I have been reading the blogs of friends/colleagues/former teachers and feeling pretty miserable about mine. Mostly, because I never write in it. I am a terrible blogger, so I’m just going to force myself from now on. Even if I can’t actually string a decent one together, I will just write – verbatim – my notes from the day, which often include (but are not limited to) thoughts, dreams, observations, jokes, and ideas for fiction. This will at least create some sort of momentum, and I will feel liberated in sharing my most navel-gazey musings with either one or two readers or no one at all. Depending on who’s available.
Have been thinking lately about permanent/temporary, and how everything seems to be a combination of both. Probably has something to do with buying a house. I am nervous to write about it – don’t want to jinx anything. (Superstitious thinking is the way of my life: The other day I considered putting all the medicine bottles that have crept into the kitchen over the past few months back into the bathroom, so that they wouldn’t be sitting there on the shelf reminding me every time I reach for the tea or the cinnamon that I am actually, in reality, a fairly regular consumer of Big Pharma-type products and really not patient or consistent enough with anything homeopathic to actually get it to work. The Big Pharma bottles are like some kind of dirty secret, only it’s not so secret sitting there at eye-level in the kitchen: how hopelessly unenlightened I am! But also, more to the point, those bottles have been rendered unnecessary now that Chui has had her ears drained and adenoids removed in a most medically-Western/non-homeopathic fashion. Now, pretty much overnight, she is well! She can hear! She is all a-flush with good health and I’m like a mother in a movie with tears in my eyes, so grateful to the ENT surgeon. But then, I think: “If I move the bottles into the bathroom, she’ll get sick again.” So they stay there, and then we all get sick within 24 hours of all this going through my head anyway. And then, I think getting sick has something to do with my not moving the bottles in order to not get sick. As though there’s some kind of trickster working the ether, eavesdropping on all my mental hocus-pocus and switching things around. So, what is the point of this tangent? I guess it was merely to illustrate the compulsive non-rationally of some of my thinking.) However, as part of an effort to be brave and to change and evolve, I will say, nakedly, what I am feeling about the house, even though I fear my enthusiasm may cause it all to come to nought: I want the ramshackle “Villa Copgari” with its painted chameleon and cheesy fleurs-de-lis. I want the glorious view and the depressing bathrooms. I want the little arched windows and the courtyard and the cracked tiles and the crazy garden. I want the awful downstairs flat, the broken gutters, the shambolic light fixtures. I want the trees blocking the sea and the dunes in the distance and the wild potential of all of it! I have been thinking about planting sunflowers. And peonies. Do peonies grow here? I'm a fool for possibility! I think we need to get some animals: Two fearsome, vigilant German Shepherds and a genius mutt. The odd cat or two. And peacocks. Definitely peacocks.
Last night I dreamed that Stumpy and I were in a parking garage that was also like a busy intersection in a city. It was like a shadowy knot of dirty, underground streets and people were walking and waiting to cross. There was a lady walking a cheetah on a leash and suddenly it started acting all nervous and jumping around, with its hackles up, hissing like a cat. (Do cheetahs hiss?) Then, there was the sound of all these care engines revving and rumbling, getting louder and louder, and then a few angry cars screeched and squealed up the ramps to block the exits. We were all trapped and then someone shouted something about a bomb and I knew we were all going to be blown to smithereens and I was terrified. I woke up and the baby was crying and it was 3 am.
It took me about 30 seconds to decide whether to write “Kleenex” or “tissues” on my grocery list the other day. I went with “Kleenex” because I felt that it had some kind of 1960’s Tang-is-what-the-astronauts-drink vibe going on.
In the US, they mostly sell white eggs in the supermarket. Here, all the eggs are brown. This sometimes causes me to inwardly burst into my own version of “California Dreamin’” by the Mamas and the Papas:
“All the eggs are brown (all the eggs are brown)/ And the sky is grey (and the sky is grey)...”
