aimless love

But my heart is always propped up in a field on its tripod, ready for the next arrow. billy collins

Tuesday, September 26, 2006

let the water hold me down

I need to start taking stimulants or something - because I have a serious case of inertia!

I have absolutely NO energy.

I don't want to do ANYTHING except read novels, eat ice cream, and lay horizontal. I mean it, I could just lay down on the floor and do nothing for about two hours! And then I'd want the ice cream and the novel.

It doesn't help that I'm reading two great books. One is for my book group - Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See and the other is a book I started listening to on tape on the way to NYC on Sunday. My grandmother fell - again - and chipped her collar bone and so even though I had wanted to go anyway, because she turned 91 on Sunday, 9/17, I really wanted to go to see her after hearing about her fall, and to try to brighten her day a little. So Sunday I drove down and back (thankfully without any traffice to speak of!) I listened to Carol Shield's book, The Stone Diaries.

Anyway, they are both stories built around the life of one woman... And so far both are really depressing!

Beautiful, poignant, deeply sorrowful, but ultimately sad!

Between that, and a visit from my friend E - I've been feeling really unanchored. Let me explain... I love E! but I don't get to see her that often, and this time she came to my house, and I suddenly became aware as I was showing her around of how neglectful I have been of this house... I haven't done any gardening, I haven't done any real decorating, and the truth is I just haven't been able to!!! First of all there is the practical reasons I haven't been able to - there just isn't enough of me to go around - by the time I finish all the daily chores the last thing I have the energy for is house beautification! But it's much more about having been unable to commit to this place. I have been just barely able to put myself into it. It's just been too hard to do - it's this whole tangle of my family, privilege and lack, deprivation and excess, and my complete inability to sort myself out in it. I cannot figure out how to BE where I am.

I started to write a piece for this autobiographical writing class that I'm taking on myself - and my first impulse was to title it

This is not my beautiful house
this is not my beautiful life

after Talking Heads song "Once in a Lifetime"

Is it really an illusion to think that if I was somewhere more resonant for me - JP, Cambridge, the Bay Area - that I would be able to be more alive???? more in my body??? more in my house??? more in my life????

All I want to do is cry!
and lay myself down!

and get lost in someone else's world for a while...

Letting the days go by/let the water hold me down
Letting the days go by/water flowing underground
Into the blue again/in the silent water
Under the rocks and stones/there is water underground.

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