Fragments

Five rats in a rainbow hammock. Ammonia smell in the air-- cats are scratching at the door to the basement at night and keeping us awake, and we're trying various behaviour alteration strategies, including bad smells. Sigh.

Music helps.

I need to go jeans shopping soon.

I've never had a handle on the concept of friends, not in a steady sense. It's cyclic. Is that bad? I miss Trevor anyhow. I should talk to him.

Rat cages need cleaning now that the shower is working. I need to find a local non-rodent-infested source of Healthy Pet litter. Mark's should get it in for me, just need to call. Well, call when they're open.

I feel odd. I think I need to curl up with someone for an evening and just talk. Maybe that's why I'm missing Trevor. I don't have that many people in my life with whom I hold emotional conversations much right now-- good, because they're usually angsty, but sometimes I need it, I think.

I want to spend more time outside. Why do I type that instead of going out and doing it? It's cold out, and I'm suffering from a lack of initiative right now, or maybe a lack of motive force.

I feel like I retain my integrity now, though-- not in the moral sense, but in the sense that I'm doing what I, as an individual person, need to do.

I want to visit the ocean right now. Why wouldn't I? Not the seawall, somewhere I can dip my toes, maybe Wreck. But when? Who can walk around with me on Wreck, appreciative but sort of disconsolate, very early Saturday morning or maybe Sunday or Friday night?

I worry because there's not enough to worry about. It's sort of like an absent, half-noticed nagging at the corner of my brain.

It's wedding dress season, all the thrift stores have them out, but I haven't got a ton of money. I collect used wedding dresses, in a sort of offhand way. Who doesn't want wedding dresses, after all?

I watched Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind last night, of course, but it didn't feel romantic to me. It was like looking into a stranger's life; it didn't resonate. I remember when I thought that the relationships portrayed in that movie were about as good as you can do: bite your tongue, enjoy some parts, and feel crappy at others. It's possible to find a place where you're happy more or less all the time, though, and so settling for something that doesn't fit, even though there's a lot of love-- well, no, it's not for me. Love isn't the minimum requirement for a relationship. Compatibility is, of whatever sort.

Love as a feeling versus actions? I don't know, maybe that idea that if there is *enough* love then actions will follow in such a way as to cause compatibility is correct, but it feels more like it works the other way for me. Working together well in a sustained way nourishes love.

I want to clean the house, but I want to sleep more. Either way, I'm still typing.

I need to get the maternity cage for Sunday sometime soonish.

I don't think I'm going to say 'I love you' to someone I haven't known for awhile, for awhile. Feelings aside, I think it's the sustained actions that I'm going to need to act on. Time to leave the hippie flower kingdom and live in the real world in a couple of ways; I'm leaving for the hippie flower kingdom in other ways, so that's fine. Nothing will be lost thereby, maybe just unspoken for longer at the worst.

Cleaning the kitchen will give me a feeling of accomplishment without me having to go outside, and it's long overdue. The stovetop is *dusty* as well as dirty. Ugh.

Anti

My life isn't actually like this anymore. Still, I love Margaret Atwood, her poetry much more than her novels.

A Meal

We sit at a clean table
eating thoughts from clean plates

and see, there is my heart
germfree, and transparent as glass

and there is my brain, pure
as cold water in the china
bowl of my skull

and you are talking
with words that fall spare
on the ear like the metallic clink
of knife and fork.

Safety by all means;
so we eat and drink
remotely, so we pick
the abstract bone

but something is hiding
somewhere
in the scrubbed bare
cupboard of my body
flattening itself
against a shelf
and feeding
on other people's leavings

a furtive insect, sly and primitive
the necessary cockroach
in the flesh
that nests in dust.

It will sidle out
when the lights have all gone off
in this bright room
(and you can't
crush it in the dark then
my friend or search it out
with your mind's hands that smell
of insecticide and careful soap)

In spite of our famines
it keeps itself alive

: how it gorges on a few
unintentional
spilled crumbs of love

by Margaret Atwood