Art is the means we have of undoing the damage of haste. It's what everything else isn't. -T. Roethke

This is a quote I love.  It's one I could live my life by, for.

I think it's true.

On another note - a Sept 17th note - I couldn't keep my hands out of the dirt today.  Everything was covered in dirt today.  Mostly me.  I guess.  I thought it was planting day.  Wondered at my mood, realized later why I was so dark.  It's burial day and, for awhile, the last of the dark anniversaries.  Not doing so well today, for a few reasons.  That is one.  "The only thing that matters, the only thing that lasts."  (quote out of context, but echoing.)  Nothing was ever harder: the 6th to the 17th.  That searing, grim, endless, morbid suspension.   A wait to get her buried.  Em's birthday needed to be celebrated -did, in between.  Necklace with a world on it from her mommy.  Poor girl.  and Poor girl.  and Poor girls.  Then another week.  So long.  Too, too, too long above ground, like that.  I'm still in Central Park, clutching the fence at her resevoir, looking at that hard white indifferent truth of a moon, feeling like the whole of it was trying to pass out of my chest.  

Or the big, wooden screw above my heart, tightening.  Feel it still tonight.  Will I never, ever heal?

Mom called the other day, no anniversary, just in searing sobs and I tried so hard to not understand, though our comraderie on this is complete.  We both know everything.  Went through everything, or almost, together.  She, in fact, had it worse.  And yet earlier in New York: the Second Chapter.  In Hell's Kitchen.  Well...

Another quote then, from Wendell Berry: “I don't believe that grief passes away. It has its time and place forever. More time is added to it; it becomes a story within a story. But grief and griever alike endure.” 

Enduring then.

And then, well, ... some disappointment. Bummin' me.

And then still just reeling from the most outrageous bill of all time.

So okay.  

Worked my ass of today.  I suppose that's good.  Quiet as a mouse.  Blistered hands.  Will go sit in my  little hot tub and bob for a bit.  Now, of course, I need that moon.

Art is the means we have of undoing the damage of haste...  I'll think about that a bit more instead of all this, without apology for redirecting seriousness to seriousness.  It's just that kind of day.

Hopefully, true things matter.

Just learned that,

"Some Japanese [don't see a man in the moon but] a rice-cake-making rabbit."   ... ??

de Vinder Viper

okay.  so who the hell has been raking outside my door for the past half an hour?  I'm kinda scared to look.   It's ten thirty at night.  Reminds me of the ghost story that went on for ever and EVER when we were little in which Devinderviper would call on the phone and say slowly, menacingly, "I am Devin Derviper..  Scary pause.   I am half a mile away", ""I am DevinderVI-per.  - silence - breathing -  I am at the end of your block."  Two houses away. At the house next door.  I can s e e you.  Breathing.  Then, at our peak of little girl terror, -- a pounding at the door and we'd clutch one another and scream and screw up our courage and bravely jerk open the door to face our murderer and some little boy would be there saying in a dumb/scary German accent:  I am der Vinder Viper and I've come to vipe der vinders.  

anyway.  who the hell is raking?  raking closer? raking my steps? raking my porch?
I can't think of a super-dumb possibility so I'll just stay inside and get freaked out.

A day of minor freaking out, but nothing happening.  Running on the railroad trestle.  Three people telling me - two on the way in, one on the way out.:  oh no no don't go/ you shouldn't have gone back there, oh.  There are homeless people back there.  oh. You'll get hit by a train.  (train did come by.  very cool. loud and bitchin' and industrial - not too close.  un peu.  just fun).  Anyway.  as soon as I was back in 'civilized' 'safe-ville' with people with homes and pets, some 8" 'dog" went after my ankles like my socks were cats sleeping on its dog dish.  ~~Jesus!  Little Savage!!

Later - post Chiropractor head snapping (he: don't move your head unnecessarily for a few hours) the SUV right next to me squealed on its brakes, skidding and squealing and Christ it was close, but I looked straight ahead, not wanting to see whatever was clearly going to take me out or, if I survived, make my neck worse.

okay.  nutthin'

other cute things today: the darling little boy (8ish)  with mad-crazy curly brown wiggly-all-over hair alone in the chiropractor's office, his mom next door.  I wasn't supposed to move and other patients were resting next door, so I whispered, "You have great hair" without looking at him.  Silence.  Tick.  Tick.  . . . little whisper:  "I like your dress."

Just cute.

An otherwise forgettable day.  The raking has stopped.  If someone knocks on the door, I'll scream!

oh my.

an actual photo of Saturn in front of the sun.  how gorgeous.