Sunday, July 14, 2013

It's been a terrible day. Terrible. It's been a hateful day. I have hated everything. I have hated my state and my species and our seemingly endless cruelty and racism. I hated the heat and my sweating as I worked outside. I have hated whatever-the-politically-correct name for Wandering Jew is as I pulled it and pulled it and pulled it. Tradescantia Pendula is the Latin name. I felt like a complete idiot, wearing myself out over those frail, trailing tendrils when part of my yard looks like this.


Do you see the black earth which the falling of the tree dug up?


The view from the east side. 


That cracked limb is as big around as a man.

I felt like a woman turning her stove burner off when most of her house was engulfed in flames.
I hated that.

I took the trash and hated the small meanness of everyday life and the cheap goods we acquire and cast off, the stinking mounds of garbage we produce. I did the laundry and washed the dishes and hated the repetition of the incessant necessary tasks. I hated that I didn't just get in my car and drive to a river, a beach, a movie. I hated that I am fat, that I am stuck, that I can't write anymore, that I don't even reach out and call someone. I hated the green beans which are growing too large to eat which are growing up too far for me to pick. I hated the man who pulled into the yard and got out of his van and asked if I knew who owned the abandoned house down the road and I hated that I felt as mean as a junk yard dog at his intrusion and as smelly and as ugly as one too and I hated that I wanted him to be some sort of proselytizing Christian so that I could unleash some of my meanness and ugliness on him. 

I am hating that my dogs are so old and blind that they can't find their way out the door I am holding open for them to go out to pee and poop. They stand stupidly beside it and I have to direct them and I know this is only going to get worse. I hate that every morning when I get up I wish that they would just be dead and I hate that the thought that this is going to happen. 

I am hating my face and the way this dermatological gel is making small lesions on it, open and weeping. What I am hating even more than that is the fact that the way it looks doesn't even bother me so much- who cares what I look like? Not me. Obviously. 

I hated that I spent hours online looking at places to stay in Cozumel for a mythological vacation, all of them saying, "Luxurious!" and I don't give a shit about luxurious, just a room with a bed and a toilet and a shower and a balcony to watch the sunset but of course, there are no places like that anymore because if you have the balcony and the sunset, there is the belief that you must have luxury too and so everything costs a pretty penny and I remember when we could stay for $49 a night at what is now an all-inclusive resort and it was downtown and on the water and perfect and I was young and thin and would always buy new silk underwear to take with me and I felt like a goddess, a beloved disciple and worshipper of Ixchel who blessed me with love and children and her warm waters and moonlight and words. 

I have hated growing older today and meaner and unloving in my thoughts and ungrateful too. 

I hated myself and that is mainly the problem- I am hating myself. Of course. 

Well. One does have these days. Dark and hateful and terrible. 

And you know what? I don't have a but oh...things will get better. 
Of course things will get better or maybe they won't and on days like this it doesn't even matter. 

Mr. Moon is on his way home from Georgia. He got his truck stuck in the mud, the red rusty mud of the woods of Georgia and it took him three hours to pull it out and it'll take him three hours to get home and he sent me a text and said, "Don't wait supper," and I wrote him back and said, "I'll tell the cook."

And so I shall become the cook now and make a meat loaf with ground venison and chopped portobellos and peppers and onions. I will snap green beans and cook them with potatoes for the third day in a row and I'm not tired of them yet and I love meat loaf like nobody's business, especially with bacon on top and I apologize to any of you vegetarians out there, I really do, but I cannot, no matter how much I wish I could, hate meat. 

It's raining again, a little bit, and I get the boys tomorrow for a little while and I cannot hate the rain and I cannot be hateful around my grandsons. Not ever, ever, ever. Please dear god, not ever. 

The world goes on and it does not care whether I hate how it goes or not. There is comfort in that. Yes, I may be turning off the burner when the house is in flames, I may be pulling weeds when a tree has fallen and plowed up the ground, I may be old and ugly and fat and without any measure of redemption and the world just does not give a shit one way or the other. It will continue its course of vast movement and meaning which I cannot begin to grasp. 

And there is meatloaf. With bacon on top. 

On some days I bless and on some days I curse and there is no day on which I cannot cook. 

