Please Don't Read This If You're Depressed Unless You Need To Know You're Not The Only One

He made it. KC, the man whose name so many of you found for me showed up late this afternoon and I was incredibly relieved. He was polite and asked me how our Christmas had been but he was not nearly as convivial or gregarious as was on his last visit. I suppose this is what happens when you deliver propane gas for a living in an area which is in the midst of a major cold spell. Everyone probably puts off getting gas until they realize it's going to be below freezing for several nights in a row and then they frantically try to get some fuel in the tank before their pet goldfish's bowl freezes solid. 
Well. Anyway. I have turned the thermostat up to the more tropical realm of 67° although we always turn it down about four degrees lower than that at night. 

Speaking of low, I have been feeling rather flat these last few days. I mean, who hasn't, right? I think it's quite possible that I have not left Lloyd in a week. I know I went to pottery last Wednesday but as far as I can remember and as far as my posts seem to report, I've been right here. 
The point is that I've been hiding or hibernating or rolling up into a ball like a doodlebug who has been threatened by a child's probing finger. And I've done nothing of value or interest in that whole time. A little mending and patching, a little jig-saw puzzling, a little laundry, cooking, dusting, sweeping, and putting Seminole Indian dolls on the wall. I promise you that all of these things could have fit into one day, the keyword being "little". 

I started wondering this afternoon if it wasn't near the anniversary date of my mother's death and so I looked that up on the blog by searching for "Mother's death," and easily discovered she died on January 16, 2013. I cannot believe it's been thirteen years. 
Thirteen years since that day I was with her in the hospital as she took her last breaths. I wrote it all out on the day after her death and that can be found HERE if you're interested. It is not graphic or weird or anything. Just a plain recounting of her last moments. It's funny that what I remember so strongly is that "Sister Morphine" by the Rolling Stones was playing in my head which was appropriate because of course they had given her morphine at the end to ease what they call "air hunger" and I was in the middle of my journey of discovery about Keith Richards and, well, that was the sound track to the death of my mother for me. 

Yes. It is true. The body remembers. It remembers anniversaries, it remembers what our minds do not and perhaps have even tried to cast aside, to bury deep in steel boxes strapped with iron bands locked with fierce determination, the keys as lost as we can lose them. 

I do not even need to mention the madness of the man who would be king and who is finally being called out by other world leaders as insane and as such, a person who cannot be reasoned or negotiated with but who must be stopped before the entire world falls into the same horror that began in Hitler's Germany. 

Still, I feel as if instead of falling into any sort of immovable darkness, I should be doing the things you're supposed to do in the face of times like this. Move your body, get involved, GET YOUR HEAD OUT OF YOUR ASS.

Thank god I have pottery tomorrow. That is exactly what I need. I will get up early, I will drink my coffee. I will put in my hearing aids so that I can hear what is being said in the studio around me. I will focus on something that has nothing to do with my mother, my country, my fears, my regrets, my guilt, myself. 

Look what I found today. 

The trillium. In going back and looking at old posts from this time of year, I saw my photos of it then and wondered if it had come up already this year. 
And it has. 
The bed it's in is a complete mess, a chaos of weeds and frozen ferns and downed oak branches and browned pinecone lily stems but there it is, alive and well and beautiful and strong and showing proof of the continuation of life. 

And then there was this. 

Look up, look up, don't stop looking up. 

And having said all of these things, I cannot stop watching this. 

I think it is probably one of the best live videos ever taken of the Rolling Stones and I'm trying to describe how I see this song, this performance, as a testimony to the depths to which we can fall and yet, rise out of. Make art of. Help some of us come to terms with things we find impossible to understand. 

I'm a mess. 

Love...Ms. Moon