I am not unfortunate. I am not broken, not beaten, not worn out, not depressed nor depressive. I am blessed and I know it and I count the ways. Sometimes things hurt, sometimes they strain and crack and fray, but they can be repaired, put back together. Being, in general, one of the stupid spoiled and happy ones, I pull myself together. Just sometimes, the effort of doing so leaves me tired, is all.
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Process notes for the poems are up at Qarrtsiluni. Rather long, but we enjoyed ourselves.
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Saved Nut #5
Waldo. The kind of rather confessional, from-the-heart narrative I have ended up not doing much of, mostly because I quickly realised I didn't have that much of interest to confess. But it was one of those times when I felt I had said just what I wanted to say in the way I wanted to say it, without being too long about it. Only edited for a bit of punctuation and grammar. Cutting this old stuff is harder than I thought, largely because it's difficult for the person writing now to intervene with the person writing then. The act of writing in itself changes one. Sometimes.
13 comments:
The act of writing changes one. Yes.
Cleanses one, too.
Yes, it's tough trying to change what we were into what we think we are now. Writing manages it sometimes - not always.
Waldo could be George, our ginger tom who had to be put down at 19. I'm not a connoisseur of cats but I don't believe I've ever met a more self-regarding animal. Never mind all that distant, hold-the-humans-at-arms-length stuff, George was demonstrably vain and as a result was never able to achieve that level of superiority which leaves the cat's owner ga-ga with admiration.
The subject of castration is referred to but - as usual - euphemistically, although perhaps you compensate for this with your phrase referring to his complete state. Even writing this I am experiencing an Alka-Seltzer sensation you know where. I would love to know what the percentage breakdown is between cats delivered to the vet for this operation by male humans or by females. Why do I instinctively believe the figure is larger in the latter case?
The confession. If I suggest that there seems to be a little fibbing here it's meant as a compliment, albeit a somewhat left-handed one. And by fibbing I mean sinning by omission. You have a tendency to be hard on yourself and here you are very hard. I realise you didn't set out to provide a balanced description of both sides of the relationship but as Mills and Boon tells us, it takes two to fail to tango. I suspect that if you set out to tell this story now, it would be a very different. The key is surely the fact that cutting this piece was harder than you thought. Nevertheless, I've got to hand it to you: it's raw meat.
So much of your "Waldo" post resonates with me, Lucy.
Love the watermill.
The millwheel, rather :)
The friends I am fondest of all have at least one gooey morass in their "instamatic" pasts; the experiences we've shared have helped me to avoid any further pitchy pitfall potential. No millstones. Life lived that way is nicer.
I had not read "Waldo" before. The story will dwell with me for some time, as will the photo of that gorgeous cat.
I found the piece on "Waldo" very moving. I do understand why you don't want to dwell in the confessional very often - and I struggle with those lines, too - but you have become so interesting and dear to me (if you don't mind me saying that), and it was illuminating to hear something more about your past and how you became what you are now.
I wrote a poem the other day, and have thought of posting it, but it "confesses" too much I'm afraid. I'm sure that we have all behaved badly and loved inappropriately at times - whether the "object" has been another person, or even a pet.
It seems a melancholy season at the moment -- even for those who know themselves to be safe, spoiled and more-or-less happy.
Oh the power of photos to haul up emotions that we thought were well and truly stoppered up. I still weep over a cracked picture of my bearded collie taken when I was a teenager, my family imploded shortly afterwards, which meant losing her and home.
I recognise the remorse and guilt you feel when you have to leave something you love behind. New loves are wonderful, but they can't cancel out the old ones.
Lee said it for me!
{{{{Lucy}}}}
Neck And Neck
When I got sober,
just a couple months of dry,
getting on the ground,
I was still looking for work.
Our ginger cat,
we called him Godot
or we called him The Best Cat
In The World, he died
over a few days
of kidney failure. One day
I held him. Springtime
in the sun. He smiled.
Grief and joy raced neck and neck.
Then I put him down.
I think that it is amazing that you feel able to edit old pieces. I could not do that. I think once I press publish that is it - the piece is an entity in itself, represents the moment I wrote it and that is that. Strange really. As you say the act of writing does change one and the way one thinks/deals with what one has written. I would need to write again about the same thing I think from my new standpoint.
You are right about remorse. That was how it was for me too - it nagged and nagged at me, wrecked my time and then I just shook it off almost with impatience and irritation.
It is hard I think to focus on the "lucky ones" thing. I struggle to do so. I do empathise with others, see their lives are harder but at the end of the day the only pain I can feel is mine, and so things that are not tragic can feel that way in comparison to other things in my own life despite the fact they would not be that way for someone with a tougher life.
Thanks everyone.
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