I had totally forgotten about these emails until the two tweets above jogged my memory.This is a story about the nicest thing a non-relative has taken the time to do for one of my children without getting paid for it.
When Salinger was 7 she became plagued with nightmares about the…
Darklight.
Sunset, or thereabouts, when I was down in Lehi. I should probably crop it, remove the little bit of road that’s in the foreground, take out some of the grass that’s there so that the focus is more on the houses, the sun behind them—and yet, and yet.
Darklight
I
Early day. Grey the air.
Grey the boards of the house, the bench,
red the dialated potflower’s petals
blue the sky that will rend through
this fog.
Dark summer’s outer reaches:
thrown husk of a moon
sharpening
in the last dark blue.
I think of your eye
(dark the light
that washes into a deeper dark).
An eye, coming in closer.
Under the lens
lashes and veins grow huge
and huge the tear that washes out the eye,
the tear that clears the eye.
II
When heat leaves the walls at last
and the breeze comes
or seems to come, off water
or off the half-finished moon
her silver roughened by a darkblue rag
this is the ancient hour
between light and dark, work and rest
earthly tracks and star-trails
the last willed act of the day
and the night’s first dream
If you could have this hour
for the last hour of your life.
1988-1990
Adrienne Rich
This morning, around 7AM:
ME: Well, one of us has to be the responsible adult, and I think it ought to be you.
ZED: Nuh-uh! It should be you.
ME: Hm. Well. OK. But only 75% of the time.
ZED: 80.
ME: 78, with a 5% margin of error.
ZED: SOLD!
—-
The rabbit that I am house-sitting with is adorable; alas, he is also neurotic as Hell. The cute ones are always crazy. :(
Title ripped from, of course, Ray Bradbury, one of my old favorites. I’m not seventeen again (even if I wonder, sometimes, if the last few years—the ones with Brian—weren’t more than just a bad dream; they’re certainly about as memorable as a bad dream), and I don’t deal with what bothers me by locking myself in my room and listening to the same song on repeat, but. But.
I’ve been down today. Music helps. And so it’s music I’m giving out, because, well, if I’m listening to it, you might want to listen to it too. It’s good, if different from what I normally give out when people ask, “What do you listen to, anyway?”
Right now …
Emiliana Torrini, Birds. Lyrics here. “Show me, when it rains, the place you go to hide.” Sad. It’s not really about loss, but … the ending of a relationship. Change, and the singer doesn’t want it to end.
Anna Nalick, Breaking the Girl. It’s a cover, actually, of a Red Hot Chili Peppers song, but it’s sung by a girl, which changes the point of view somewhat, I think, and makes you more likely to sympathize with the unnamed man/woman the song is about.
Ani DiFranco, Both Hands. Lyrics here. About a failed relationship. Zed loves this song. It … always makes me cry, because I know why he loves it, and the lyrics are just brutal.
So there you are. Music. It’s how I cope. Playing and listening.
Some days, it’s all there is.
Thought about things in the car today, on the way back from the grocery store—specifically, how I spent so much of my life waiting for someone to say, “You are my best friend” and “You are important to me” and I’ve only just gotten that within the last year or so.
Everything in its own time, I suppose. I’m glad that it’s happened, even though it doesn’t mean as much to me now as it did then. It still matters; it’s just not as intensely—well, important. I know that I matter, now, and that if I were to disappear, there would be at least a handful of people that would go, “Hey, where’d Jenn go?”
With that said:
If you are reading this, right now, I want you to know that you are important to me. You matter to me, and you have made a difference in my life.
You matter. You are important.
Now if only I didn’t smell vaguely graham-cracker-y, my day would be going well.
Oh, right. Cooking.
My cooking “blog” (read: livejournal) is available at kth_cooks.
So, you know.
I am struck more and more by just what a gap there is in the friendships I have. I went to Riverview with Amanda/Melissa/Heather today, and I mentioned that it had been about a year since I came out to swing, because it was a better idea than killing myself.
… they didn’t know what I was talking about, because it was something I’d shared with Zed, not with them. Made me think.
I don’t willfully hide things, unless it’s something I’m not OK talking about. But I’m not as open as I thought I was, either, and … I don’t know how I feel about that.
I want to start writing poetry again. This is probably a really bad sign.
My prose is OK. My poetry, though …
There are a handful of things I have tried and failed at epically, that I know I should probably not try again. They are, in no particular order:
-Making my own pie crust (though I’ve gotten better with dough, so I probably will attempt this one)
-Crochet (just … don’t ask)
-Reading the entirety of The Fountainhead
-Writing poetry that does not make whomever reads it want to beat their head against a wall until blissful oblivion takes them and they forget that they ever read what I wrote.
Just, uh.
Yes. Bad idea. I only write it when I’m severely unhappy, which I’m not, this time around. I’m just feeling weirdly disconnected, and it seems like writing poetry is the best way to deal with that feeling.
(It’s not. I promise it’s not.)
