Much has gone on in the past seven years - much to regret and much to delight in. Yesterday morning, I flung myself from the bed at six, swearing as usual. It would be better, I know, to meet the black winter dawn as a grateful observer of its slow unfolding. To meet my conscious self once again, alert and dispassionate. To feel the cold puzzle of a dark room and not wish that it were something else, that the tangle of tasks awaking in my head were not so slippery and daunting. In the kitchen, there are the usual tired lights overhead, the endless truck of clutter along the countertops. How is it possible that supermarkets still advertise on thick, glossy reams of paper all their unbeatable deals of the week? Don't people have to go there anyway at some point? Will all those BOGO offers really be missed, the items remain unsold if not for the weekly circular? Must be that there's some profitable alliance between Big Printing and Big Market, its formidable lobby doubtless driven by the shrewdest of two-time bar exam failures, their ambitions fulfilled and futures secured by keeping us all in junk mail. Says my evil conspiracy twin. The kettle rumbles, its electric blue lightswitch like a tourist nightclub souvenir from the far away land of Mykonos. I am about to piss off at least one person - my first of the day! I push open Chui's door, turn on the light, tell her it's time to get up. The windows are black and the walls are freezing. She hates me right now and I don't blame her. I turn off her fan and hang her dear lavender bathrobe where she can reach it easily when she finally climbs down the clunky wooden ladder from her loft. Stumpy built her this amazing bed last year, a nest tall enough for him to walk under. Even if she's as tall as he is by the time she leaves us, she won't ever hit her head on it. I walk through all the rote motions of weekday breakfast and school lunch prep - again, the soft bread, the peanut butter, the rooibos and honey, the popcorn and salt, the muesli, the milk, the toast, the droewors, the green apples riven to pale white flesh and arranged on a plastic plate in a vaguely elegant, Japanese (?) way. Chui sits at the table, munching away quietly, her mind a private galaxy of thought. She reads Ripley's Believe It, Or Not! (2018 edition) and sometimes shares the stories she reads: a man in Illinois won the lottery twice using the same numbers. A woman in NYC posted an ad to have her pet tortoise walked daily in Central Park, and was surprised when more than 400 people applied for the job, a few from as far afield as Australia. I go to the bathroom and am momentarily cheered by the observant sensuality of John Cheever's journals. He retreats again and again to nature; he grapples with family, with desire, with truth and failure. He gnashes his teeth about the limits of his talent, the dreariness of his narrow capabilities. Reading Saul Bellow both inspires and devastates him. Like most things, I guess. And so I will conclude this blog post, which began in the morning and didn't get very far. It should be noted that I am obsessed at the moment - with the brokenness of this year, with the rawness of my heart. My abilities are limited, as were Cheever's, as are everyone's. We cannot ever be all things to all people. It's work enough getting along with yourself.
