Vilhelm Hammershoi (1864-1916). Woman in an Interior, Strandgrade 30 (detail), 1901.
Oil on canvas
8:55 am
I'm feeling very down this morning. (I managed to crack myself up thinking the words self-care and how much I loathe them, especially the hyphen)
It took a pandemic, but I'm currently eating 2 gummies of Charlotte's Web Calm version of CBD every morning and drinking a glass of wine every night. Am I calmer? Perhaps, but I know that it takes some time for CBD to actually do its work. I'll keep you posted. As for the wine, it goes well with the meals I've made of late: 1/2 leg of lamb, rubbed all over with a paste made from butter, fresh mint and rosemary from my garden, garlic, roasted on a bed of cut-up slavered with olive oil and salt potatoes.
A friend sent this to me this morning:
Can you read that? *** It’s actually FAKE. Thank you Steve Reed. You know, the thought crossed my mind that it seemed far-fetched, but damn if it wasn’t entertaining. (And perfect for these fake news times with the clown in charge, right?
God talk depresses me. Too much God talk makes me despair.
Two mornings now the cactus wren has woken me, but I'm not complaining because it's Mexican. I'm in Mexico. It's hard to believe that the creature making such a ruckus is a bird, and I haven't actually seen it but imagine it to be chunky and grossly sociable. There's a hardscrabble beauty to everything around here in Baja. Yesterday, I took a walk alone toward the ocean, my footsteps the only sound on the sandy path, and the crash of surf only anticipated. An enormous ridge of sand rises at the end of the path, and you have to wind around a long narrow tide pool, edged with grasses and cacti before you climb up and over the ridge to the deserted beach below, the roar (waves crashing) meeting you. I hadn't yet gotten there, gotten to the point where the sound meets you, when I saw in the distance a pack of dogs, maybe five, come up over the far ridge on the other side of the pool. At first I fancied coyotes, then contemplated wolves and settled on dogs, their ears dark v's, spaces between them and wondered where they were going and whether they were wild and what would I do (dumb, non-dog loving American) if attacked and would anyone hear me if the roar of the Pacific was not yet discernible from bird calls much less screams. The dogs were so in the distance, but I could have sworn that they saw me, that they scattered over the dune, scattered toward me, so I stopped and turned around and walked back, quickly, trying not to look back over my shoulder. Over my head, high up in the sky and then past my line of vision flew a long streak of a bird, black-edged and elegant and alone.
A great frigate, the Bird Photographer told me later.
Frigatebirds can stay up in the air for two months without ever touching the ground.
I'm not sure what I want to say about this, how my mind conjures both threat and wonder but it does and it does again no matter the place.
RIP W.S. Merwin
The Solstice
They say the sun will come back
at midnight
after all
my one love
but we know how the minutes
fly out into
the dark trees
and vanish
like the great 'ohias and the honey creepers
and we know how the weeks
walk into the
shadows at midday
at the thought of the months I reach for your
hand
it is not something
one is supposed
to say
we watch the red birds in the morning
we hope for the quiet
daytime together
the year turns into air
but we are together in the whole night
with the sun still going away
and the year
coming back
I think today is International Astronomy Day or something, and yesterday I went downtown with three friends to visit the Mirrored Infinity Room at the Broad. You could go in, only two at a time, for only 45 seconds. Gazillions of lights hung over water like stars.You stood on a platform and looked at your reflection in the many mirrors. It was cool, but we agreed that the pictures were actually better than the experience. There just wasn't enough time to really feel the magic. When I walked out, I remarked that it was what I imagined death to be -- some kind of immediate and quick merging with the stars. At least that's what I hope it'll be.
So, this is my 4004th post. How weird is that? I wish I had someone who would go through all of them and pull out the significant ones, if any. I know the key to the organization of my book is somewhere in there, but the task seems formidable. Anyone?
Anyone?
Sophie continues to recover from her oral surgery on Tuesday. She had minimal swelling and no ice was used. I think it was the CBD. It's a powerful anti-inflammatory. I'm feeling a bit drained from the experience, but it's not about me, is it? Speaking of, I got a dress-down from someone on Facebook. I had objected to her use of the word "retarded" in her rant against Elizabeth Warren detractors. While I agreed with her rant, I was bummed that she'd used the word "retarded" and said so. She defended it. I wrote her a private message explaining why it's so awful. She wrote me back and was very angry with me. She said a lot of things that I've been thinking about, some true and others just plain vituperative.
