Laying Low
Oct. 17th, 2020 10:26 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mallorys_cameraLeaf mold, wrote rebeccmeister. Flash! A light bulb clicked on over my head. I am highly allergic to mold, and the weather conditions this week—the ghost of Hurricane Delta followed by two days of lovely, unseasonably warm weather—would have primed the fermentation process. Decomposing leaves are everywhere.
@@@
I dreamed that I had traveled somewhere for some kind of memorial service for Beau. I was at the same hotel I stayed at for Nathan’s wedding, Once again, RTT was with me, and once again, he was a young child. The H___s were in the adjoining room, and there was some business with children wanting to play but not being allowed to play because general solemnity of circumstances. Also, there was some business with shoelaces (buh?), black shoelaces—they were part of my shoes and also part of some outfit I was planning to wear: The shoelaces come loose from these articles, and I needed to re-lace them except I couldn’t remember where I’d put the damn shoelaces, they were missing.
Then I was in a car on its way to the service. A_________ was driving. I have not seen A in easily 10 years and she had no connection to Beau whatsoever, so I was a bit confused about (a) why she was driving my car, I mean I don’t want other people driving my car! and (b) why she was there at all.
A_________ mentioned that Heidi was one of the mourners, and I thought, Which Heidi? L’s daughter or my old neighbor Heidi from Monterey? Neither of whom knew Beau, so again—all very confusing.
###
It was easy to lay low yesterday. It rained hard all day.
I taught Nafisa:
But otherwise, I did not do a thing.
You are building up your strength! I told myself.
But it felt more as though I was hiding out from something.
In the evening, my mother’s cousin Susan sent me a link to a Google drive on which someone had downloaded the contents of “Grandpa’s Scrapbook.”
Whose Grandpa, it was not clear.
But there were some pix of my grandfather’s father, Abraham Vogel, and his wife Elizabeth, my great grandmother.
By the time I knew Elizabeth in the late 1950s/early 1960s, she was very old and very senile—which was the word we used before “dementia” came into vogue.
I remember once, Grandpa brought home a steak, and she scrubbed it with Ajax cleansing powder because it wasn’t kosher.
I also remember she used to talk to people who weren’t there.
I was seven or eight, and I was fascinated by these people who weren’t there.
Are they people you used to know? I’d ask her. Or are they people you’ve never seen before?
But she would shush me impatiently. She was more interested in talking to the people who weren’t there than she was in talking to me.
I didn’t feel the slightest affection for her, but then I didn’t feel the slightest affection for any of them besides my mother because —well. She was my mother. And my cousin David because we were inseparable playmates, very close in age. The others were all strangers to me, and I couldn't figure out how I’d come to be living in such close proximity to them.
As a seven year old, I had no subjective sense that I would ever grow up, have any agency of my own, so my life was a grim set of circumstances that I just had to endure the best I could. Which I did by reading and playing my secret games.
rebeccmeister. Flash! A light bulb clicked on over my head. I am highly allergic to mold, and the weather conditions this week—the ghost of Hurricane Delta followed by two days of lovely, unseasonably warm weather—would have primed the fermentation process. Decomposing leaves are everywhere.@@@
I dreamed that I had traveled somewhere for some kind of memorial service for Beau. I was at the same hotel I stayed at for Nathan’s wedding, Once again, RTT was with me, and once again, he was a young child. The H___s were in the adjoining room, and there was some business with children wanting to play but not being allowed to play because general solemnity of circumstances. Also, there was some business with shoelaces (buh?), black shoelaces—they were part of my shoes and also part of some outfit I was planning to wear: The shoelaces come loose from these articles, and I needed to re-lace them except I couldn’t remember where I’d put the damn shoelaces, they were missing.
Then I was in a car on its way to the service. A_________ was driving. I have not seen A in easily 10 years and she had no connection to Beau whatsoever, so I was a bit confused about (a) why she was driving my car, I mean I don’t want other people driving my car! and (b) why she was there at all.
A_________ mentioned that Heidi was one of the mourners, and I thought, Which Heidi? L’s daughter or my old neighbor Heidi from Monterey? Neither of whom knew Beau, so again—all very confusing.
###
It was easy to lay low yesterday. It rained hard all day.
I taught Nafisa:
But otherwise, I did not do a thing.
You are building up your strength! I told myself.
But it felt more as though I was hiding out from something.
In the evening, my mother’s cousin Susan sent me a link to a Google drive on which someone had downloaded the contents of “Grandpa’s Scrapbook.”
Whose Grandpa, it was not clear.
But there were some pix of my grandfather’s father, Abraham Vogel, and his wife Elizabeth, my great grandmother.
By the time I knew Elizabeth in the late 1950s/early 1960s, she was very old and very senile—which was the word we used before “dementia” came into vogue.
I remember once, Grandpa brought home a steak, and she scrubbed it with Ajax cleansing powder because it wasn’t kosher.
I also remember she used to talk to people who weren’t there.
I was seven or eight, and I was fascinated by these people who weren’t there.
Are they people you used to know? I’d ask her. Or are they people you’ve never seen before?
But she would shush me impatiently. She was more interested in talking to the people who weren’t there than she was in talking to me.
I didn’t feel the slightest affection for her, but then I didn’t feel the slightest affection for any of them besides my mother because —well. She was my mother. And my cousin David because we were inseparable playmates, very close in age. The others were all strangers to me, and I couldn't figure out how I’d come to be living in such close proximity to them.
As a seven year old, I had no subjective sense that I would ever grow up, have any agency of my own, so my life was a grim set of circumstances that I just had to endure the best I could. Which I did by reading and playing my secret games.
no subject
Date: 2020-10-17 11:01 pm (UTC):^)
It at least helps to have some idea as to the source of the malaise. It was beautiful here today - hopefully that helped you perk up a bit, too.
no subject
Date: 2020-10-18 02:04 pm (UTC)