Objects and Appetites

Now and then and everything in between came down with the fog early this morning and dampened all the clothing on the line.  But one day each year, providing conditions are right, the sun comes into my bedroom like this:

(maybe this only gets to happen once)

I never heard June Peace cry until today, when she called me on the phone to apologize for something she hadn't even done to begin with.  Her mind is escaping her, and she forgets ordinary things as she clings to the practical details she needs to remember in order to get by; she focuses so hard to ensure the table is set for dinner, but she loses track of her train of thought and you can see it pass over her face with momentary concern, and then confusion.  They want to send her to the nursing home, but she's resisting, and besides, everyone around her is slowly losing some faculty or other as they shake their heads in dismayed acknowledgment of each other's disintegration, but remain unaware of their own.  The body breaks.  The muscles in their tired hands have atrophied over the years, and now the movements of their limbs are slow and graceful in the ordinary way that falls upon old bodies as a new mindfulness is needed to get from one place to another.   Its a shaky kind of grace.

There are aesthetic concerns.  This type of concern is a relief, because its a problem worth addressing, and it's actually possible to fix this type of imbalance.  I can't say this is true of my heart, or yours, or yours.  But that was yesterday.  And yesterday was spent thinking about an impossible man.  I've always loved forbidden things.  Like a child to the oven.  Like a hairpin to the keyhole.  And your mouth has only one aesthetic concern I'd like to address.  Okay, maybe more than one.

His letter came when I was in the kitchen, listening to the BBC Newshour while roasting breadcrumbs in bacon fat, sauteing mushrooms in butter and garlic, hollowing out an artichoke to stuff with the least vegetarian and most fattening concoction I could invent.  It was a long letter.  Everybody knows there are a hundred thousand ways to say goodbye.  We chose kindness over bitterness, so we are family now.

"Its a self-affirming artichoke.  Think about it like that." (-MM)

Conversations touching on toxicity happen amidst kitchen laughter, but not during the funny parts.  Kitchen laughter is number 37 on my list of favourite things.

I know this is broken writing, but I need a place to put these things that occupy my days, and they don't always follow in an orderly fashion.  Maybe they never do, or maybe they always do.  Everything is true, depending on how you look at it.  Everything is also false, depending on that same thing. 

Something is wrong with my heart today.

My book is almost full.  It's been almost full for a long time; I guess I'm still afraid to put it down.  This one can't live in a suitcase because it needs to breathe the air for reassurance.

If you put your ear to it, you can hear the sounds of things that really happened.