pre-NYE

I drove down to Redwood City and took V and W out to lunch. V still pregnant -- 39+ weeks. She is due on January 3. It was lovely to see her (and W, though I don't know him all that well). They are both waiting for something to happen.

I left with several oranges from the tree in their yard. It was raining hard enough to slow the traffic on 101. I drove past the scene of a collision just south of the airport. I caught sight of two or three cars on the shoulder, most notably a minivan with a crushed front bumper, but saw no signs of human injury.

Yesterday I had a long, chatty lunch with A+B, Jonathan, Gary, and David A. and his old friend Bill. A is very excited about her novel, due out in early March. J looked relaxed and relatively happy. Gary and B were at the opposite end of the table.

I have no plans tomorrow. Maybe, if it's rainy, I will see A Hidden Life. If it's not rainy, maybe Marin? I don't think I've ever hiked there alone.

walking in London

And she had been walking and alert all day. The conditions were right, then. First, before the lit space, a terror: but slight, nothing that could overwhelm, less fear than the reluctance to acknowledge her condition of being so alien, or walking always as a watchful critic. This was loneliness? Yes, she supposed so. But if so, what else had she ever known? So that was a gift too: people said "loneliness" speaking of an ultimate dread, and she had once said "loneliness" meaning a blow of fate that might make her alone among her fellow creatures, something that in the future might claim her. But no, since she had been in London, she had been alone, and had learned that she had never been anything else in her life. Far from being an enemy, it was her friend. This was the best thing she had known, to walk down streets interminably, to walk through mornings and afternoons and evenings, alone, not knowing where she was unless she walked by the river, sometimes walking so long she did not even know what part of London she was in, he feet tired, but conscious of strength in their tiredness, her head cool, watchful, alert, waiting for the coming of the visitor, silence. And her heart . . . well, that was the point, it was always her heart that first fought off the pain of not belonging here not belonging anywhere, and then, resisted, told to be quiet, it quietened and stilled. Her heart, as it were, came to heel; and after that, the current of her ordinary thought switched off. Her body was a machine, reliable and safe for walking; her heart and daytime mind were quiet.

-D. Lessing, Four-Gated City


We were in London on Monday. I went to London Bridge. I looked at the river; very misty; some tufts of smoke, perhaps from burning houses. There was another fire on Saturday. Then I saw a cliff of wall, eaten out, at one corner; a great corner all smashed . . . A complete jam of traffic; for streets were being blown up. So by Tube to the Temple; and there wandered in the desolate ruins of my old squares: gashed; dismantled; the old red bricks all white powder, something like a builder's yard. Grey dirt and broken windows; sightseers; all that completeness ravaged and demolished.

-V. Woolf, Diaries 

reality

and when I thought
"Our love might end"
the sun
went right on shining
-James Schuyler


I didn't tell you it wouldn't be like this.
-Robert Frost

seagulls

Say of the seagulls that they
     are flying
In light blue air over dark sea

-W. Stevens


The hills step off into whiteness
People or stars
Regard me sadly, I disappoint them.

The future is a gray seagull
Tattling in its cat voice of
departure, departure.

The waves pulse and pulse
like hearts

-S. Plath

pre-christmas

I'm sitting in my living room. It's been raining but now the sky seems to be brightening. I'm looking out at a low, heavy mist. Yesterday -- the shortest day of the year -- was cloudy but dry. I did not go outside except to harvest some rosemary from the bushes out front. This is partly because I banged up my knee a couple of weeks ago, in the dumbest possible way: I walked into a thigh-high concrete post outside office building where I work. As my upper body lurched forward, I heard my knee "crrriiick." It's getting better, but slowly.

Later the same day: I drove over to Bernal because I needed buttermilk and coffee and other things. I decided to try walking up the hill. I got up and around the park without much difficulty. (The hill is very green and some areas have slid a bit.) The way down was a little uncomfortable, though. The sun is out.

pre-thanksgiving

I'm watching the sun come around to the front of the house. It is lighting up the western corner of the living room; whitening the sheer curtain. I am thinking about taking a shower. I don't have any plans for the day.