These things drain me, too, but once you're drained you're empty and can find things to fill you back up.
I can't get this poem by W.S. Merwin out of my head today:
I Live Up Here
Ilive up here
And a little bit to the left
And I go down only
For the accidents and then
Never a moment too soon
Just the same it's a life it's plenty
The stairs the petals she loves me
Every time
Nothing has changed
Oh down there down there
Every time
The glass knights lie by their gloves of blood
In the pans of the scales the helmets
Brim over with water
It's perfectly fair
The pavements are dealt out the dice
Every moment arrive somewhere
You can hear the hearses getting lost in lungs
Their bells stalling
And then silence comes with the plate and I
Give what I can
Feeling It's worth it
For I see
What my votes the mice are accomplishing
And I know I'm free
This is how I live
Up here and simply
Others do otherwise
Maybe
I've read it about ten times today and gotten something new out of it each time.
Disney Hall, seen from The Broad
I can't stop listening to this old song:
4,004 posts.
Art, poetry, music.
This is how I live. Up here and simply.Just give me one thing that I can hold onto. Others do otherwise maybe.
I'm finishing up Elizabeth Taylor's Angel and would say that it's a slow but beautifully written read whose torpor appeals to me. I've always been a sucker for the slow read, where characters unfold with events as opposed to events unfolding with characters. I think of Trollope, Eliot (George, not T.S.), the Brontes and Austen -- the novels that, when finished, leave you aching not so much from what has happened but more because you'll miss the characters. Here's a little bit of Angel that made me nearly laugh out loud and certainly sigh in admiration:
He thought her extraordinarily placid. He sent for a cab and took her to tea at Gunters; the least he could do, he supposed. She was arch and gay as if she had come to London solely for this treat, and he wondered if she had ever been taken out to tea before; with that moustache, he rather thought not.
I've just begun David Grand's Mount Terminus and will report back at some point if I don't get lost in W.S. Merwin's new book of poetry, The Moon Before Morning.
Hours after I contemplated stopping this -- yes, this (writing) -- I read this:
I asked how can you ever be sure that what you write is really any good at all and he said you can't
you can't you can never be sure you die without knowing whether anything you wrote was any good if you have to be sure don't write
which is part of this W.S. Merwin poem and if I'm going to believe that there are no accidents, magical thinking, not Merwin but Merlin, I'm going to have to say that I don't need to be sure. Honestly, I don't need to be sure, so I'm going to continue to write, this. I took that photo of Sophie in the carwash today where I'd taken her to silence her, to take up time, to absolve the guilt of not doing enough, to diffuse the frustration I felt as she repetitively let her ankle collapse, her right ankle. It's a freaky move that she's done on and off for years and now it seems to always be on, and it makes her very unstable which makes me think I have to put the gd orthotics on her again. I put her in the car and we went to the carwash.
he suggested I pray to the Muse get down on my knees and pray right there in the corner and he said he meant it literally
it was in the days before the beard and the drink but he was deep in tides of his own through which he sailed chin sideways and head tilted like a tacking sloop
I took that picture -- my silly blue phone -- and then I puzzled over it as forced wind rushed over my car, drying the droplets, skittering them down the windshield, perfect tears that disappeared. I can't quite figure out the perspective in that random shot or what there is to focus on with rear-view mirrors and glass to look through, the street ahead, the brushes behind and Sophie looking down, chin sideways and head tilted like a tacking sloop and my eye, blinded. That's it. I felt blinded today. Blinded and bored by story. My story. Sophie's seizures. Sophie's foot. I contemplated stopping it -- that story -- and doing nothing at all.
don't lose your arrogance yet he said you can do that when you're older lose it too soon and you may merely replace it with vanity
I've mixed up the verses of the poem, the order, his order, Merwin's order (or Berryman's), and I'm not young, but I guess I'm going to have to get out of my own way, not stop.
