Saturday, November 22, 2014

Rainy And Bleak But With Great Gratitude

It has been raining on and off all day and right now it is pouring. When I got back in bed a little bit after noon, it was just drizzling but gray enough and just rainy enough to give me full permission to cuddle down into the covers. I read for a little while but my eyes got so heavy I had to put my book down and I didn't even try to fight it. The book I'm currently reading is by Lydia Millet. Mermaids in Paradise. Because I always choose books by their covers in the library, I absolutely had to pick this one up.


I've never read anything by her although she seems to be fairly prolific and I have already fallen in love with the way she writes. Almost every paragraph has a sentence that I want to read out loud to someone. 
I'll let you know how it goes. 

Anyway, I slept for three whole hours with Maurice cuddled up beside me and then I laid in the bed for almost another hour, just laying there, eyes open, not moving a muscle, being still just for the pure delight of it, the sensuous pleasure of having nothing I needed to do and being wrapped in soft sheets beside a warm, sleeping cat, the curtain of rain and heavy pewter sky outside making a cave of my world. 

When I got up I decided to call an old, old friend. She'd left me a voice mail the other day about wanting to go to Roseland to cook in the pink kitchen, to skinny dip in the lion pool. It is hard for me to make phone calls but I called her with this pocket of time where I knew no one needed me. 
It turns out that she had some fairly serious news. A health situation and it hit me hard. We've been through so much together. Now this. But she is not scared. She's pissed at the inconvenience of it all but no, not scared. We talked about so many things and we laughed and we laughed. 
There is nothing in this world so warming to my soul as slipping back into a connection like this. And of course it is hard to hear about difficulties but here we are- sixty years old- and life is just going to jump out and kick us in the balls sometimes. That's all there is to it. And it's a comfort and a joy to hear that voice on the other end of the line. To pick up that color in the tapestry which is the story of my life. The color which is that friend's and that friend's alone, to weave into the pattern again. 
We talked too long. But she sounded so good and everything one of us said led to something else and then something else...
We ended with me telling her to get some damn rest and to take her meds. And that I love her.
Which she knows. 
Thank god I've never had a problem telling the people I love that I love them. 

Kitten is doing fine. I only go in that bathroom to give her treats, to once in a while actually use the bathroom. I talk to her sweetly. I certainly don't try to approach her. I just want her to get used to my presence a little. Once, when I went in today she actually looked directly at me and waited a second before she fled behind the shower curtain. I take that as progress. She surely does use the litter box. She certainly has spread out the towels and washcloths. She absolutely does love chicken pot pie mixed with warm water and mushed up. And she is, without a doubt, the fluffiest orange kitten ever born. 

Garrison Keillor is singing a song about immigrants. He's on the same side of it that I am. 
Welcome. Welcome, he says. So do I.
Thank-you, President Obama. Your legacy will be a beautiful one. 

If I ever get to a time when it don't bother me
To see innocent people degraded like dogs in the street
Who picked our vegetables, our policemen expelled
Then I've lost my compassion and mercy, as well as myself.

And this whole thing about Bill Cosby breaks my heart. I can't help but believe the woman who have come forward, and to the people who ask why it took them this long- all I have to say is- some of them came forward years ago and because he was The Daddy, the Sweet, Good Father, no one believed them. 
He gave them drugs which turned them helpless and powerless (like little girls) and raped them. 
I understand this way better than I wish I did. 

Right now they're singing a song on Prairie Home Companion called "That Old Time Atheism."
Oh god. I love Garrison. 
I hope he never raped anyone. 

It's a weird, strange world. 
I don't pretend to understand one bit of it. I just know that we need to love the ones we love and tell them that without hesitation. 

My husband will be home tomorrow. I can barely believe it. 

The rain is still pouring down. I need to get out the umbrella and go out and close the chickens up. I have no idea what to cook for supper. Maybe a poached egg. 

My heart is full of so many things. I am looking forward to tomorrow when my arms will be wrapped around that man. I will cook him rock shrimp and make an arugula salad and there will be clean sheets and because I AM sixty years old, I will appreciate every bit of that. 

Love...Ms. Moon






13 comments:

  1. I'd believe it of Cosby, with his controlling, moralistic paternalism before I'd believe it of Garrison Keilor, I'll say that.

    Oh, your bed story was so beautiful.I savoured it. Reading and nappy in the middle of the warm bed with the rain outside - so perfectly perfect.

