I am a mess.

I've had an interesting ten days, most of it spent working on the novel, on a class I am taking on Modern Psychology and Buddhism. When not working, I have been gardening. Occasionally when I am exhausted, I watch social media. I have an ambivalent relationship with all forms, except for my blog and Tumblr and of course, Goodreads. They are all little glimpses of thoughts and ideas that I have stored where I can see them when needed. Things go through my head, sometimes very quickly. The Internet has its uses. Storage is one of them. The best. But I suppose I have run out of reasons to be on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Since March, it has been depressing to watch, to see what I surely know is a reflection of our society. Twitter probably does that best. Of the three, Twitter is the most satisfactory form of social media to me, because most of it is information that links to other places on the Internet. News, book reviews, essays, and so forth. But it is the most brutal of the three. I don't like Instagram at all, and Facebook is surely a distraction.

Oh,  in the last ten days I have had to face my own personal reflections, too

And I am a mess. My house is a mess. My garden is a mess, my desk cluttered with books and notes and a thousand busy thoughts that I write down in blue ink when not writing the latest Word file. I went to the doctor Thursday and there are concerns. Age and gravity is against me and I am not doing my best. But I have mastered my anxiety and depression where I can live drug free again. The latter is positive, but I still have not done the personal care I need to do to live better and longer. And I have been reminded of it.

I am not too bothered by messes. Life is full of as many imperfections as possibilities. Countless. But I do need to bring some order to my life and to my art. When the house gets as cluttered as it is now, my mind follows suit. I would laugh at that, but it so true. I was looking for a book the other day and went through a hundred before I found it. I could not find a certain notebook. I went outside and realized I needed to weed a flowerbed I thought was passable for this year. 

John is not here to remind me to do a little bit each day and not attempt too many things at one time, to make lists, and follow them, if haphazardly. My Placebo notes are not properly organized. My writing notebook has no organization. How did this happen?  I haven't turned the air conditioning on this year. It's always over 80 degrees in the house, but the thermometer needs new batteries and I am so unorganized and mired in work that I just walk by and promise to change the batteries the next day. Today I changed them.

I know work and art makes messes. I know life makes messes. I know that in general I am messy. Not as in a cluttered floor or in hoarding but as in desire and love and art and work. My mind is colorful and busy. My desires are somewhat neurotic and consuming. And I just want to create new things all the time. I seem to organize things better in my mind than in the physical world. John did that. My mind is messy like the inside of a big purse.

I blame it on gardening, something I have done since a child. Gardening is messy and very imperfect. You plant something and live for possibility. It might die, it might bloom the following year in a different place, or it might multiply like weeds. One can never be sure in a perennial garden. Gardeners live in possibilities and hope. They are the most optimistic people I know. My cup is always half full, even if it's on bordering on empty. I live like that, mostly because I live in the present as much as I can.

But in the last ten days I have been reflecting and counting and tallying up. An accounting. And I am too messy, enough that I have to reorganize and begin again.

And that's that. There. There.

Gardening....

This past week has been all about gardening. I've done a great deal of work in flowerbeds and such. This morning when I woke up it was raining so I thought I wouldn't get much done but finally was able to plant five pots of flowers and one fern. Lots more needs to be done. I've bought Bee Balm and more petunias and tomatoes. Others, Mexican heather and lantana. Planted zinnia seeds and morning glories. I hope I can get most of it done this weekend, so I can write on the novel next week. I have missed two weeks of work. Not good.

Superlatives

I want to dream of songs filled with words both blue and lit with starlight;

two of them

north stars

steady and bright and blue

as you

in your loneliness 

and me

with my purple and pink heart

that aches for all things

wild and blue as you;

All things

under sun and moon and stars

the wind and sea

that soon roll

words into whispers

oh so low.

Low.

You are all superlatives!—

softest grass

softest rose

softest kiss

light as air.

We are whirling through the night sky, love.

Split in parts by space and time, 

We are tumbling through the sky too fast. 

Soon we will burn in fire.

Soon we turn to ash.

But we are now all superlatives! —

Brilliant.

Bright.

A multitude of words and sounds;

We are the bluest of blues

and lit by brightest light.

                                                                           Copyright (c) 2020 by  Jane Harrington

Thinking of Shirley Jackson

“You never know what you are going to want until you see it clearly.” 
                                                ― Shirley Jackson

Angela Carter and Mother goddesses

"If women allow themselves to be consoled for their culturally determined lack of access to the modes of intellectual debate by the invocation of hypothetical great goddesses, they are simply flattering themselves into submission (a technique often used on them by men). All the mythic versions of women, from the myth of the redeeming purity of the virgin to that of the healing, reconciliatory mother, are consolatory nonsenses; and consolatory nonsense seems to me a fair definition of myth, anyway. Mother goddesses are just as silly a notion as father gods. If a revival of the myths gives women emotional satisfaction, it does so at the price of obscuring the real conditions of life. This is why they were invented in the first place."

                                         —Angela Carter

Lydia

Today, Lydia came with her parents to. my house. I have not seen any of them since February except on FaceTime.  The most difficult aspect of this virus on a personal level is not being able to see my children and grandchildren. But for a bit there, they were all working the frontlines and it was impossible. We basically met outside on the patio while her parents were doing some work in the yard. We always had this space between us. There was no hugs at all, but we blew kisses across the distance. Everyone talked and told stories and worked. It felt so ordinary and yet it was somehow more beautiful and good than it had ever been previously. It was a moment that I captured in my mind, watching it all play out, understanding how we human beings take so much for granted. I will never take seeing my children or grandchildren for granted ever again. I learn lessons easily.

This plague should remind us all to take care of little things. Ordinary things. Everyday things. People things. Hugs. Kisses. I was thinking today, for me, what a lovely thing a whisper might be now.