What are you doing?

Me? Oh.

I'm watching the entire five seasons of Brothers and Sisters, and while it's devolved into pure soap, it's been a great binge. I thank Carrie Link for the addiction.

I just saw the movie Still Mine with James Cromwell and Genevieve Bujold. I loved it.

I'm reading the last chapters of Transatlantic by my Irish love, Colum McCann. I've savored every word although less so than the ones in Let the Great World Spin. 

I'm also going to start Meg Wolitzer's The Interestings and read that along with Flaubert's Madame Bovary.

I ordered but have not yet received this poetry series. There's stuff in there by Lydia Davis, one of my favorite short story writers. She also translated the edition of Madame Bovary that I noted above.

I'm listening to this by Patty Griffin who also sings the song Heavenly Day, featured on our Extreme Parent Video Project that is almost a year old and has nearly 32,000 hits.

I'm also listening to this. We've been lonely. We've been lonely too long.

I like this poem -- it reminds me of my receding respite week in Canada:

Northwest Passage

That faint line in the dark
might be the shore
of some heretofore unknown
small hour.

This fir-scent on the wind
must be the forests
of the unheard of month
between July and August.

James Richardson

So, Reader. What are you doing?

Hercules' lament

So, yesterday.

Yesterday, I began the day lying in bed underneath a sheet and a lightweight blanket, but it was the large, sparkly and multi-faceted boulder that I had to summon all my strength to push out of the way. The boulder has multiple surfaces, nooks and crannies, and it's difficult to get out from underneath it without scrapes or nicks, not to mention deep bruises. There are sticky parts, too, the kind that demand a response beyond a push away or slither out. For those I use my finger dexterity skills, I flick, they fly, the words. The day wore on. I went to see Dr. Jin for what some might call female troubles of the near half-century mark (I had flicked away the letters that spell c-a-n-c-e-r), received tiny bags of powdered herbs to be dissolved in boiling water and drunk, one cup twice a day. Drink all, she said, but leave small amount and dissolve this powder in last bit. I nodded. Tastes bad, she said, drink fast. I left Dr. Jin and went to a mall to watch a movie to keep the boulder off, let it nip my heels. I saw Still Mine, a movie about an aged couple, a couple very much in love. I sat in the theater, looked around, realized that I was, most definitely, the youngest person there. Gray heads bobbed, voices were raised, the woman behind me spoke of her failing kidneys, her asthma, her friend murmured. The litany went on through the previews, and I considered turning around, waving my Twizzler in her face, asking her to please be quiet. The old man next to me turned his head and barked gimme a break, and she stopped. I shifted in my seat, smiled, the boulder lay quietly under my feet. I laughed in the movie and I cried and when it was over, I walked to my car, the boulder at a distance, respectful. I couldn't find my car, though. I couldn't remember where I'd parked it. I couldn't remember which level, which aisle, which entrance. I walked up and down and around for half an hour or so, and when I finally broke down and cried, the boulder took advantage, climbed on my back, made me sway. A security guard pulled up, and I climbed in his truck, apologized for the weight, the boulder. It's no big deal, he said. It happens all the time. We found my car, I got out of his, he smiled, wished me luck, and I slammed the door behind me, but the boulder slipped out, like it is wont, draped itself around my neck, settled in for the ride home.