And speaking of self-absorption, these are the blog bits I keyboarded upstairs early yesterday morning:

Yesterday I missed my mother for the first time since she died in August 1999. I've been sneaking up on it, this missing. I've caught sight of its long dark garment slipping around emotional corners, but I couldn't catch up to it, couldn't feel it. And then yesterday I was walking down the street and there it was, my sorrow, mushrooming up behind my sternum like a silk-brocaded pillow with tears at the fringes, and immediately I remembered how special our relationship once had been and how special she once was, and I knew how utterly she was gone from my life, and for the first time I felt loss. She was so angry on her bed of death. She spurned my touch, rejected my love. And my own anger in losing that last potential connection prevented my bereavement when she finally passed. I cut myself off from it. You are not forgiven this time. And during the May flood here, when the high water rushed through with such force, I stood on the footbridge down the way and finally poured out her ashes from the gray particle-board box, and those of my grandmother from the small brass one, and I watched them rage away from me. Now unexpectedly and almost involuntarily I have let go my petty angers. I embrace the fierce confused spirits of my foremothers and know them in my heart.

I miss my mom. A lot.

I didn't do any of the things I said I'd do yesterday. My pay in the mail, hoped for on Thursday but fully expected by Friday, was not there. We drove to town anyway to see whether the missing half of my big expensive order of remainders had finally arrived. And there it was, its bashed and torn box all strapped together with nylon bands with a note of apology from the postal service for having damaged my stuff—except it wasn't just damaged but rather missing most of the books, which must have spilled out across the concrete at the San Francisco Bulk Mail Center (issuers of the apology) and been gathered up partially, and somehow a book I never ordered and I don't even think is in the catalog (Confessions of a Street Junkie) was included among them, and anyway I'm just so upset about it. It was a lot of money to risk and now I get why people pay the extra to ship by UPS. I don't know whether Daedalus will make good on the missing books; they box things so shoddily, they should (but they were closed for the long weekend when I phoned their customer service). As it stands, between the missing items and the ones that were squished in transit, instead of making a huge profit I will just break even, maybe.

This must not stand.

I've been beefing up the eBay used laptop (Powerbook G3 Lombard) the UPS guy brought me yesterday all the way out here. I purchased it for the shop using a credit card some unwise person granted me two weeks ago (acquiring a laptop computer for the shop was the reason I applied for the card in the first place). Now I must pin down some good book inventory software.

It rained all night here. When I took Ranger out to his pen this morning I found the drops had frozen on the fence wires. Lovely in their stillness refracting and amplifying the blue light before dawn.

Back to today. I read the NYTimes Sunday Book Review section in bed this morning, on the aforementioned Powerbook. More coincidences, smaller and more personal: The Joan Didion book on her ordeal with grief following her husband's death; the review mentioned that her only child died as well, this past summer, just before the book was printed. Such pain. I filled with it. And a review of Joyce Carol Oates's new novel Missing Mom, in which a 30-something daughter explores the seemingly insignificant life of her dead mother, a smiling woman who had obliterated herself in the course of a lifetime spent loving others.

So we got off to a very somber start even at a personal level, in addition to our distress on behalf of so many injured and bereaved at once all over the planet. I ritually purified my spirit and form with the blessing and gift of hot running water, C-Weed soap, and rosemary shampoo. Tea today was Keemun black. I cut a thick slice from an enormous loaf of homemade bread for toast. And then I went out into the bright morning and hung laundry on the line—I confess, not really a clothesline at all but the long stretch of 6-foot sheepfencing that encloses the garden space. The air is sweet and clean and crisp. There is a good dry breeze. While I pinned up sweaters and Levis and pajama parts, my brother in his eagle cap carried water up from the creek in plastic 1-gallon bottles. We have many of them, and so this requires many trips. This is a new responsibility for him, and he feels proud about it every day. I water the herbs in the greenhouse with the cold water he brings me, and the house plants, and Gunter, who needs a sort of pool to sit in in order to drink. I felt so good out in the wind, with the wet clothes flapping on the fence, and I wanted to smile and wave hi to someone (besides Lorenzo), so I made a little film of me looking at you and wishing you were here. (Except it's a sideways movie because I stood the camera on end, and so you'll have to lean left to watch it.) I plan to post little silent video clips over at Blogger from the DSL computer. Stay tuned.
2:49:37 PM    comment []  trackback []  

I apologize for my seeming indifference. I am not that callous, I hope.
12:10:05 AM    comment []  trackback []