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  2. Jo- I hope you are right. It still breaks my heart that someone I loved SO much did such evil. Fuck. Really.
    And that nap- I hope I remember it on my death bed. It was that sweet.

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  3. When Cosby started all that moralizing about "the old days" is when I stopped thinking he was funny, but it's still difficult to wrap my mind around what he's being accused of --

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  4. Elizabeth- Me too. It's like another fucking example of abuse. And I hate that it comes from this man whom I have admired so much for so long.

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  5. At the moment here, horrible revelation after revelation about the favourite children's entertainers of the seventies and eighties are coming out - and even worse, the tv stations' collusion in keeping secrets, suppressing stories, and even providing the abusers with victims.

    It's horrific, but somehow more believable each time. I suppose I'm getting jaded :(

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  6. Before my mom died I bought her and my dad two tickets to see Bill Cosby and seeing him was one of the best moments of her life. She, being raped herself would have been sick to hear this news. She was a believer in women taking years and years to tell their stories. She was raped when she was about 15 and it took her 45 years to tell my dad, her best friend and lover. If it took her that long I have to stand by these women, my tribe and believe them. When my mom told me her whole body shook with shame. Shame! Oh, god. The sadness that went with that shame. It was then my own mother became my daughter and all I wanted to do was protect her. I even had the absurd thought of hunting this man down and telling his family but apparently he died years ago. What I would like to know is how many women he shamed. And how many women has Mr. Cosby shamed. Fuck it all.

    Anyway, my heart is also full tonight.

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  7. Addendum - I adored Mr. Cosby and god help me, I hope I am wrong in my accusations. I am throwing him to the dogs.

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  8. One of the crazy things about the whole Bill Cosby thing is women have been saying he did these things for years, going back to a case he settled in 2006, and yet it was only when a man, a comedian, made the rape allegation in a stand up routine that the story gained traction. No one listened to the women all these years. Yet everyone took what the man said seriously; they believed the accusation he made in a comedy routine. How many women would have been spared if the very first one who came forward had been taken at her word? Why did a man have to say it for everyone to finally hear it?

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  9. The Cosby story breaks my heart too. I have always admired him so much, and seen him as a role model. I don't doubt that what those women say is generally true. I'm sure it is. It speaks to the fact that our heroes are flawed human beings. That's just reality.

    I think in addition to the comedian that Angella mentions, the reason all this is coming to light once again is because Cosby has produced a new biography and had several projects in development to relaunch his career. (As The New Yorker wrote several weeks ago -- you probably saw that article.) So I don't think it's ALL down to that male comedian and his routine. I wish there were a way to bring closure for everyone -- prosecute Cosby if need be, find him guilty or innocent, render justice, rather than just letting all this hang out there.

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  10. I never did really care for Bill Cosby--can't explain it. He just wasn't on my radar screen much. People hide so much about themselves. We don't know who they are really. Some are suffering from deep depression, others are criminals and sadists--the list goes on and on. But then there are the good people who just do their best to do the next right thing. Like you.

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  11. Jo- WE are all, most sadly, getting jaded. Still, Bill Cosby? Fucking shocking. And the weird part is- he probably could have had any of those women but he choose to drug and rape them. Sickness and evil.

    ditchingthedog- I hear you. On every count. And yes, abusers and rapists so often count on shame to prevent women from coming forward. It's the truth.

    Angella- Did you read that account of the woman from National Enquirer doing a huge, well researched story on Cosby with all of this information back years ago? And the magazine 86'ed it?
    Sickness. And we protect the guilty and shame the victims.

    Steve Reed- You're right. I think as long as he was under the radar, so to speak, things were controllable. And I did read that article. And yes, that biography just glossed over all those accusations which of course shone a big bright light on them. Not the author's intention but for the sake of his victims, I am so glad this is coming out. I wish, though, it had never happened.
    And yes, if he is guilty, there needs to be judgement.

    Syd- We all just keep doing the best we can, don't we? Most of us do. Which is why the world is as sweet as it is. I guess. Sometimes it sure doesn't seem sweet.

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  12. I hope he is not going to blame is reprehensible behaviour on the death of his son.

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  13. Go I LOVE Garrison Keillor. And I'm so sad about Cosby. Noah and I saw him live (Cosby) years back and he was so funny. I don't want my deeply funny people to be deeply, well, awful, at the same time. My parents have seen Keillor live and hopefully one day, I will too.

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