september song
not especially cool, but crisp all the same - 64°F, 58°F dewpoint, winds from the west at 12 mph. oh yes and sunny. summer took a powder last week, peeped back in on sunday, and has since resumed her seat by the door, awaiting a fortuitous moment in which to make good her escape.
two years ago today my mother died. i still forget that it happened, sometime. we had really only just begun to find our way out of that awful estrangement, which i blame on everybody and everything and just wanted to leave behind, along with all the other weirdness i brought into the family during those late 90s. analysis is powerful but can only go so far. i think she may have also been softened by a sense of her mortality, as those bladder tumors proved more and more difficult to remove completely. heaven knows my own sense of mortality keeps me from holding onto anger, even though i don't believe my end is near. but still...the last time i saw her (before going to the hospital, that is) was the night of the big blackout, and we were going to north carolina the next morning, and had all the packing to do and no lights, and no gas in the van, and me going over to my folks' house to get some gasoline out of my dad's lawn mower so we could drive at least to ohio or somewhere where we could fill the blinkin' tank, and then sitting in their back room (the "addition") with the oil lamp burning on the round oak table, just the way it used to burn on that table when it was on the side porch of the old house, and my mom looking very tired and picking at something, i think it was cottage cheese, wondering whether the nurse would be able to come by tomorrow and drain the stent or whatever it was she had to do. and then us leaving the next morning, hoping for good news as we made our way south. i did call her from the beach, and we chatted for a while, and it was actually pleasant. but then coming home, and starting school, and i didn't really have a chance to get over there one week after the next and then i got the phone call. and it was all over very soon after that.
what would you have to do, exactly, to go through this world, to live the life of a human being, doing all the things human beings do when they live in this world, and be able to say to yourself that was a good job i did there, i did right by everybody, no one was hurt, it was "all good"? i don't think you can. it's okay; that's just what it means to live here. but it becomes hard sometimes, to keep from screaming out against the trivial, the tremendous pressure that wealth exerts on us to be trivial, or to indulge our hedonistic tendencies, or just to forget about the other human beings in this world, as if their lives were in any (significant) way different from ours. humph. in the corner of my eye i see a soapbox, but i will resist mounting it. i will just go on.
--->crunchy
two years ago today my mother died. i still forget that it happened, sometime. we had really only just begun to find our way out of that awful estrangement, which i blame on everybody and everything and just wanted to leave behind, along with all the other weirdness i brought into the family during those late 90s. analysis is powerful but can only go so far. i think she may have also been softened by a sense of her mortality, as those bladder tumors proved more and more difficult to remove completely. heaven knows my own sense of mortality keeps me from holding onto anger, even though i don't believe my end is near. but still...the last time i saw her (before going to the hospital, that is) was the night of the big blackout, and we were going to north carolina the next morning, and had all the packing to do and no lights, and no gas in the van, and me going over to my folks' house to get some gasoline out of my dad's lawn mower so we could drive at least to ohio or somewhere where we could fill the blinkin' tank, and then sitting in their back room (the "addition") with the oil lamp burning on the round oak table, just the way it used to burn on that table when it was on the side porch of the old house, and my mom looking very tired and picking at something, i think it was cottage cheese, wondering whether the nurse would be able to come by tomorrow and drain the stent or whatever it was she had to do. and then us leaving the next morning, hoping for good news as we made our way south. i did call her from the beach, and we chatted for a while, and it was actually pleasant. but then coming home, and starting school, and i didn't really have a chance to get over there one week after the next and then i got the phone call. and it was all over very soon after that.
what would you have to do, exactly, to go through this world, to live the life of a human being, doing all the things human beings do when they live in this world, and be able to say to yourself that was a good job i did there, i did right by everybody, no one was hurt, it was "all good"? i don't think you can. it's okay; that's just what it means to live here. but it becomes hard sometimes, to keep from screaming out against the trivial, the tremendous pressure that wealth exerts on us to be trivial, or to indulge our hedonistic tendencies, or just to forget about the other human beings in this world, as if their lives were in any (significant) way different from ours. humph. in the corner of my eye i see a soapbox, but i will resist mounting it. i will just go on.
--->crunchy
posted by cicadashell at
12:42 PM
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