fog's sake

This is what greeted us late afternoon today. It was very silent for a Sunday and yes, beautiful. But not my beautiful.

It has been a shitty week with seemingly endless cramps and bloating and all the heavy stuff that goes with it. There are times when I hang from the door frame like a woman in labour, followed by long hot showers. More often, I feel the urge to drop the grin from the grin and bear it approach and instead kick the door frame or whatever else comes my way. Which is when R thinks it's time for the ER but so far, none of the real emergency events have occurred that I have been informed should neccessitate such a trip (vomit, blood, fever). This started after I had a strange imaging procedure on Wed morning, involving a sticky toothpaste like barium paste, and things have been going downhill since. I am hoping for an uphill turn eventually. The intestine is such a massive disappointment currently. Somehow I do believe I am on the way to possibly have some of it removed. I wonder when the day comes. Meanwhile, food intake is tricky.

My daughter was almost in tears when I told her this morning that I don't see myself going out for a meal ever again. The life of the young loses meaning without sushi or pizza. I told her that I have had my share of delicatessen, some of which I would not eat again even if healthy (octopus, bat, pig's glands, snake, escargots) and that I have excellent and fond memories of eating in amazing places on several continents. It calmed her down a bit.

The silver lining in all this is of course being retired, having time and place for distraction, for the making of bland soups in their endless variations, for gardening and staring into space while sitting in a deck chair wrapped in several warm blankets, for watching the jays flying in to elegantly pick the peanuts I place on the patio for them. Also, we cycled through glorious sunny forests yesterday and sat down for coffee in the Portuguese cafe where I watched R munch a warm pasteis de nata. Now that is something I wish to eat again one day. 

And of course, reading, this not for the first time, but the book is so amazing:

So I think there was one moment in the evolution of human language that marked a dividing line: before it we were not yet human, but after it we where.

It was probably the smalles thing, neither heroic or grand. More than likely, it was the intimate moment, probably late in the evening in the low blue quiet before dreaming, when a single human being told the very first story.

I doubt it was told to a group. If anything, it probably took shape between two people who already spent most of their time trying to talk to each other: a fussy child who needed to sleep and a mother who needed to sleep even more.

Cat Bohannon in: Eve, How the Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution (2023)

And finally, a poem that spells autumn for me:

    

 

Rock Me, Mercy 

    The river stones are listening
    because we have something to say.
    The trees lean closer today.
    The singing in the electrical woods
    has gone dumb. It looks like rain
    because it is too warm to snow.
    Guardian angels, wherever you’re hiding,
    we know you can’t be everywhere at once.
    Have you corralled all the pretty wild
    horses? The memory of ants asleep
    in daylilies, roses, holly, & larkspur.
    The magpies gaze at us, still
    waiting. River stones are listening.
    But all we can say now is,
    Mercy, please, rock me.

 

Yusef Komunyakaa