Phil is supposed to be researching clip art to use on the website he’s building, but when I go into his studio with a question, he’s reading about how intestinal worms help women get pregnant and I exclaim Oh, my God, and he adds, soothingly, but only in the Amazon.
At Silver Sneakers yoga, Susan puts us through a series of standing poses—warrior 1, 2, reverse, triangle, and back to one—says, one more. When we complete that series, she says again, one more, and I mutter, softly, sweating, you lied. Susan hears me, says happily, I love to lie, completes her warrior 2 and adds, I’m a lawyer. Teaching yoga is what she likes to do in her retirement. Atonement, I suppose.
Our neighbor Christine the doctor is meeting us for a foray to Arash, a halal grocery, and emails me that it should be no problem to leave work early if no random shit happens. Random shit happening is what runs our lives. My blog was done by ten, I happily planned the rest of my day, and then it took three hours to post because of random WordPress malfunctioning.
At the store today, I feel in my jeans that I’ve gained weight and my face bears the breakout associated with eating too much junk. (Yes, my dears, such blemishes are not necessarily limited to adolescence.) I need to cut the sweets, go back to dessert only on the weekend, but at the checkout I pick up a candy bar anyway.
Months ago, I made the mistake of telling Christine to read the blog in which I read a poem to her cats whilst feeding them during one of her absences. (Link to said blog below.)
https://patriciadubrava.com/?cat=6&paged=7
Now that I am to feed them again for a week, she tells me Roo, her reclusive cat, likes Shakespeare and Rilke. Highbrow cat. I’ll recite the Shakespearean sonnet I know by heart, but otherwise, she’ll have to suffer through my own pitiful efforts, because I need to time them for a faculty reading.
Having fed them and cleaned the litter box, I settle on the couch in the room with afternoon light and arrange my timer and poems. Liat leaps into her carpeted cat tree by the window. Roo crouches on the floor in a patch of sun—close, but not too close. I set the timer and begin.
Poems by William Knott 1968
I open a book I haven’t opened in decades, The Naomi Poems by Saint Geraud, aka Bill Knott. When I flip through its pages, I see that in 1972 I drew tiny ink stars next to the poems I liked best, some love poems, some like this:
McNamara the businessman sits at his desk
and stamps ‘PAID” on the death-lists
A torn piece of tin foil attached to a shred of blue paper falls out. I recognize it immediately.Vietnam is long ago, as is my smoking, as is this bit of cigarette package, doing service as a bookmark. I’m swept by a sudden sensation of who I once was.
I take a walk and mean to meditate on a translation problem, but my mind skitters away from me. I catalog the names of people I knew 50 years ago who could be dying right now and might leave me money. I imagine getting a crisp envelope embossed with a law firm’s letterhead. That’s ridiculous, my sensible brain observes, who’s going to leave money to an old woman like you? Those people don’t remember you and you barely remember them. Never mind, the dreamy brain answers, let’s plan how we’re going to spend it.
It must be spring because the yard across the alley that has been abandoned all winter is now full of bare-chested young men playing corn hole, beers in hand, the rhythmical thud of bean bags landing on hollow wood, their shouts of winning or losing a presage of summer. I wonder if you can buy sound-proof windows?
We’re at Enoch’s doing taxes for maybe the 30th year. Enoch is crunching numbers and Phil says after this I can take him to dinner at Parisi’s and I retort, I take you? And I’m paying Enoch this year besides? Yes, he says, because I’m your intelligent, charming, good-looking husband and Enoch shakes his head, says you’re echandote el caldo, you know, pouring the soup over yourself and Phil says, Trump must be covered in noodles then.
At Parisi, Phil cleans his plate and I say you shouldn’t have eaten it all and by the time we get home he’s holding his gut and groaning. I have no sympathy, tell him it’s like the saying on Enoch’s desk calendar: experience enables you to recognize a mistake when you make it again.
Maybe the best fortune cookie fortune I ever got: No one is happy who does not think herself so.
Lovely post, Pat. Your jottings seem random but aren’t. I recognize this quality having just finished César Aira’s novel Ema, the Captive, which is full of random stuff that somehow illuminates both the other random stuff and non-random stuff. By Aira standards it’s a long book, 230 pages, and concludes with an Author’s Note that is nearly as strange as the book itself. In it he uses the term “hymenoptical,” which is far as I can tell is a neologism, to modify the word “oceans.” But what does it mean—”hymenoptical oceans”? The illumination, such as it is, is oblique, secretive, sexual, salty, and restless. Now, this describes Ema, the main character, but that feels almost accidental, like almost everything in the book. And yet it is involving, funny, fascinating stuff. Much like this post of yours.
Joe, thanks for this mini-review. Adding Ema to my reading list.
Hola dear Pat, Your blog always makes me smile, this post especially so. Many regards to Phil!
Have you tried the new Hershey’s Gold peanuts and pretzels? “When in disgrace with midriff and my thighs…” Sorry, Pat and William, I couldn’t resist.
I must say, your response is in the spirit of this post! No I haven’t, but have you seen that M & Ms now come in expresso flavor?
Kudos to a fellow determined diarist!