Notes on The Summer So Far

It's been a while, n'est-ce pas?  What can I say?

I am in recovery mode -- recovery from last semester's Foundations of Mathematics class, from the greater than usual marital strife, from a winter spent in the arms of a physical therapist.  And now it's summer.  That season I hate where my feet, encased in rubber bands -- or at least that's what it feels like to my nerve endings -- proceed to swell.  I can smell again:  With this much moisture in the air all the globules of matter from sweat, toilets, the kitchen's compost bucket, perfumes, and cooked food attached to the water molecules and travel up my nose.  I've started counting the days until September.

Here's the thing:  if I don't get the tough work done in the morning, it simply doesn't get done.  And by that I mean the writing.  I'm working on a story, "For Those Who Think Young", and am at what I'll call the molding and paring stage.    I start with the knife and carve off pages.  I take off words and paragraphs here, add words and paragraphs there.  I pinched a scene off and attach it to another part.  I walk around the creation, still dissatisfied, but not dissatisfied enough to punch the damn thing into a mound, pour water (totally new ideas) over it and start the wheel again.  It's an exercise in finding the essence of the story.  Two things I know about writing fiction:  1) there's the story you think you want to tell and 2) there's the story that emerges as you struggle to do 1).  On a few rare days the work goes well.  I am here in the office ignoring my surroundings.  It's just me, the paper and my favorite purple-inked pen.  Other days, the more common ones, I'd rather be doing almost anything else than writing.  A root canal without anesthesia?  Where do I go for that!?  How about a colonoscopy???  Sign me up, please!  Or a stint as a short-order cook at TGIF's?  Can't wait to begin!!!!  Just don't make me write.

Two things I am doing this summer that are different than last.  I am going to the gym.  I've grown to look forward to it.  I'm not fooled; there's always a honeymoon phase.  For now, Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays I have a date with strength training.  I can see the difference in my body.  I even attribute the work to keeping my blood pressure shockingly low (at least for me), so much so that next time I see my internist I'll ask him to start tapering me off the meds.  And although my feet are permanently swollen these days they are are not nearly as huge as the watermelons of the Summer of 2012.  Don't get me wrong, my f(@#(#ked up back is still fckd up, my right hip still feels like someone stabbed me with a long needle, and I'm not too proud to ask for help to turn over, but still, things are much better.  I am stronger, nimbler and my arms don't look like cottage cheese dipped in chocolate fondue.

And I'm gardening again.  The peace treaty hammered out with Cuthbert left me with the front yard as my domain.  After hiring help to move raised beds, and turn the soil, I called on local gardener friends and pals and have planted a crazy quilt of hostas, echinacea, fewerfew, daisies, strawberry's, ferns, and who the hell remembers what that green thing is called.  Some of the transplants went into shock, but gardeners are patient animals, and I just whacked them back and sit in the dining room window with the day's first cup of coffee and imagine what next spring will look like. I think all this working out is so that I can get down on bended knee in the fall and plant some bulbs.

Did I Tell You How Much I Hate the Summer?

As you can see from the last post it has been a while since I wrote anything other than a check.  No Saturday Poetry; no commentary on the game of chicken the President and the Republicans are playing; no disquisition on the Casey Anthony trial and what it means about this nation of ours that the life of one white child is of greater import than say a dozen colored children or so it seems judging from the amount of media coverage; no thoughts at all about gay marriage being legalized in New York nor what it must be like to be Yale University and to have raised a reported $4 billion (don't forget that there are probably undocumented donors) during a worldwide recession and what impact that power will have on the governance of the host city it is devouring.  Nope, I have nothing to say about all that.

Instead, I've been watching my feet and ankles swell.  Yeah, it's summer and I hate it.  Hate it.  On the other hand Husband No. 1 hates the winter.  Every time the temperature dares to go below 30 degrees Fahrenheit it's stop the presses time in our house.  Did I tell you, he bellows to no one in particular, that I hate the winter?  Oh.  Really?  The only thing he hates more than winter is south Florida so I guess he is going to have to suck it up and make peace with November through February in the far Northeast.  As for myself, I want to get a doctor's note that temperatures above 65 degrees are Hazardous To My Health and that in order to prolong my life I should be confined to 24 hour bedrest (with internet access of course) and aging eunuchs to fan my weary brow.  Why aging?  I don't want to look at anybody who has a BMI less than 35 right now.

So again I beg off thinking and writing until I can get shoes on my feet.  I'm going to stick with gardening, swearing, drinking and boycotting Woody Allen movies.

Not that my boycott matters at all, but even liberals such as myself have to draw the line somewhere and that somewhere for me came when Allen wooed and wed his own stepdaughter.  (A pause while I once again say Ewwwwww, with mouth downturned and eyes squeezed shut.)  Husband No. 1 and I don't agree on much but we do agree on the immorality of that behavior.  I will have to remember this story the next time I want to tear off his head for plucking my one last (and frayed) nerve:  Husband No. 1 used to attend New York's School of Practical Philosophy.  He liked it.  I was skeptical largely because I found it a little too precious for my tastes what with students addressing each other as lady and gentleman.  (Yo, this America, yawl!)  But, he liked being in the school for its philosophy and we were at that stage in our marriage where individuation was a highly prized trait.  (Now we're at the "Can I borrow that ink-stained shirt that you're too fat to button up?" stage.)  He told me that the Allen/Farrow breakup came up for discussion in his sex-segregated class (another reason I had no interest in the school) and the men were chortling and basically saying what's wrong with that?  Yuk yuk yuk ....  So, Husband No. 1 said to them, since we had only recently been married and at that time our family was comprised of one 42 year old bride who hadn't shown her legs since 1985 and one bee-u-ti-ful big-eyed clothes horse.  Said Husband says to his chums:  What if I left my wife to run off with 16 year old [D]aughter No. 1?  That shut them the fuck up and not another word was said about the matter.  So, I owe Husband No. 1 a big kiss.  Plus, Woody Allen hasn't been funny or particularly interesting for years.  On those counts alone I can do without him, but it's nice to have a dollop of moral outrage to reinforce shunning him.

Roman Polanski's also on my Do-Not-Watch List, and that's a harder deprivation because I'm sure his work is worth seeing.  But I'll continue my small protest against pedophiles and rapists whose actions are excused because they are famous or powerful.  It will take my mind off the heat.