Month: July 2004

VIII

I can see myself years back at Sunion,
hurting with an infected foot, Philoctetes
in woman’s form, limping the long path,
lying on a headland over the dark sea,
looking down the red rocks to where a soundless curl
of white told me a wave had struck,
imagining the pull of that water from that height,
knowing deliberate suicide wasn’t my métier,
yet all the time nursing, measuring that wound.
Well, that’s finished. The woman who cherished
her suffering is dead. I am her descendant.
I love the scar-tissue she handed on to me,
but I want to go on from here with you
fighting the temptation to make a career of pain.

from Twenty-One Love Poems in The Dream of a Common Language, by Adrienne Rich. I copied in one of the other poems on that particular page back in the spring…this is the one that speaks to me today. (yesterday I was reading one of her other books that I checked out of the library, and looking at the back jacket: she’s 75 years old…for some reason that startled me, although I guess it shouldn’t. after all, the book that I just quoted from is nearly as old as I am.)

something to keep thinking of as I try to go onward & upward.

there are three men in my driveway, gradually disassembling a buick…at least it isn’t on the lawn anymore. (even if it doesn’t work at the end of this experience, it’ll be towed to the actual owner’s place, and thus out of my world entirely.)

I’m raring to go on a long bike ride, but first I was waiting until it cooled down a little, and now I’m waiting for C, who wants to go with me. I imagine we’ll either go way out on the Chehalis Western trail, or downtown & around the lake. either would be lovely.

today I stopped into the shop where I bought my bike and told random guy at the counter that it changed my life. now I have the store address and the owner’s name, so I can put that thought in writing.

I had my first therapy session today. the last time I tried therapy was such a clusterfsk that I’ve been reluctant to give it another shot. I’m glad I did. (Mike, I’m also planning to make a doctor’s appointment; I need a physical anyway.)

I’m reading a lot of poetry lately, stuff that I’ve loved for a long time: Adrienne Rich, Mary Oliver, Tess Gallagher’s Portable Kisses Expanded, Claudia Mauro’s Reading the River. it brings me back to the poetic voice, which I’d mostly lost years ago. (sometime during the heyday of the old Writer’s Group, I think; I stopped being exposed to poets and poetry, and it just died in me, except for haiku.)

don’t ever buy a desknote.

I’m sleepy, but I don’t really *want* to take a nap. although it might be nice to take a nap and then wake up with a bike ride in the cool summer evening. mmmmm.

* Boingo jumping the neighbor’s fence
* bees in the oregano
* daffodils (not that there are any around now)

I appreciate the responses from Dorothea & Kermit to yesterday’s extended anxious whine. (I thought about deleting it entirely, but decided against it.)

today I’ve called a few therapists…and my inlaws, to whom I owed a bit of explanation. (I have inlaws? this continues to surprise me; but I love them a lot. dad gave me some good practical advice, not on mental health, but on remodeling, which I appreciate.)

what’s the saying? the first step is admitting you have a problem?

sigh.

but today I made this list in my head:

* I haven’t written more than a page on my (10-year!) novel in the last six months.
* I haven’t written more than a half-dozen poems longer than 3 lines in the last couple of years.
* I have been dreaming a lot, but can’t remember anything.
* I’m always tired.
* I haven’t made a piece of jewelry since Christmastime.
* I’m 40 pounds overweight.
* My ankles and wrists always hurt.
* I don’t have a single friend of my own in Olympia.
* I only have one friend in 100 miles, and I haven’t talked to her, not really, in weeks.
* I have credit-card debt.
* My kitchen is mostly-disassembled, and I don’t know what to do next.
* My garden is half-dead.
* And so on…

it goes on like that, the rambling list of anxious dread in the back of my mind, for a long time.

I’m not sure if I’m even going to leave this post up (will I regret it in the morning?), but tomorrow I think I’m going to figure out what mental health professionals are covered by my insurance, and then see if any of them will do me any good. because I can’t go on this way, not at all. I feel drained of any creative energy, terrified of the future, paralyzed by doubt. I hate myself this way, and I can’t stop it.

that’s what I hate most about this feeling…I can’t just say to myself to cut it out and just start doing something, being different, being the myself that I want to be, ought to be, but I can’t. I’m just too……

ugh. not going to write any more. going to go back to trying to clean out the abyss of papers on my home office desk, and hope to god there’s not some forgotten bill or yet another project I was going to do but didn’t…..

I’m trying the PHP-driven dynamic text replacement on the headers, now that I’ve again found the font that the header images were created with. so far, though I’m noticing that it’s not handling those special characters very well. I’ll need to look into that if I’m going to keep this method. (I wonder if it’s a problem with the font….)

I’d be writing this on snapping links, but I can’t post there because my admin password is written down on a squib of paper that’s in a stack of squibs of paper in my office…and I didn’t change the profile to add an email address, so I can’t even email it to myself.

what I *was* going to say is that I’m finally starting to make some of the tweaks that I didn’t have time for earlier in the week. (as in, it’s now (8 pm!) finally cool enough that I can use my brain in some capacity.)

closing in on 100 (F) here in the shade of the carport. I’m just languishing, waiting for the afternoon to pass and the cool of evening to come.

the one serious difference between the (rare) heat here and the (frequent) heat down in so cal is that down there, it gets hot earlier and cools off earlier. here, it’ll be hot for quite a while yet, and it’s already nearly 6 pm.

bleh.

Yes, our server crashed.
Yes, our server administrator is on vacation.
No, his cell phone is not on.
At least the liquor store is open.

from an email list….

yesterday I had sort of a long philosophical ramble in my paper notebook on the way home, something about being the kind of person that I want to be.

part of that is being more social. (“sad, but social”)

today, I emailed a person I don’t really know, and an old boss (no, not Don W.) who I haven’t seen in many years who I had heard was retiring. yeah, I know, the internet isn’t really social in quite the same way as hanging out in person, but one of the things that bugs me about myself is how utterly crappy I am about keeping in touch with people.

so, yeah. for what that’s worth.