Electric Counterpart” by Pat Metheny, “Smooth Jazz” by Roy Ayers, and “Everybody’s gotta Learn Sometime” by Beck.
Dedicated to my baby girl, now in Heaven with my Big Sis
November 7, 2010 – October 1, 2022
I awoke this morning with a song in my head, and quickly began singing it to myself. It was the song, “Everybody’s Gotta Learn Sometime” by Beck. For some reason I had a heavy heart, feeling contemplative, yet longing to extricate myself from this sorrow. I realized it was one week since my sister’s (MY) dog, Lela died. How can one miss so much a dog so loved, yet such an annoying little pet. She would plop herself down wherever she wanted, and we would have to say rather loudly, “Excuse me,” and then she would move. No matter where I went, she wanted to follow then plop herself on my feet rendering me frozen, unable to move again, unless I called out, “Lela, I gotta get up!” She would stand and lean on my lap growling at times, and I didn’t quite get it until suddenly I checked her water and she was out! Or if she had to go outdoors to do business, she would do the same… All these things now… I miss terribly. I knew she was getting older, but she was left to me from my eldest sister, who I loved so much and also miss terribly. My sister died the day after Christmas, 2018. Still, I miss her awful. Will I feel the same about Lela every time I remember Saturday, October 1, 2022? I don’t know…probably.
I go to the computer keyboard in my private room, after setting my first words here. I am listening to a lot of my music, and planning—yes, PLANNING. What am I planning? I have yet to discover this subtle manifestation of events crawling out of me, but I sense an upheaval in the dead of night. You would think, at this time in my life, that energetic youth is over, as I am, definitely, at the winter of my years. But after having gone through what most people go through in their mid-years; after losing everything financially, and having to start ALL OVER AGAIN; after suffering such a depression that I don’t know why I’m still standing, there is this resurging of life coming on, and I feel a “do over” creeping up my spine.
I don’t know what that feeling entails. I only know that there is a lot of creative energy in me I have kept quiet for so long, wanting to exercise its power. I don’t know what to expect just yet, but something—so I contemplate: what is going on inside me? I lose my baby girl, Lela, I cry heavily like a crazy person, and then a week goes by and I’m feeling a resurge of life somehow. Perhaps my sister and HER dog are happy together again, and I can try and be happy too, even though I miss both of them terribly.
Let me assess my inventory.
1) I am writing a few novels which I’ve been writing all my life. I have never been sure enough, however, where they go in the scheme of things, or if I have any skill at all, or if they are worthy of worldly exposure. Frankly I still don’t know where they will be taken. But they suddenly beckon for me to finish… This is not the problem, though. They beckon me to finish in a way that is foreign to me, and it frightens me to think that my characters know something about me, better than I know about myself, that I MUST do in order to achieve success in this department.
2) I have so many short stories I’ve been wanting to edit and I do a little at a time. Also, my poems. Too many of them are “dark.” I think because I feel everything too deeply, example? Lela. My sister. Frida, my Chihuahua that was hit by a car right in front of me. Edison, my baby Yorkie boy, I bought him when my daughter began her estrangement toward me. There are so many other events and miseries, but I’ll not burden you with them all.
I’ve wanted to add some of those poems I’ve kept inside me that celebrate life–and there are some inside me, believe me. The bottom line here, though, is similar to the novels. All the themes, characters, and allusions and symbols and personifications, et. al, well……like a crowd of teen-agers, they call me out to just let myself go, and fall on them, as they promise to “catch me.”
3) I’ve been becoming more and more aged and physically I am faltering physically on a gradual pace, but assuredly it is showing me signs to the soft end of my existence nonetheless. Yet, there is something in me that tells me that I am in control of this, and I can turn it around if I stop thinking about joining all my family and pets in Heaven, but to stop falling into oblivion, specifically with my old soulful healing power of music and singing. I love music, and I love to sing, or at least I did. I might say, I sense a “power” beckoning once more to me: “Come on, stop holding your breath, stop suffocating yourself, and let out those notes that are uniquely your own sound. Sing-OUT LOUD!
4) The hardest thing to let go is the need to get away from it all. It isn’t anyone’s fault. They love me as a particular person whom they have known all of their lives. But events have changed me inside, ever since I’ve gone through so many losses. All people go through losses, but it occurs to me that I become more and more wounded by the loss of yet one more person or animal I love. It is this phenomenon that has wreaked havoc on my confidence and identity that I held to most of my life because I can not trust when or where I might break down in sorrow; I cannot trust myself not to lash out at innocent bystanders because I feel a sense of anger for those people and because of my loss of them.
So. I’ve changed and I need to test who this “different person” is. Needless to say, I am here, thinking aloud on the BLOG, wondering how all of this will occur. But…What stops me is always the same thing…. I mentioned “the winter of my years,” right?
Well, I keep attempting to find work, since I have lost all my property, and it may be a product of traumatic guilt and stress for losing everything I hoped to leave to my children. I am no longer capable of telling you what kind of “retirement” I ever will have, as I lost my real estate to the banks, and those two houses were my retirement and my childrens’ estate. I’ve exhausted everything….I’m in limbo at present.
So again, isn’t this the best time for me to finish the writing I’ve accumulated? Well, yes, but….You see, with all that has happened in the past two and a half years I am somewhat in a psychological slump that feels like a concrete tomb. I think it is called “depression.” I had been unable to believe I could rise from this concrete of depression, and it seemed to be hardening each day as I drew a shallow breath within it. I think THIS is the “THING” that is happening. I am going to be “breaking out” of this cement soon. How, I’m not yet sure.
I feel it must be done soon, for I really don’t know how long I will be around. If you pray, save a prayer for me(https://youtu.be/6Uxc9eFcZyM). It’s overwhelming to imagine the job ahead of me, my novel(s), and the many, many things I have to leave behind before I go, for this now is what I leave for my children as my only estate. And as the poet whispers in my ear: I have miles and miles to go before I sleep (Robert Frost, June 1922).
THE PLOT THICKENS 