The Peace Lily

[mallorys_camera]

First strawberries are ripening.

Except for a brief foray to the garden to water, I stayed in the Patrizia-torium all day yesterday, hammering away at the current Remunerative Project.

I did 4,000 words. All of them usable.

Four thousand words is actually quite a lot, but somehow, my brain thinks I should have written 8,000 words and is now punishing the rest of me with Dire Thoughts like, You will run out of money in Palermo! and the ever-popular, You will end up living in a cardboard refrigerator box under the bridge!

Realistically speaking, it will take me three more days to complete this one.

But, of course, I think I should finish it today. Or even yesterday.

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Today is Ben’s birthday.

Had he lived, he would have been 66.

I hadn’t thought of Ben in weeks and weeks and weeks, and then suddenly, throughout this past week, he’s been on my mind constantly.

I’m not sure exactly why.

It’s kind of galling to realize that one’s Great Love was a con artist, a schemer, a sociopath, a rapscallion, a charlatan, but the archetype is still very attractive to me: Loki, the shapeshifter (Norse mythology); Coyote, the trickster (Native American mythology.)

Interestingly, there appears not to be an equivalent archetype in the annals of Graeco-Roman mythology, which (of course) provides most of the foundational support for our culture still. You’d have to fuse Hermes with Pan and maybe throw in a little Dionysius to create a Western scoundrel god.

###

I miss talking to Ben. Gotta give him that.

Whatever else he was or wasn’t, he was always a marvelous conversationalist and banterer, and conversation and banter are two of my favorite things.

And, of course, there’s RTT…

###

After Ben died, I took a few things from his apartment.

A pair of incredibly heavy brass candlesticks.

A paper umbrella that was one of the props from Bruce Shoe’s wedding to a Thai princess. (The Thai princess subsequently left Bruce Shoe for Buddha. No shit! She became a Buddhist priest.)

A fabulous lamp that turns on with a touch.

And an enormous peace lily plant.

Last year, practically all the leaves on the enormous peace lily turned crinkly and brown. The peace lily almost died.

Peace lilies are weird ‘cause they turn brown if you over-water them, but they also turn brown if you under-water them, and I didn’t have a clue which one I was doing. And it could have been that I’d over-fertilized it. I fertilize all my houseplants every spring, and they seem to enjoy it, putting out new leaves and shoots and such. But maybe the peace lily didn’t enjoy it? Who can fathom the impenetrable heart of a peace lily?

###

I didn’t want the peace lily to die because of course I had developed a fantasy about it. That somehow Ben’s fleeing soul had run from Death and decided to hide in the… you got it!

I didn’t really want to kill Ben, and if you get right down to it, I hadn’t really wanted Ben to die.

True, he was the proximal cause of a staggeringly huge amount of pain, humiliation, and despair in my own life.

But, you know.

I was well on my way to separating out those life strands; I have landed on my feet and am comparatively happy these days, and he was a great conversationalist.

Anyway, I nursed the peace lily back to health!

It is sitting on a table very close to my writing space looking green and healthy. It is putting out three new leaves!

It does not talk to me.

###

Nothing much else to report.

Temps (thank Gawd) are back down in the 60°s and 70°s. Shortly, I will go forth to tromp and weed.

Hopefully, I can pound out another 4,000 words today.