people driven by the tension between the desire to communicate and the desire to hide.  
-Donald Winnicott 


Maybe.

Sometimes I love myself very much, but (or and?) often I find myself disappointing. Better, I suppose, than being disappointed in the world.

I could not sleep last night, and the night was terribly long. Sometimes I am terrified by the world. It doesn't seem likely that I will be able to go through my life without coming into contact with something truly awful. I lay awake wondering, like a five-year-old, what it is that is coming to get me. Sometimes a raccoon is not just a raccoon.

Other times, usually during the day, I am sanguine. I am delighted and moved by all the beauty and good intentions. It is miraculous that processes, machinery, and systems are functioning.

cookies

My first free Sunday in a while. What have I done with it, so far? I got up when I felt like it, made quinoa for breakfast. I walked over to the community garden around 11 but no one was there, so I took myself for a stroll along Quint, Maddox, Bridgeview, and the planet streets. After about an hour I was home again. I did a load of laundry and hung it out back, played the piano.

Eventually I turned on the game and baked double chocolate cookies.

It has been a very good day. Now the curtains are tangled up in the late afternoon wind. I am sitting on the couch listening to Rosalyn Tureck play Bach partitas.

I cleaned up most of the cookie-making dishes but not all. The duvet cover and the featherbed cover are flapping on the line, mostly dry. The peaches are almost all off the tree. I can't easily reach the ones high up and/or at the back of the tree, but I can probably go a few more days without having to buy fruit. I ate or gave away more this year than last, but ended up composting too many -- the ones that fell and did not get picked up until they were too bruised and mushy.

Security

“Security is when everything is settled, when nothing can happen to you; security is the denial of life.”
-Germaine Greer, The Female Eunuch

Or so I try to tell myself when I'm lying in bed listening for raccoons.