Yours truly...Ms. Moon




17 comments:

  1. I am eating a delicious lunch of chicken cooked in yogurt and red curry over rice, with a perfectly ripe avocado as a side dish, and I am not hating a bit of it. I think you must have borrowed all my hatred today.

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  2. "My formula for living is quite simple. I get up in the morning and I go to bed at night. In between, I occupy myself as best I can."


    ~ Cary Grant

    About it for me too....

    I'm going to add to your hate list. I hate it when my 17 year old cat shits beside the litter box. He potties in squirts. I hate it. very much.

    I've tried to escape that image for hours because the litter box is in the laundry room which is just down a step from the refrigerator where the Klondike bars are. sugar free and reeeeally good

    No need to tell you chin up ol thing… because you will work it out... or not. we all do or not. and I do know what you mean by .. please don't let me hate in front of my g'babies…

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  3. I don't feel hate today but more sadness. I haven't done much of anything--not motivated to do anything much. Maybe I just needed a day to look at old photo albums which show Mom and Pop when they were first married and all beautiful/handsome. And the snow was as tall as Mr. Moon in Port Jefferson then. And all the people in those photos are dead. Every single one. I didn't need to go down that trail today but I did. And now I'm going to go take a shower and go for a walk.

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  4. Mr. Downtown- Well, I would gladly take all your hate if that means you get a lovely, hate-less day. I just held an avocado in my hand that I bought on Thursday and deemed it ripe. Maybe things will improve. I love you, baby.

    Carolyn- Great Cary Grant quote. As to the rest- ummm...I could have lived without that image but now I have it and yes, I am hating it.

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  5. Syd- Well, sadness/hate. There is a fine line. I hope your walk brings you peace. I really do.

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  6. I had a bill collector call a lady that I used as a reference a LONG time ago. I just needed a reference. Didn't think the collector would call her because I was ignoring their calls. Well...now this lady knows I'm behind on a bill simply because the collector left a message in her cell. I'm beyond embarrassed, angry, and mortified!! But there are worse things going on in the world at this moment. Ms Moon I wished u lived near by. I'd give u a HUG & wine cooler.

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  7. Mary go for it woman. All days are not precious and perfect and photo op adorable for anyone. I adore your hatey days and one thing I love about you is that you are so completely human.

    ps. We are connected to trees deep in our bodies those who live with and love them. I can imagine the pain that came with the noise of the giant branch breaking. The tree had something to say and you were its conduit. I know it sounds like woowoo horse shit but I believe it with my whole heart.

    rebecca
    Rebecca

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  8. Angie- Lord. That would suck. I'm sorry. And honey, I'd take the hug but wine coolers are not my friends. I'm allergic to wine. Luckily, beer and hard liquor are A-Okay with me.

    Darling Rebecca- I'm so fucking human I'm an ape. Without the ability to make a nest every night. I love you. And yes, you are exactly right about that tree. God dammit. Live oaks live for six hundred years, I've been told. Two hundred to grow, two hundred to live and two hundred to die. This one is in the process of dying and I heard its scream of submission to time and gravity. I will never forget it.

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  9. Fucking Sundays, MM. Fucking, fucking Sundays.

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  10. Ah Mary. The best that can be said is that today is over. Monday is almost here. I love you woman.

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  11. Rabid,feral, mean dripping hate.
    Sometimes nothing else will do.
    Let it roll.

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  12. No words for you. Nothing I can add or take away. You feel what you feel. My grandmother always said that shared grief is smaller. So share away Ms Moon. We will listen in silence.

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  13. I think anger is a perfectly acceptable response to the state of things right about now! I'm sorry you had a hateful day, but we all have them and I suppose they're even necessary on some level. Can we really not say "wandering jew" anymore? What a shame.

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  14. SJ- They never cease to cause me despair.

    Bethany- I love you too.

    Elizabeth- Hopefully.

    Angella- My heart knows that and is grateful. I hope you feel it in return.

    Yobobe- You understand.

    Photocat- Thank you. Very much.

    Steve Reed- They seem to be part of my life. As to Wandering Jew- hell, I don't know. If we can't use that name, they need to come up with another.

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  15. oh, I've had days like this. Lots of them. Thank goodness they are not a permanent state or I'd have bashed my own head in by now.

    Hoping the wonder, light and love return soon and chase away the disgust and dismay and disbelief.

    If all else fails, there is that meatloaf.

    xo

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