5-31-06
Good Morning Beloved –
Rested most of the evening last night, not even playing much poker. Needed it; glad I did. This morning better, physically and — thus far — emotionally.
6-1-06
Good Morning My Love –
Sorry I didn’t write much. Not too much to say, especially after the emotional bath I gave myself the day before.
Lisa’s dating situation is getting almost funny. She has four or five guys very anxious to get in her pants, and one or two who may even be interested in her. She is, of course, delighted with her new-found popularity and, of course, terrified by it. Plus, it’s exhausting dealing with all these slavering swains. Basically I think she’s a one-man woman, but how do you tell which one? It’s making her crazy(er). She alternately wants to indulge big time and to tell them all to go away.
6-2-06
Good Morning Donna My Darling –
Lisa didn’t write much re: her counselling session besides saying she didn’t get much out of it. Wonder what she expected?
Was tired and sore of back, so played very little poker and went to bed. I don’t miss you in bed as much as I used to, though should you suddenly be next to me (and reasonably healthy) I would assume I’d died and that there really is a heaven. My love for you still pours out of me. There’s just no one there to accept it, much less return it. I still talk to you a lot, now mainly comments but sometimes still those odd dialogues that are dialogues despite being one-sided. The only time I really wondered if you were trying to get through was during a poker session last week. I’d drawn pocket 5s — your hand — and as I always do said Hi to you. Someone bet high before the flop, and I told you I’d have to give the hand up, though — I said aloud — this time the set would probably come in. I folded — and the flop was 9-5-9, a gorgeous full house. If that was you, baby, I’m sorry I folded! Keep trying, OK? I’ll pick you up eventually.
It’s two weeks without anything on watch on ebay! Hope I can keep it up, would like to see six months without a purchase. Miss it, have to fight the temptation, but happily there’s nothing compelling to break down my reisistance. Other than grass, ebay’s been my biggest non-essential expense — and now that I think of it, I’ve spent more on ebay than on grass since you died, so it’s #1! It’s my finances that are, uh, #2….
Finished the sketch about Jane’s fever dream. Interesting process. I’ve told you the story: Jane extremely ill, touch and go, some time (I think) pre-me. Dreams she’s in a room with a curtain which begins to wrinkle in one corner. The wrinkles begin to spread across the curtain and she realizes if the wrinkles cover the curtain she will die, so in her dream she works at smoothing the curtain. Almost fails but prevails and lives.
But as I wrote it, I discovered that the story I wanted to tell was about why she fought to smoothe the curtain instead of just giving up. I didn’t know when I started that this was the story. The same thing happened to some extent with the migraine sketch, about halfway done. I’ve had to invent a character roughly (very roughly) based on Jackie who challenges my little boy as he tries to protect his mother, to focus the dramatic moment, so instead of the story being about a boy who helps his mother when she’s sick, it’s about a boy who has to find the courage to defy a formidable grown-up so he can help his mother when she’s sick.
Each sketch has mild built-in interest, but doesn’t answer the so-what? factor. In each case I’ve discovered the answer in the process of the writing.
Would you believe one of ECS’s pieces was performed on “Ellen” yesterday? If you were alive, you probably would’ve seen it: a piano piece by Gwyneth Walker, a very popular but basically second-string composer whose greatest talent is self-marketing. Played by a young Japanese piano virtuoso, it’s — he says — a favorite piece of his. Much talent, no taste. We found out about it yesterday afternoon when a dealer ordered a couple of copies of the piece and told us why. Are there widescreens all over heaven?…
De. seemed much more relaxed on Sunday, what with Freddie’s situation behind her. She remains suspicious of and upset with Abra whom she suspects of having designs on all of Freddie’s spoils. De. says Freddie told her there’d be a few grand for her and Stevie, but he didn’t do any codicil, so it’s up to Abra to handle that, plus any other personal effects which might suitably go to family. De. wanted the piano but Abra seems to want that too. I actually think De. has no room for it and is better off letting it go. De. says she doesn’t hold grudges; maybe not, but she sure stews over things.