Yesterday I got out the ladder to straighten the irrigation system's rain gauge. One of the cats jumping from the fence to the roof of the shed displaced it a while ago, and now that there is rain the forecast I finally decided to right it. I peeked around the corner and noticed that the shed does not go all the back to Marlon's back fence. Hmm. So I took the ladder to the other side to the yard/shed and peeked around that corner -- seems like the shed goes all the way back on that side. Interesting . . . is this a reflection of the lot boundaries or have the lines gotten blurred over the years? The shed extends 8 to 12 inches beyond the fence that separates my yard from Marlon's, and I've always wondered about that. If I ever get around to replacing it, these questions might need to be answered.

Last weekend (or was it the weekend before last?) I happened to see what looked like a hawk hanging out on the back corner of the uphill neighbor's roof. I don't have a zoom capacity, so the bird is just a spec in the shots I took. The crows were clearly perturbed by this usurpation of their space. They took turns dive bombing, some of them much closer than others. The hawk flinched several times but stayed put. It seemed disoriented -- but maybe that was projection on my part. Eventually, it took off. I hope it landed on a familiar and friendly spot.

Lately I have been walking around the neighborhood a bit more often, mostly over to San Bruno Ave to catch the 8AX. The garbage dumping is amusing and depressing. There is almost always a collection in front of the abandoned house on the 1500 block. Mostly you just see shoes, dirty clothing, food and food containers, and broken-down furniture. But sometimes the mix is particularly odd. It's mind boggling to think about all the things people no longer want.

November, what?

I'm having some trouble with work. When I think about leaving I feel old. I don't know how many more years I'll be working but it can't be all that long before I retire, if I'm lucky enough to be able to retire. Should I move on to another job? The job I have is a good one -- I know this, even in my most frustrated moments. But I've gotten tired of the dysfunction, the particular kind of dysfunction that I've been part of for more than a decade. I've painted myself into a corner by accommodating and perhaps reinforcing weird dynamics in ways that are not good for me. Will anything change (for the better)? I don't know.

In the meantime, I have felt unproductive and unfocused. Too much screen time and not enough creative or social or constructive activity. Writing this morning is a small attempt to counter that feeling. Can I go somewhere over the holiday? I decided not to join n+t in Bisbee, partly because I don't want to spend so much time with t (love him but . . . ). But mostly because I don't want to spend that amount of money. And then I ask myself why not? What is my money situation, really? It's yet another thing that I can't seem to focus on.

Visiting m+d was tender and sad.

Vija Celmins

In the New Yorker:

What I wanted was to pick an image that just described a surface, and to document that image -- place it out there, without any feeling. Of course, that's impossible, unless you're Duchamp. I wanted to remove myself and leave something, a sensibility.

labor day weekend

Early each morning for the past week or so, I've been awakened by raccoons tussling on the fence outside my bedroom. I think they might be nesting next door -- the house has many openings. I'm back to thinking that I need to nail something spiky and uncomfortable on the top of the fence. There is also usually a disturbance in the bark chips in the back yard that I straighten up every morning.

The dishwasher is chugging and I'm just sitting on my orange stool, thinking about doing this or that.

KW and Craig came to dinner last night. We had
tomato risotto, the salad with melon, basil, fennel, and pistachios, and steamed green beans. I also made a galette with strawberries and currants. Craig made manhattans for us all. I really should have people over more often. I realized last night that just having a couple of people is a lot less taxing. Then again, it takes a certain amount of energy just to get these things going so there's a rationale for inviting several people -- more bang for your hosting buck, so to speak.

glibness

I very much dislike this novel, but I will finish it because I'm reading it for the book group. I find its trivialization of pain and fear and grief annoying. There is a lack of respect for other people -- everyone and everything exists only insofar as it allows the protagonist to say something glib, almost always about herself. With rare exceptions, anything anyone says or does registers only as a way for her to obsess about what she is feeling or not feeling, to tell us over and over again that she is not feeling the way a normal person would feel. All of it seems designed to make her feel special, different, uniquely unfathomable. No one is fathomable, of course -- none of us coincide with ourselves.

sunday again

MG sent a link to an NYT essay in praise of the online personals. I wish I could say that my personals experience included travel and house sitting! But hey, I shouldn't complain. I got a house out of it, which led to me staying in place for a few years. 

I do know what she means about the fuzziness that can set in when you are married -- or in a long-term relationship. Apologies for the triteness of this profound thought: I keeping learning, over and over again, that I can't get everything I want because what I want is completely unreasonable.

