I kept waking up last night, sweating. I jumped the gun with the fleece jammies but the cats had deserted me and the window was open. Gardening makes me feel better. There are seven bags of yard waste beside my house right now, and my aching back and the dirt under my nails. I pruned the star magnolia and the grapes and cut down all the iris stalks and dead roses. The oak tree hasn't turned yet. Fall moves so fast and then it is done and winter and rain all the time.

My brother killed himself on November 26th, 2007. How I will observe the anniversary I do not know.  

when you are gone, I have to remind myself to breathe. Breathe. I think my heartbeat is erratic.

Golden Sunday, spent 5 days with J. Falling leaves, turning Autumn, reminds me of the Northeast. Always a longing for fall back there, the smell of burning, newly made cider, my father and his dogs readying themselves for duck hunting. My father cleaning guns in the basement, dogs whining to go, into the station wagon, duck blinds, decoy ducks, brothers cleaning ducks on the cellar stairs. 

J reminds me, 3 weeks from today I will be on a plane to Hong Kong, then Katmandu, half way around the world, egad. The pile of travel stuff grows in my bedroom, time to winnow, no I don't need to take 4 pairs of pants. The collapsible meditation bench worked out this morning and it only weighs 4 pounds. Time to get out of the US, collapsing all around us. 

I haven't written a thing in 5 days. Too distracted. 

I;m wearing my grandfather's ring right now, crazy gold double headed snake ring with rubies for eyes and diamonds down their backs. Ridiculous.  

I bought a new MAC for my office and it is so beautiful I want to live at my clinic so I can use it. What was I ever thinking all those years with ugly PCs? I bought one of those big screen flat things and it makes my laptop so...dinky. I could make the case for taking this one home and using my laptop at the office. And no wires and no spam and easy to read and soooooo pretty. 

I leave for India in 25 days. There is STILL a wedding ring mark on my finger. Maybe it's permanent. Gawd. India will erase it, I hope. An exorcism may be in order. Or a tattoo, some kind of flesh offering. I did leave the tip of my little finger in my gym bag, reached in to find my comb and a razor sliced it right off, ouch. I went to the desk and asked nicely for a bandaid while bleeding on the floor. Total biohazard. 

When I come back from my trip, Obama will be president and he will have inherited a huge crapola mess. I wonder where all the crooks go when they die? Are they recycled as bugs? slime mold? jello mold? permafrost? jujubes? Remember those? I pulled out fillings with jujubes, oh and turkish taffy too. I was an odd child, too much Greek and Roman mythology as a 6th grader. I read anything I could get my hands on. Medusa with the snakey hair, now that was a fantastic woman, turned mortals into salt if they looked at her. Yas.

My Beautiful Children

I have one pair of high heels and a black dress cut on the bias. Yas, yas. I am fine, so fine. Up to my elbows in the garden, dirt under my nails and clumped on my boots, you would never know what a vixen I am. But I am. Especially after it rains and the ground groans and gurgles open.

Version three:apologetica

take the orange moon across the room and mince why is it you have no feelings have they been excised along with your fur I regret the showers we took together you thought we were close after that but excuse me you have not seen anything yet excuse me for these messes I keep making in the laundry room trying to get the stains out I think they are blackberries but maybe I 'm bleeding and I just can't remember the blood was on my night dress how old fashioned with flowers and leaves but the blood was where my crotch should be perhaps I 've begun to bleed again like I did when I was twelve that would be ironic I think you call it after all this time to bleed for you in your pale skin I think you 're dead you sit there on the pale couch you don't say a thing while I eviscerate myself ok that's too strong an image all those intestines coil like snakes the blood on the floor in front of the picture of the girl in the blue dress I hear you I press my ear to the floor you haunt the cellar stairs you muffle your cries you don't know beans about sex well you won't learn it is too late to teach you where to put your hands your mouth your goddamn mouth

no, oh no. Thursday is workshop day and I have nothing to read, oh gawd. My brain is a dried up, squeezed up husk, a poor limp thing (not limpid thing, oh no, not that). It's too many babies, all at once, it's bad cats sleeping on my feet and sucking out my blood, the dog ate my homework, it's the root canal I had back in '84, it's the stolen wallet, the warm piss, the vanilla pudding.

Tonight I am going to lie on the couch and eat edemame for dinner. Maybe I'll have a glass of wine too. 4 births since Thursday. Gawd, I'm beat.

The moon is a grand hussy tonight, spilling her sassy self on the lake. We stand and gape.

I am getting to the heart, the bloody heart, close enough to smell the burning.

I took down the large beautiful Quan Yin scrolls in my bedroom. Well, they don't belong to me. A lot around here doesn't belong to me. Maybe nothing belongs to me--Zen moment--well, hogwash. The cats are mine and the quilt and the painting of the naked lady. I finally put up the naked lady because she is, well, naked and I can look at her whenever want.

Yesterday I was in therapy, just getting revved up, kleenix in hand and my pager went off. So off I charged, calls to the momma, my student, my partner. We arrived and the mom was laughing between contractions. She actually laughed until about an hour before the birth. Beautiful boy with gobs of black hair. Sometimes I wonder at the work I do, the birth thing. Women sweat and cry and push out babies and the babies are gorgeous and they don't usually scare us by not breathing so all is well. Not your average job.

I watched 'Au Revoir les Enfants', Louis Malle, the other night. Wow. I fogot what film can look like in the hands of an artist. Beautiful and bleak, almost monchromatic, a few bits of red and blue. The children all look pinched, hungry and pale. Now I have to watch his other films. Immediately.

