Dark Magic

I was terrible Saturday.  I haven't been or felt that way for many, many years.  Perhaps decades.  It was a most beautiful day, light and pleasant, and I was miserable.  I have become paranoid about most things now and weak of mind and spirit.  It is a dangerous malaise that has befallen me, and I am beginning to think that dark magic is at the root of it.  I don't believe in such nonsense intellectually, but experientially things are different.  Can all of these mishaps and disasters coalescing and coinciding be mere circumstance?  I am definitely becoming paranoid in my old age, weak and useless at most things, inept at the rest.  Now that my art has been taken from me, what is left?  Oh, I am still allowed to read from time to time, but not undisturbed.  There is a wickedness that seeks to normalize me.  It is difficult to resist.

Today, Sunday, I give in to coffee and pumpkin bread.  I may try a weak rebellion.  I want to make something badly.  There will, of course, be the usual dinner with mother that has been at her house the past two weeks due to my unfortunate circumstances, but it is my turn once again tonight.  That is "making something, but that is not what I mean at all.  Useless beauty or a jolt of the hideous, nothing utilitarian even if the meal is fancied and tasty.

I was to go to NYC next week.  That has been cancelled, of course.  Life is reduced the the confines of a house much in need of work.  It is what I have just now, the factory, the domestic routine, and the duties of the property.

I will walk in a bit and then go to brunch.  I will laugh off my troubles with ironic aplomb, then come home to do a little bit here and there.  Remember this, you who are luxuriating in your ease, enjoying a Sunday's leisure.  I was once like you, happy and confident and in possession of modicum of creative force.  I will remember it, too.