vendredi, juillet 28, 2006

Into the Maelstrom

[my grandmother died this morning.]

In an email a friend mentioned striving to become an "emotional jedi", and, though my Star Wars theory is weak at best, I assume he was alluding to one's ability to slide through the wreckage of daily life without losing a sense of purpose and the all important zen.

I am not sliding right now. Sliding implies the pull of gravity and the potential for loss of control. I glide. Like an astronaut looking out the shuttle window and gently drifting head first into the sink. I think there never was any control, therefore the loss of it is a non-event.

I glide through my days the way I used to effortlessly consume
choose your own adventure stories: read for a while, come to the page where I had to choose to one of two or three options, choose one arbitrarily, continue, come to the end of the story, read another. My day to day choices seem unimportant; I will feel exactly the same if I go out for beer with a friend as if I lay on the couch and watched reality television programs. Zero emotional range.

Emotional Jedi. Teflon girl. Ice princess.

Everything is gray, and not in the nuanced, between-black-and-white sort of way. Gray in the whispery-November-stalks-of-shasta-daisies way.

But shasta daisies are perennials. And below the gray something simmers. Nothing else explains my fascination with Grey's Anatomy, the hospital drama that I've been watching on DVD. I am pretty sure that my mum and brother think I am deranged: having spent the better part of a month in the ICU of various hospitals, and having watched my father die in one, we were part of that drama, albeit with worse lighting. I think I watch to make sure that parts of me still hurt. To make sure that I haven't lost myself completely. To remind myself that it wasn't all a dream. Twisting the knives so I can bleed again.

I wonder: how long will this numbness last?
How bad will it be when I start to feel again?

jeudi, juillet 20, 2006

concentration

I flew back home a month ago today. Looking back, it seems like years since I left the south of France, and the blink of a hummingbird's eye since life was "normal". The absence of my father continually surprises me, blindsides me while I set the table for four.

Thinking is the worst. Not constructive list-of-things-to-do-today thinking, but the idle musing that happens while one is doing something else. I stay awake watching banal television until I am so exhausted that I fall asleep immediately. The before sleeping time terrifies me.

To fill my mind I have started knitting again. Because knitting falls into the category of things I can do and think about other things at the same time, I have chosen a complicated fair isle pattern knitted in the round. Should keep my mind occupied for a few hours a day at least.

mardi, juillet 18, 2006

jeudi, juillet 13, 2006

dimanche, juillet 02, 2006

and to dust you will return

Again, it is early and the house is quiet.

My dad died on Monday, six days ago.

It has been a tiring and busy week-the service and wake are today- and I have been on "Type A Personality Autopilot" for most of the time. That looks like me at my most efficient but with the air of zombie and no short term memory.

There is so much I could write about that has been funny or uplifting, but right now I can't.

It's going to be a long day today.