Art saves me. Music and art and poetry. Even though I am not writing poetry right now. I am having trouble describing love; incandescent, liminal, lingual. I don't want to explain the mad tangle. Lenticular halo.

I have a confession. I listen to the sound track from Mama Mia everyday. I played a little Mozart this morning and then....Pierce Brosnan singing is cringe-inducing but I don't care. I know all the songs by heart now (not hard because they are so obvious-alone-flown, around-down, etc). Patti Smith they ain't. I think it is my version of valium. I need to listen to Meryl Streep singing Super Trouper.

My squirrely cat is behaving bizarrely, even for her. Maybe S.O.S. is getting to her. That song makes me jump up and down in the kitchen, making the dishes rattle. She is chasing a dish towel around like it is alive. She is flipping and skidding and pouncing. Usually she reserves this sort of behavior for living (or recently dead) rodents and birds.

One more typhoid pill to go. I haven't keeled over. And now I am protected for five years. I wonder where I will go after India. My bedroom is now a staging area for clothes and other stuff like tablets to treat water, sunscreen and bug goop, synthetic clothes that 'crush'. I know from being a runner and hiker, fake fabric smells gross after a healthy sweat so I am expecting to be quite fragrant. But maybe India herself is quite fragrant so I'll just blend in.

without you the stars
without you grasping
without you the antichrist
without you heavenly lava

India

I just took my second typhoid pill (one hour before meals, two hours after) and it came with a lot of warnings. *If you feel nausea, dizzyness, derangement, etc, you may be having an allergic reaction. (ha!). Drink with a whole glass of cool or lukewarm water. If you miss a pill, take as soon as you remember. Keep refrigerated. Take every other day*. Sheesh. Good for five years, well, thats a relief.

Everyone says I will get diarrhea. Great. So bring some anti-diarrheal meds. And some cipro for the respiratory infection I will get too. Plus India is hot, really really hot. But you gotta cover up because of mosquitoes and sunburn. Okey dokey. Don't drink the water, not even in the shower. If we get showers, that is. Laura said she took two bucket baths a day. Dump a bucket of water over your head twice a day to cool off. Take clothes that cover but are cool. With UV protection and insect repellent. How did anyone travel before REI, I ask you? I mean, John Muir climbing around on glaciers in wool pants and uncomfortable boots with a huge heavy box camera. Christ.

I got a catalogue yesterday for body parts. It's a fake body parts catalogue. You can get eyeballs and hearts, also budget eyeballs and giant eyeballs. You can deconstruct vaginas and testicles. And brains, my favorite. The brains run anywhere from $50 to $200. The expensive brains are sliced in pieces and fanned out, like you would arrange a cantalope for a picnic. Very pretty. There are a bunch of skeletons too. When I took Anatomy a million years ago, I got 100% on the bone exam. I would lie in bed next to my girlfriend and name all her bones. Maybe that's where I went wrong, the worst kind of objectification, "the shin bone connected to the ankle bone, etc".

I went to a wedding yesterday. It just made me feel sad. All those high expectations, all that alcohol. And a great view and some people I really love. I snuck out early because I couldn't take my bad self any longer. Sometimes I am better off being alone with my evil thoughts.

I once hid under my mother's bed while she sat on her hope chest waiting for me to come out so she could spank me. All the kids told me to ask her if it was OK to jump on the beds. So I went and stood in the doorway of the bathroom waiting to ask her. She was changing my retarded cousin and looked harrassed. Angry even. I decided to make an executive decision and ran back to the bedroom and said, yeah, it's OK. We were having a hell of a time, jumping from one bed to the other when she came in. Uh-oh. She was pretty mad and I was fingered, of course.

So I ran and hid. I think she was very patient. I looked at her shoes for a long time. I finally came out and got spanked for lying. Years later she asked if I was having it off with my boyfriend and I told the truth. So she threw me out of the house. Permanently.

Where is the justice in this? I now see that it involved beds amd jumping on them. I mean, teach your kids to tell the truth and punish them when they do? This might be the source of all my maladjustments. It is why I have futon beds. You can't jump on them. I also have a pathological fear of being homeless. I still imagine being able to put everything I own in a backpack. The cats would have a hard time being in there together. At this point the backpack would have to be pretty big. I would include the wooden Quan Yin, all the poetry books I own, my lucky penny, some underwear and extra glasses, in case I lost mine.

There is still a dent in my finger where my wedding ring used to be. It sucks.

Today I picked up a plate and dashed it to the floor. My therapist suggested this as a way to express my anger. It scared me and the cats. It was really loud. I was afraid to break any more dishes after the first one. When I get a new set of dishes, I am sure my old dishes will meet a similar fate. If you ever have an ex living directly under your living room ( with a new lover), you may feel like smashing dishes with a resounding crash, sending the cats skittering off to the basement.

I like my therapist right now. She has some good ideas. And she is keeping me from being self-destructive, well mostly.

I leave for Nepal and India in about 5 weeks. Egad. A big adventure. A friend wants me to ride an elephant for her. I' m not sure that is technically possible. She said elephant skin is tough and the hairs are thick and spiky.

Cool.

I'm way too tired to be up still. Only one thing. Without you, I can't wear the red shoes. My bathrobe is unappealing. I haven't the heart to break any dishes. I want to sleep on the floor.

Restore me to my former glory. I might have to wander the heath.