Winter Waxing Moon
A dull glaze coats my mind. Not all the time, but some. Forgetting things. Urgency softened, what to do next unclear. Forgot Deborah was doing the meditation at Jewish Studies. Slower at prepping for my Wednesday class. No painting. No writing. Drifting. Even with SeoAh and Murdoch’s energy infusing the house. Don’t like it, but it goes with the steady beat down of uncertainty, of traumas large and small. Yesterday, for example, I sat down in my reading chair, closed my eyes for just a minute. Woke up an hour and a half later. I’m getting good sleep at night.
We need good news unalloyed with hesitation or new symptoms. Though I feel Kate’s beginning to recover, she’s not gained weight. She had three days with nausea unrelated to eating. She sleeps several hours at night and naps often. I suppose chronic illness puts this patina on any couple after an extended time.
A friend from mussar has a vicious, rare degenerative disease called multiple systems atrophy, MSA, in its end stage. Another CBE friend is in the middle of seventeen weeks of chemo for cancer. Yet another is still recovering from a fall that broke her femur. Another CBE friend cared for her husband for several months until he died. We’re not alone. This is the present.
Even as I write this I can feel it lifting. Writing can be therapy, taking what’s inside, putting it outside where its outline clarifies, where it doesn’t rattle around contaminating the rest of the mind. There’s a stress element. There’s also an oh, I’ll just lean back and let things go past inertia. I can’t be on all the time. And, if I’m honest, I sometimes hit this slump without any outside influence.
Maybe it’s melancholy, a low grade version. Whatever it is, I’m tired of it. Exercise helps a lot and I’m back to that. Writing helps, but I’m stuck there right now. New novel trying to come to life; Jennie’s Dead still incomplete. Submissions stalled. Had the painting time with Ruth, then stopped. I feel guilty about this since SeoAh’s here taking off the cooking load.
Going to regain my verve. How’s not exactly clear, but I’m going to. Sorry for the Debbie downer tone here, but it’s where I am right now.
