One of the real life situations I've alluded to but haven't written about here has reached end game. My mother-in-law died last night. We begrudged each other then grew to like and respect each other but there was always the distance of our differences in what each of us thought important between us. Send your good thoughts to Earthgirl.
There is much to think and write about, some of it ghastly and horrifying re: geriatric care, some of it hilarious and ghastly re: the ghouls from the funeral home last night at midnight. I've been trained to think it tasteless to write about the latter at all, much less today, much less here, I've never denied that I'm still mostly leashed and when not leashed still e-collared and dog-fenced everywhere and anywhere. As for geriatric care, if it was more humane the ghouls might not be so ghoulish or turn such an obscene profit.
- Just a few inks today: mostly gathered last night before news. No idea what next few days bring.
- Man, I don't know what reddit is, but it sent me several hundred pings last night off a post in 2010. Weird.
- Hey, a note from Arthur. Please consider throwing up the coins in your pocket.
- Newsweek asks, What the fuck's wrong w/fascism? Yes, I know.
- National Don't Talk Like a Tribalist Day. Yes, I know, it's hard for me not to, which is why I assault my tribe here more than motherfucking crackers.
- POTUS 12: Lessons.
- Another world is happening?
- Math and Occupy.
- Robert Reich says stop dancing on Romney's grave.
- Fucking shoot me.
- The microscopic eye.
- Things you might have missed.
- Verily, fuck blooger.
- Did you know Washington DC has a professional soccer team? It's true, they play tonight in Chester, here's a story about their invisible Albanian striker.
- Arvo Part.
- Shostakovich's birthday is Tuesday.
IN VIEW OF THE FACT
A.R. Ammons
The people of my time are passing away: my
wife is baking for a funeral, a 60-year-old who
died suddenly, when the phone rings, and it's
Ruth we care so much about in intensive care:
it was once weddings that came so thick and
fast, and then, first babies, such a hullabaloo:
now, it's this that and the other and somebody
else gone or on the brink: well, we never
thought we would live forever (although we did)
and now it looks like we won't: some of us
are losing a leg to diabetes, some don't know
what they went downstairs for, some know that
a hired watchful person is around, some like
to touch the cane tip into something steady,
so nice: we have already lost so many,
brushed the loss of ourselves ourselves: our
address books for so long a slow scramble now
are palimpsests, scribbles and scratches: our
index cards for Christmases, birthdays,
Halloweens drop clean away into sympathies:
at the same time we are getting used to so
many leaving, we are hanging on with a grip
to the ones left: we are not giving up on the
congestive heart failure or brain tumors, on
the nice old men left in empty houses or on
the widows who decide to travel a lot: we
think the sun may shine someday when we'll
drink wine together and think of what used to
be: until we die we will remember every
single thing, recall every word, love every
loss: then we will, as we must, leave it to others to
love, love that can grow brighter
and deeper till the very end, gaining strength
and getting more precious all the way. . . .
