Various topics below.




+++++Frankenstein Bunny


I see it has been over two weeks since I was last online. I am genuinely surprised, because I was certain it had been way over a month by now. (And that was AFTER factoring in my tendency to “quantum time”, subtracting an enormous experiential span.)

Since this is the very first time I've felt capable of articulating anything [ unessential ] in writing, to anybody at all, I figure I'd better get it done before I too-late discover I'm into another spell of TCB silence.

(—Not exactly my Terminal Optimist way of looking at things. Also, this comes to mind: “What I think I'm going to say isn't very interesting,” which has been pressing hard and repeatedly on the Eject button. “Glum” seems to sum it up, wouldn't you agree?)

Before writing this I re-read the top one-third of the entries presently on the scrollable “Current 25”/home page here, just to get a feel for where I left you guys hanging. What jumped out at me immediately is the parallel between what I've been undergoing (and still am), and something I noted in “on Poet's Block” (which entry still appears below). It was in the footnote about my apparent poetry-cycle, a new series that suggests a pattern of prescience ('... by mid-August?— some sort of grief-stricken “loss” in my life?').

This rediscovery hit me somewhere near the solar plexus with an almost physical THUD, instantly driving from my brain whatever it was I'd thought I would be saying to you today. I hope I can remember to run that past my “master astrologer” friend next time we talk. I am more than “just curious” —much, much more: I have been grieving.

Of course, I can say this NOW (given than I have no way to ever know if I am in error), but it sure feels to me as if that is the ONLY reason this particular gap, since at the time I posted here last, I was just building up SPR momentum again. (“Lazarus” and “Dimly” TCB entries were byproducts.)

Grief is such an odd duck, as emotions go, isn't it? In my own case, I recall that when I finally grieved the loss of my mother a full nine months had passed since her death and, at the time, I'd long THOUGHT that I had already grieved her. —You know, crying and feeling sad after a loved-one dies? I'd certainly done all that back when it happened and for a few weeks thereafter. But I had no idea because, when it did hit, it came over my head like a dump truck dropping manure. There really is nothing you can do about it either, except suffer until it lets up.

I suddenly remembered enormous help from reading C. S. Lewis's _A Grief Observed_ back then, so tried it again this past week, briefly. No dice, made me feel so much worse I had to put it back. (MAN, can that guy write!) I guess grief must be like babies: No two deliveries are alike. This time I think I'll just take it straight up. I've definitely entered the diffused phase that, to me, signals “the end is near”, so I hope that is correct. (What do I know? —My first child was not breech and had only one head.)

I'm not ready to go into personal detail on any of that, though. May never. Probably never.

(Sorry, Bill. Your letter got involuntarily bumped. I know you understand such things, but I wanted to say it outright.)




+++++Gratitude


Speaking of intercessions, or I should say “thinking” of them, I want to ESPECIALLY acknowledge that person/persons who have/has been anonymously showering me with hand painted cards, audiotaped greetings, and homemade meringue and, alternately, chocolate candies. (They are the best kind for plugging up bullet holes which, I've found, cause perennial leakage.) And that singing telegram delivered to me at the dentist's office? That one REALLY blew my mind! Where did you ever find a Western Union employee who owned my high school boyfriend's football jersey with his same letter on it?

You (meant in the collective sense, if this is some sort of team effort) have single-handedly —so far, at any rate— kept me hanging on. Please, WHATEVER you do, don't stop! (I am positively determined to hop out of here on all fours.)

This is no small feat, given that I am at present camped out (for the duration, and I MEAN that) where I finally hit the ground, which is —wouldntcha know?— in the desert off an unmarked camel trail. My so-called tent is made of straw. (I've been collecting them my whole way down, so I thought I'd get some practical use before the wind suddenly picks up, and they scatter every which way never to be seen again. —Boy, that's one howl I definitely will not mind when I hear IT coming.) I'm living off cactus juice and the cornbread that still occasionally falls, although I can already tell I'm building up quite an appetite, over time.

I'm parked on the far side of the trail where I can keep that unsteady dune in sight, with all news of civilization prohibited. I have no human contact except the rare caravan guide who monosyllabicly happens by, and to whom I am as likely to snarl as to speak at all. (I haven't bitten anyone. Yet.)

Maybe once every three or four days I think I see an angel, but they are always in motion so I can never get up close enough to check for wings. (Nobody wears a halo.)

There aren't any other campers that I've been able to locate, just a few herbivores (you can spot them because they never wear shirts), an astonishing variety of native predators (who forever try to pass as herbivores), and poacher patrols looking out of place in tri-cornered hats. (You can hear their four-wheel drives coming for miles). As far as I can tell the only poachers around here are the moonlighting patrolmen, but don't quote me on that —they don't seem to understand about the dust.

Meanwhile, I feel like a werewolf: slobbery, dangerous, unreliable, and totally irresponsible while this is going on. I must stink and have lice, too, because the local jackals have finally begun giving me a wide berth. Gooooood.

Whoever you are, I am positive your castle in heaven has had an entire wing added, along with acres of virgin forest all around the sides. I like to pretend I'm living there and imagine a secret passageway through the trees that only we two know about. We hold hands and sing. From now on, I'm calling you “The Dragon Slayer”.

If I could figure out how to kiss you (I think about that almost all the time now —I hope you believe me), I probably could not stop, although —drool notwithstanding— I doubt you'd want to be that close to my lice. (I tell myself this is why, for now, you always use a courier —lice wash off. I almost believe that sometimes.  One thing I always do believe: None of this has ever happened before.)




+++++Falling on My Face
(did I hear somebody say “this won't take long?”)


In the middle of ... er ... all that, I had a melodramatic fall. Ended up actually skiing across the sidewalk on my nose and left knee, which pretty much left me looking like a monster for about a week. All the way across the width of my nose, from its bridge to its tip, was one huge scab until day before yesterday.

After that, I morphed into a doughy (swollen all over without edges) longterm sot (bright red, vaguely enlarged schnoz) of recent plastic surgery (broad scab across upper lip). Maybe I just look like I badly need dialysis and got a cold sore infected? Any way you cut it, its ugly, folks. (At least nothing is dripping.)

This particular sot is slightly jaundiced (unhealthy yellow tinge across about 1/3 the right side of my face, according to my dental hygienist I should add since I cannot see it in my apartment lighting) with a Neanderthal eyebrow (right side still juts out weirdly) and a perpetual almost-wince. (My knee scab, which is thick and hard as a rock, pulls painfully with every movement. When I'm out and about, I move a lot.)

“At least this sot isn't limping,” she notes in a failed attempt at optimism.

But there really is a good part to this story: It is a fact that I did not break anything and did not get even one black and blue mark ANYWHERE —which seems miraculous to me, since my nose and knee took my entire body weight from where I hit to where I ended up, probably three to five feet pocked as pumice. My brand new $300 glasses, which rode lens-down the whole way —jammed as they were between my eyeballs and the concrete— don't have a single —even hairline— scratch on them. And when my nose scab came off it took with it all the pores enlarged since I was eleven years old.

The last time I fell on a sidewalk was Fall 1984 when I misgauged a curb (same thing) and landed on my knees. That one was unpredictably painful for over five years, so I feel really fortunate this time.




+++++Bye-bye


Well, that's about it for today. Crossing my fingers it won't be so long next time. (Hoping for your chuckle, somewhere above? I feel better, too.)

There are no comments to this entry.