Now she can switch her attention back to her son and his latest approaching hearing. The main non-legal issue is getting Grant to accept the realities of his life: that he can’t drink, that if he drinks he can’t drive, that his brain isn’t wired quite like other kids and that he must live his life differently as a result.
Funny: after 1 1/2 sketches I’m already a bit tired of my younger self. Scared little wimp. I don’t know how much more I want to write about him. An odd thing is, though it’s my life history I’m telling, the stories come not from within me but from Jane; most of them are her stories in which I play a fairly passive part. I know I gave her much joy, as well as a vital reason to keep on plugging during miserable times, as if there were any other times. But other than battles of will between us, I was a passive passenger in Jane’s nightmarish journeys. The migraine sketch marks a transition to my greater role in my own and her life, reinforced by the incident when her father was dying in Virginia and she couldn’t cope emotionally, and left me there while she went back to NYC.. That’ll make a good story, and I’ll look better in it too! She was so ashamed of that — rightly, in my opinion — but to me it was a kind of rite of passage that told me I could hack adult responsibilities. A man’s job, given to a boy and discharged satisfactorily. And it was part of the long transition from dependent to caretaker which resolved so many of our conflicts because how could we be so terrible as child and parent when it worked out so well in the long run? I think we were forced to conclude that for all our well-documented mistakes and shortcomings, we were a better mother-and-son team than we thought. Underneath all the wrong were things that were very right. That’s the thing I most want to say to and about Jane. The scars from her black side are permanent on me, but her gifts to me still benefit me, and the best that I am arises from her love, generosity of time and self, and her ethics, which were strong and true.
6-5-06
Good Morning My Best Baby –
I apologize for not writing over the weekend. Be assured, my love, that even when I don’t write, I think of you constantly and talk to you often.
After my session with Janet I drove home and it began to pour and I just moped my way through the day, doing tv, sports and poker. Yesterday I awoke with the runs and couldn’t get over them and out until 4:30, when I walked but did little else. I just procrastinated and vegged out all weekend, basically, and I’m sorry for not writing.
Didn’t even type up the draft of “The Fever Dream.” Didn’t write a lick, except to Lisa (who’s OK but still overwhelmed and very edgy re: dating). Read sporadically. Low level blues, I’d say. Missed you. Always miss you.
Must say that Lisa’s Adventures in Dating is a cautionary tale to me. So complicated, so fraught with anxiety, so expensive!! Don’t want to have anything to do with the game, which I wasn’t much good at in the first place. My approach: be myself. If anyone shows any interest, assume they’re nuts and run like hell.
Tonight’s the first (of 
art classes. Tomorrow the car goes to Patrick. Eventually I go to Hades.
art classes. Tomorrow the car goes to Patrick. Eventually I go to Hades.R.S. just gave me the word: I’m going from $34K to $38K annum. I’d expected a $3K raise, needed 5, pleased with 4. Starts this next paycheck. I’ll still need part-time work but not as urgently. It’s an extra $77 a week before taxes, so that gets it to $50. Need $50 more. Janet gives me maybe $20. So I need $30. at least. Two more Home Instead gigs would do it, but I won’t do Ponzo and nothing else is out there yet. At least this takes pressure off, and without ebay spending I may be a bit better than I think.
In reading the printout the orthopedic surgeon gave me, I was struck by a couple of things. Most important is the on-going, long-term risk of post-op infections. I’m warned that for at least two years post-op I’m to take antibiotics before having any dental work done at all, even cleanings. Wound care important. And remember all that stuff I had to give away: the raised toilet seat, the sock putter-oner, the gripping tool that gets stuff down from high places — I might need ‘em all for a week or two. Probably if I’m in rehab I’ll get ‘em there. And I’ll have to be conscious of the hip, leg and foot position, probably for the rest of my life.
Other details — size of incision, kind of anesthesia, whether or not surgical cement is used etc. — remain to be seen. The surgery is ten months away and who knows what the hip will be like then.