I just read an interview with Almodovar in the Guardian and am looking forward to his new movie.

I'm trying to plough through on yet another chapter of the manuscript I've been editing. Here's hoping I get two-thirds of the way by the end of the day. It's very quiet this morning -- all I hear is an occasional car passing. The rooster in the back yard adjacent to mine is not crowing, and there aren't many big trucks being driven around on Sunday, I guess. Ah, but here comes a plane; so much for silence.

how to take a walk

Few people know how to take a walk. The qualifications are endurance, plain clothes, old shoes, an eye with nature, good humor, vast curiosity, good speech, good silence, and nothing else.

~Ralph Waldo Emerson

sunday sun day

A beautiful day, again. And I'm feeling down, again. N canceled our Marin hike because the dog is sick. I'm disappointed but then again, I'm sleep deprived -- I can't seem to get out of my every-other-night rut. I can use the day to do housework that is long overdue. I haven't vacuumed in weeks, and there is laundry, as usual.

And I can go walking all by myself.

I hated writing that $4,000 check on Tuesday, especially since it was the second time I've paid to have rats evicted from the attic. I hope those people knew what they were doing. I hear sounds and am not altogether sure they are not coming from above.

Cue the tiny violins. I'm struggling with my demoralization at work, concerned about m and d, and feeling alone and lonely.

But hey, I went to the circus yesterday. Or rather, the circus came to a park near me.

civility vs. morality

Adam Serwer, in the Atlantic:

When those in power are caught abusing that power in ways that are morally indefensible and politically unpopular, they will always seek to turn an argument about oppression into a dispute about manners. The conversation then shifts from the responsibility of the state for the human lives it is destroying to whether those who object to that destruction have exhibited proper etiquette. . . .

This variety of tut-tutting is irresistible to many ostensibly objective journalists, who by convention are barred from expressing opinions on policy but are welcome to lecture on tone, and take nearly every opportunity to remind the rabble of their obligation to be polite to their rulers. But to express outrage at the criticism of nefarious conduct while treating that conduct as a typical political conflict in which there are two equally valid positions is to take a side.

And, finally:

Demographics are not destiny, unless you make them so. A conservatism that appeals almost exclusively to white people, and views nonwhites as an existential threat, is not worth fighting for.

I don't want

From Eliot Bliss, Saraband: 

I don’t want to go out into the world and earn my living. I don’t want to have to say goodbye to a quiet scholar’s life, to smooth, civilized hours around a Wedgwood teapot. I want to be able to watch the evening in the sky, to dream on some far hill, to make things slowly out of patterns that I have been finding for years. I don’t want to feel cramped, jostled, frightened, herded among thousands of people; to work among the noise of machines, the incessant clamor of traffic vibrating on the nerves. I don’t want to be terrorised into a set formula of life.

liberal democracy for whom?

Adam Serwer in The Atlantic: 

Black Americans did not abandon liberal democracy because of slavery, Jim Crow, and the systematic destruction of whatever wealth they managed to accumulate; instead they took up arms in two world wars to defend it. Japanese Americans did not reject liberal democracy because of internment or the racist humiliation of Asian exclusion; they risked life and limb to preserve it. Latinos did not abandon liberal democracy because of “Operation Wetback,” or Proposition 187, or because of a man who won a presidential election on the strength of his hostility toward Latino immigrants. Gay, lesbian, and trans Americans did not abandon liberal democracy over decades of discrimination and abandonment in the face of an epidemic. This is, in part, because doing so would be tantamount to giving the state permission to destroy them, a thought so foreign to these defenders of the supposedly endangered religious right that the possibility has not even occurred to them. But it is also because of a peculiar irony of American history: The American creed has no more devoted adherents than those who have been historically denied its promises, and no more fair-weather friends than those who have taken them for granted.

Memorial Day

Hiked with Scott today at Monte Bello. The very beginning was sunny but we quickly encountered mist and mud. There was no view. We did not mind, especially when we were going uphill.

