A profound question: Is all of life really about preparing to die? A Catholic woman once told me so
Made recently (pictures to come): “river rocks” dress, two bias skirts (one a bold swirly print, the other tiny polychromatic paisley), a gypsy muu-muu (decorated with real Afghani coins). Just started an olive-green velvet skirt with godets. (Illusion)
Nemo is sitting on Gary’s shins (G.’s in bed reading Foodboy by Carol Swain). Nemo is staring right at G.: “He can’t stop staring,” G. says.
Suddenly I understand a word: cathexis.
(Get it?)
With the twin occurrence of the end of summer and the end of New Orleans-as-we-knew-it (although I didn’t know it as I have never been there 😦 ) I find myself even more than usual interested in organizing things, all the debris and fabulous surpluses of my daily life. Some primal part of me believes that if I just DO MY HANDWASHING everything will be OK. Seeing it hanging over the tub is amazingly consoling.
The government, it renders us… parentless.
Or it’s like… our parents… are crack addicts…
Is it wrong that, given all the human misery, I keep thinking of the animals?
It’s just that they’re so innocent, and they trust us so entirely…
A fleeting thought today… “must buy… second cat carrier… just in case…”
The Big Difficult
(a sonnet for Katrina)
Wind.
Water.
Fire.
Theft.
Rape.
Destroy.
Poverty.
Neglect.
Sick.
Pain.
Pain.
Kill.
Pain.
Death.
Doc says the eye is 99% healed. Al hamdulillah! It’s still a little achey, and I can’t start back on eyeliner for another week, but I’m OK. Whew!
Hello all
It seems I have a corneal ulcer.
I thought it was just a little irritation, but Gary’s ex-wife had this same thing happen, and he said it can have dire consequences. A number of web sites told me it was a medical emergency, so I made a trip to a circle-of-hell like emergency room so late Wednesday night that it was Thursday morning already — got home at 430 a.m. after a night of exposure to the poor and suffering of Brooklyn: the man who had just had spinal surgery and was afflicted with a constant gasping hiccup — he could keep down neither food nor water; the pregnant woman with chicken pox; the lady who got beat up at a party; the young woman whose cat had scratched her just below her eye; the ailing lady who moaned ohmigod ohmigod and soiled herself; her enraged adult son who demanded more care for her and was threatened with expulsion for unruly behavior; the woman who cried and sobbed, “I just want to die, I want to dieeeee…”
I felt silly going there with just a little irritated eye, but it turns out it’s a good thing I did. The emergency room doc told me it was probably just a corneal abrasion, but told me to follow up with an opthamolagist. Yesterday I saw an opthamologist who said it was probably an abrasion but wanted me to see his partner. I went to consult with his partner today and he told me within two seconds of looking at my eye that it was an ulcer, and that it was good I came in in because such ulcers can, he said, be “devastating” and can result in permanent *impaired vision or permanent vision loss.* AAAAAGGH! Big scariness.
So now I’m using some miraculous new eyedrops and the prognosis is good. My eye is achey and I feel tired, though. Wearing my glasses feels odd. Worst of all… no eyeliner until I’m safely through this.
Anyway, I caught it in time. Filled with that shaky residue of a nearly missed disaster.
OK, no blogging for a little while until this gets better.
xo
N
Rodney, I’ve always thought of you as a KER-ne-kuh. And you know what, I think you need a blog. Your own blog, to call your own.
p.s. I have one poem with a line, “the rest of this poem will leave you dizzy” — and when I read it aloud I always say, “and here I always want the line to end with ‘Michael Gizzi’– and then I read the real line, which doesn’t have a rhyme in it at all. But the Gizzi bit has become part of the poem for me. Agreed, MG has a splendid name.