And the printout feels obliged to tell patients that they will not have more function than they had before the hip problems developed. Duh!
By the way: the above makes it a virtual certainty I’ll have at least one more extraction before April.
Have been reviewing my finances in my head. If I can stay off ebay I can save $25 a week, which is at least what I’ve been spending. 3 weeks since I bought on ebay. That $25, plus my found money, about makes up the $100 I need. And I can save $10 a week bringing in my own coffee and breakfast and about $5 a week if I did my own laundry. Thge former I’m prepared to do at any time, but I’m real reluctant to do my laundry myself again. Of course, pot remains the big optional expense, and if I could get 2 evenings from Home Instead I’d cut down on that too….
At least I feel like now I’ve got a handle on it with wiggle room in terms of more income and/or less expense still available to me. I’ll be very interested in what my take-home is this Friday.
I’m also figuring that, with stuff going onto ebay and my ebay guy owing me some money from before, I may be able to get the bank account up over $2K. I need it to stay there. Other than the trust, that’s my safety net. It’s $1200 now and that’s nowhere near enough. My hope is that, starting with this paycheck, I won’t have to dip into the account every pay period the way I’ve had to do lately. Stop withdrawals, increase deposits. We’ll see if we can, now.
6-6-06
Good Morning Beloved –
Looked around the bedroom last night, and you were everywhere. Not just the pictures or your wonderful Christmas message from a year and a half ago. There’s the bed: your beloved bed that you were so pleased with. The headboard we found together. The big pillows you used as a back support (me too!). The swing-out tv mounted on the bedside armoire. We’d seen it in the hospital and I liked the idea, but you tracked down a manufacturer and made it happen. And the armoire itself, the last piece of the bedroom set you adored. A few clothes are tossed on the folding chair you reupholstered so well — it was the last project you completed successfully. Subsequent efforts either required too much strength or visual/spatial acuity the tumor stole from you. But by the door is one of my favorites of your projects: the gold-flecked refinished mini-bureau. You did a GREAT job on that — on the chairs too!. Open the armoire and there’s the gorgeous mosaic jewelry box I bought you, and on the shelf by the bed: your bling!! Inside the closets: photos, jewelry, your PC, bedding we shared…on and on. I am still steeped in you, my love.
Car at Patrick’s. As long as we do business together (many years, I hope) we’ll share you. What was it a bout you that made you so special to so many people? One thing: your courage in the face of your illnesses. Another: your tenacity/stubbornness/perserverence. You would not give in, not back down from something you felt was important. And living your life your way was very important. Another: your love affair with life, and the things in life which delighted you. If people expected you to be defeated, glum, negative, what they got was your delight in a sky, a cloud, a flower, a butterfly, a child. You made us ashamed to be sorry for ourselves. Another: in your last decade you achieved a kind of wisdom, or at least perspective, that people found valid and inspiring. You seemed to have greatly sorted out what mattered from what didn’t, and what mattered was getting what good you could out of your life and not letting anyone prevent that from happening. People needed to hear that, especially from you. I was proud to play the enabler role in this scenario. And another: you were a crazy, sweet, funny, goofy ditz of a person whose company could be just wonderful. And finally: god, you were strong. As your outer strength waned, your inner strength increased. No one could spend 30 minutes with you and not feel it. Nature might’ve been trying to force you to your knees, but in the end, you were the force of nature.
Did my first drawing class, and must tell you there won’t be any exhibits of my work soon. We tried to draw bottles with vine charcoal on an 18″x24″ pad. Mine were static, inhibited little things. But after I learned about negative and positive space, filling up the page and breaking real-world shapes into geometric ones, my bottles were better and I was praised for my “energy” (sloppiness), because I scribbily (!) darkened the background. I did enjoy it, and the instructor’s a cutie (don’t worry, no chance).
Can you tell, my darling, how much I love you still?
Only problem with taking the car to Patrick, now that Craig’s gone (making my raise possible), is the walking. Back and hip are sore now. I expect quality heating pad time tonight, probably tomorrow too.
