Friday, May 5, 2017

Well...

So Maurice has lost her mind and spends half the night trying to get us to open the door into our room from the little porch by jumping on the window and crying and we refuse to do that. She just needs to go around the house and come in the cat door but no, she won't, and last night was horrible. What is she thinking?
So Mr. Moon got up and made a spray bottle of water and sprayed her with it through the screen and I fussed at him and then Maurice did, in fact, quit jumping on the window and came in through the cat door and besides that I have a patch of poison ivy on my thigh (?!) that itches like crazy, and also, dear god in heaven if I don't quit having dreams about needing to clean a house I don't know what the hell I'm going to do.
Therefore we were both a bit annoyed this morning and not as sweet as we could have been, Good-bye, see you later! Kiss, kiss...but I've got sheets hanging on the line and it's almost actually chilly here and the chickens are pecking about, even the littles who look like quail and every time I try to take their picture you can't really see them due to their fabulous camouflage.
I started reading Joan Didion's South and West yesterday. It's a tiny book, mostly written-up notes she took on trips in 1970 and I'm in the South portion and as much as I love Didion, I sort of hate these observations of hers and I'm not sure why. She seems so incredibly disdainful of the Gulf Coast south and I'm quite certain there were plenty of things to be disdainful about then and still are and hell yes, it's hot and things mold and so forth but, oh, I don't know. She seems to discuss the various motel pools she swims in as much as anything and also discusses the fact that she wore a bikini which southern women did not.
Well, the writing is beautiful as always.

All right. I have things to do and I'm sure you do too.

Happy Friday, y'all.

Love...Ms. Moon

10 comments:

  1. It's funny, but as much as I admire Didion's writing and coolness, I read her last few memoirs with great aversion. There is something so entirely self-conscious and cold and contemptuous about her observations, however skillful. Even her grief feels proprietary -- as if she's the only one who ever felt it. That might be unkind, but it's how I feel when I read her. That being said, I dutifully bought the new one and will probably read and admire the brilliant prose.

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    1. Yes! Yes, yes, yes! "...cold and contemptuous." Exactly. She went looking for rot and ruin and she found it.
      I'm glad I got this one out of the library and did not pay for it.

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  2. Poor Maurice! So confused! The water bottle sounds like a good solution. I love Joan Didion, but I haven't read that book. Somehow her journalistic remove doesn't bother me. (Maybe it's my own journalistic training -- I'm used to skillful detachment!)

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    1. The weird thing about her journalistic remove (great phrase!) is that she spends so much time writing about her own presence in the situation she is reporting on. So it all ends up very odd to me. She's detached yet, part of it all.

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  3. We are all a little out of sorts, I think. Who can find firm ground with all the shenanigans when we turn on the news. As for Didion, she's a brilliant stylist, but I can never quite cosy up to contempt, which I always see as looking at a thing with a superior air. so i don't read her that much, and i get your resistance. i hope you are getting ready for friday night martinis that will make everything right with this day. i love you.

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    1. She most definitely has a superior air in this little book of notes from the road. And a bikini!

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  4. Well, I have never heard of Didion. I have so many books waiting to be read so I think I will take a pass.

    You definitely need a spray bottle when you have cats. We just have to shake ours and Norbert goes running.

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    1. One spraying event and Maurice did not meow once outside our window last night!

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  5. I was going to say the same thing about just shaking the bottle after the offending cat has been sprayed a few times. Judy has found it works with our mischievous (at times) Blackwell.

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