First thing, two stories that will tell you something/everything about me.
First, as I said yesterday, a stupid person could fix my mother's sling in seconds. My mother's neighbor's daughter did just that. In seconds. What I had finally done after an hour was all wrong and completely idiotic.
Second. My mother's 97 year old widowed neighbor has mice/rats/whatever in her garage and in her house. The neighbors all look after the neighborhood elders, and one of the women called a pest company to come out and rid the widow's house of them. This morning, when I got up to get my coffee, there was a mouse in the windowsill. Scared the shit out of me. I didn't know what to do. I watched it slide behind the curtain. I could still see its tail. I stood there for a long while thinking. What could I do? I looked around for something to catch him in. I could find nothing. Should I try to smash him, I wondered?
I woke my mother who was sleeping in the recliner. She told me to get the mouse. She handed me a towel. WTF? I said. You get it. No, no, you can't. I tried to open the curtain, but the little fucker moved and I jumped back and screamed like a. . . what am I allowed to compare that to any more? Well, like a little girl from the Bad Old Days. Yes, like a gay femme. Like someone with a syndrome. Like whatever. I was screaming and jumping worse than I would have imagined. But I guess I scared him. He ran behind the refrigerator. Good, I thought. Fuck this.
I'll get rat traps, tapes, and poison today. Electronic zappers. Whatever it takes. Why the fuck don't they have ray guns for this kind of crap?
No kidding, though, you should have seen me jump and dance. I didn't know I could reach those high notes. What a tonal range I just developed. I think my mother should be grateful, though. I might have pushed her in front of me toward the little beast if she had been near.
Fucking rodentia. What do you think YOU would have done?
I'll see his beady red eyes staring at me in my sleep tonight. The only good rodent is a dead rodent.
Yes, yes, it is true. I DO have a degree in zoology. But I have also already confessed I was the only one in my vertebrate zoology course who never captured anything on our weekly outings into the wilderness. Couldn't even pick up a lizard. I was the Felix Unger of the class.
Oh what my mother must think of me now.
One piece of news made me happy today. Gregory O'Connor lost his big MMA bout last night. I know, I know--McGregor. . . no. . . Conor McGregor. I am not sure. But he is the sort of thing that is wrong with the world right now. The entire UFC should be banned, not because the fighting is brutal, but because of the values they extol. They let shitheads act out to gin up money for fights. It is wrong. The last time I was this happy about a fight was when Ronda Rousey had her jaw broken and her eyes cut up. Sure, I'm a horrible human being, but not as bad as they are.
Still, we all know how it works. Arguments between smart guys and rough guys, I mean. We know how those go. You can make someone feel stupid right up until he breaks your nose. And he will. And you know it, so at some point you take your ball and go home. Only he keeps your ball, and you say you are going to report him to the proper authorities. But nothing happens except you lose your ball and have a broken nose. And suddenly, knowing all sorts of stuff about Euclid doesn't seem as important. Nor do important dates in history. Nor great quotes from the world of literature. And none of your smart friends seem likely to help you get your ball back. That is how arguments go.
Having grown up with evil, brutal, sicko criminals, I have always known that. It is why I didn't just read books. It is why I learned to box, went to gyms, got good at sports. A badass intellectual.
Did I tell you about the mouse?
Did I tell you about my mother's sling?
Yup. In the end, I'm just a cowardly idiot.
But that Gregor O'Connelly sure got his last night. Got his ass whupped.
This morning, though, I have to of wonder what either of those fighters would do if faced with the mouse. I can't even Google that one.
Oh yes, wildlife. Right now I have chipmunks. At least they are cute. When I hear the pitter-patter of little feet running across the living room ceiling every night I picture a chipmunk rather than something less aesthetic. Then there are the bats that make their way out of the attic at dusk and crawl back in somehow at dawn. Every so often I get a visit from the marten who has a bad habit of stashing his kills under the floor of the porch. The worst is when a skunk gets annoyed under the barn. Had to close the shop for that one once. No matter how badly I want to, I no longer feed the birds because of all the squirrels that it attracts...
ReplyDeleteDoes your mother like cats?
ReplyDeleteI dunno where I am posting this drivel anymore. Here there everywhere.
I enjoyed this post. Giggled. Smiled. Saw it.
Bravery manifests itself in all sort of ways in our lives - sometimes one can be called brave simply by admission of Not.
I mean, right? :) (I'm always on your side)
"Baudelaire was in possession not of genius, but of an extraordinarily "sensitive disposition" that enabled him to perceive, through a painful empathy, the character of an age."
T. has that bracketed in red, skinny marker. There's lots of that - in this book - little blood like marks.
Of course, my initial reaction is to go about the book and look only at what he thought was important enough to grab his ever present highlighter, sticky note, pen (often times dangling from his lips) and markup - make known.
He could think about a passage for a month or longer --some his whole life -- pull it out of his head when he needed it.
We had that in common. Pulling things out to help (or sometimes to confuse) a subject that was being discussed or debated. I guess it isn't really that unique. I guess when you are in Affinity with a person, Reality and Communication are easy. If you lower any of the sides of that triangle, however, all three are lowered.
I've been sucking on Tom Cruise's balls, ya know.
He'll be gone three years this October, T. Three years without a man I could call my own. My best friend. My teacher (I hope, always, that I taught him somethings too - mostly about love and kindness - caring - about how truly exceptional a person he was.)
I never really wanted to be anything except a lover/muse and mother. Those seemed like important enough jobs to me. I mean of course, I wanted to be an architect, a dancer, a teacher. But none seemed as important - to me.
Sometimes the pain becomes overwhelming. Sometimes he is a ghost. A dream. Remember I collected pictures of dead animals ? I wasn't allowed to bury him - I wonder if that plays into my mind ? Some Ritual of the Dead missing.
I know though, it is possible to love the dead and the living at the same time. Perhaps there is even a heightened - new sense of all good things in this life - because of the now dead.
When I was writing poems during April - and used the word "dead" - one of my poem friends always wrote in the comments "could you use passed on or another word?"
Did I say this already? Sorry. Dead is dead. The word is the right word.
I have been unhappy with some of the translations I've been reading of Mr. B's work. I've always had a bit of a fascination with translations.
So I'll leave an original:
L'Aube spirituelle
Quand chez les débauchés l'aube blanche et vermeille
Entre en société de l'Idéal rongeur,
Par l'opération d'un mystère vengeur
Dans la brute assoupie un ange se réveille.
Des Cieux Spirituels l'inaccessible azur,
Pour l'homme terrassé qui rêve encore et souffre,
S'ouvre et s'enfonce avec l'attirance du gouffre.
Ainsi, chère Déesse, Etre lucide et pur,
Sur les débris fumeux des stupides orgies
Ton souvenir plus clair, plus rose, plus charmant,
À mes yeux agrandis voltige incessamment.
Le soleil a noirci la flamme des bougies;
Ainsi, toujours vainqueur, ton fantôme est pareil,
Ame resplendissante, à l'immortel soleil!
— Charles Baudelaire
My cousin leaves in an hour or so. A week off and then my eldest niece and her boyfriend. Then a week off and then my brother and his family for two.
It will be August. Mom will be so much farther down the healing road.
You will be too.
x
Rats be rats. Not all cats will eat them or even chase them. The cats I've owned were largely afraid of them, though I don't know about the feral one around my house right now. I've probably fed her too much for her to be a mouser, but who knows? Cats be cats and rats be rats. And me. . . I'm a real pussy :)
ReplyDelete