I was away for ten days but it felt longer. Partly because I kept changing venues -- a couple of nights with Nina in Oak Park, one night at Nina's mom's place in Kalamazoo, a couple of nights at my brother's house in Aurora, and four nights in Asheville with my parents. The last part of the trip was not so easy. I can see dad struggling with his physical and mental deterioration (he's increasingly forgetful and fretful), and I can see my mom trying to cover for him. I'm worried about the two of them living unassisted. I talk to mom and she acknowledges some of what is going on, but she struggles with the feeling that she's being disloyal. The deal between the two of them has always been that dad is responsible for the planning and arranging of their lives. It's difficult to change that now.

Unlike my two remaining siblings, I can understand why m&d decided to stay in Asheville. I can see how difficult it would be for them to move to a strange place. N is upset because it's harder for her to get to Asheville than to Walnut Creek. And that's true, of course. But I think she's glossing over the difficulty from their point of view. When we talk about it in twos or threes, N and D seem frustrated that m&d haven't changed in their old age -- they are still loners who do not ask for help. I think they are mostly just wishing that the end of m&d's lives could be easier -- that we could follow some kind of script, like a "normal" family. But I don't think there is a script, and I don't want to complain about my parents.

That's not to say that I'm perfectly at peace with them! We bought a smart phone while I was there, so that dad will maybe stop driving and rely mostly on Lyft/Uber. The phone we bought was a samsung that my dad had settled on; I'm not intimately familiar with android phones but I figured I could figure it out. But dad is not in a state of mind to figure things out. His vision and coordination are not great, and he's not used to the touchscreen -- he kept accidentally entering numbers and switching windows and it was very frustrating for him. After about 24 hours of fumbling around, he said he was going to take the phone back. I tried to tell him that he was making progress (slowly!) but he was quite petulant -- and I confess that I didn't have a lot of patience with that, even though I know he's struggling.

Agnes Varda

I would like to be remembered as a film-maker [who] enjoyed life, including pain. This is such a terrible world, but I keep the idea that every day should be interesting. What happens in my days – working, meeting people, listening – convinces me that it’s worth being alive.

India experience

I've been waking up in the dark, wondering where I am. The sheets are soft and warm. Sometimes during the daytime I am at a loss -- what should I do, now that I'm home alone? -- but at night I am not afraid.

I can't properly describe the India trip just yet. It's swirling around in my head.

It was a familiar feeling, coming home to my empty house, relieved but also tired and depleted. When I opened my front door I entered what seemed like bare, color-starved space. The Sadlers had cleared off the coffee table, for some reason, and they had moved the chairs. In the kitchen, they cleared off the island and moved the dining chairs. The counters were dotted with coffee- and tea-colored stains and the floor was dusty and smudged. I could not go to bed yet -- it was noon -- so I got to work, unpacking and wiping down the countertops and vacuuming.

Now my house and I are getting reacquainted. The Sadlers left a lot of money on my kitchen island -- they said they wanted to cover the cost of the utilities they used. I think I'll use it to get some prints framed. And then I will hang them on my white walls.

Mary Oliver

I didn't know much about her while she was alive. Now that she has died, poems of hers are appearing on the Internet and I like some of them.

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.

Mary Oliver, “Wild Geese”

washing and cleaning

I've been watching the pillow go round and round in the washing machine. It's the first time I've washed it in . . . forever. I am starting to worry about Ellie's parents staying here and finding it wanting. So what? I ask myself, in my rational moments. They will have a free place to stay in a very expensive city. But still, I have been adding to my stock of sheets and I bought an electric blanket for the bed. I will clean and fret in the days before we leave.

And then we will be in India, amid unfamiliar people and things. I find it impossible to imagine that transition, as I always do before a trip.

The pillow doesn't look all that different now that it has gone through the wash. But here's hoping it smells and feels better.

Yeats for a cloudy Sunday

I went out to the hazel wood,

Because a fire was in my head,

And cut and peeled a hazel wand,

And hooked a berry to a thread;

 

And when white moths were on the wing,

And moth-like stars were flickering out,

I dropped the berry in a stream

And caught a little silver trout.

 

When I had laid it on the floor

I went to blow the fire a-flame,

But something rustled on the floor,

And some one called me by my name:

It had become a glimmering girl

With apple blossom in her hair

Who called me by my name and ran

And faded through the brightening air.

 

Though I am old with wandering

Through hollow lands and hilly lands,

I will find out where she has gone,

And kiss her lips and take her hands;

And walk among long dappled grass,

And pluck till time and times are done

The silver apples of the moon,

The golden apples of the sun.