7/10/23

 Monday, July 10, 2023

In bed around (:30, up at 3:50, and let Lilly out,    62℉, high of 85, clear skies today, AQI=51, Moderate.  The wind is SSW at 9 mph, 6 to 13 today, with gusts up to 27.  The sun will rise at 5:21 and set at 8:32, 15+11.   

 

Camille Claudel, yesterday, day 3.

LTMW yesterday, I saw a lone wild turkey with her 5 chicks sticking close to her.  It reminded me of the time Anh and I were exploring the bogland behind our house outside Saukville and were startled when we came upon a nesting turkey at the foot of a tree deep in the bog.  She was more startled and flew away from her eggs.😢

Old Age is an adventure I'm not well prepared for.

Oh me! Oh life! of the questions of these recurring,

Of the endless trains of the faithless, of cities fill’d with the foolish,

Of myself forever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish than I, and who more faithless?)

Of eyes that vainly crave the light, of the objects mean, of the struggle ever renew’d,

Of the poor results of all, of the plodding and sordid crowds I see around me,

Of the empty and useless years of the rest, with the rest me intertwined,

The question, O me! so sad, recurring—What good amid these, O me, O life?

Answer.

That you are here—that life exists and identity,

That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.

Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass (1982)

I took my Power in my Hand—

And went against the World—

'Twas not so much as David—had—

But I—was twice as bold—

I aimed by Pebble—but Myself

Was all the one that fell—

Was it Goliath—was too large—

Or was myself—too small?

Emily Dickinson, 540

Hard day today, too conscious of failures, wastes in my life, my own weaknesses, stupidities, fecklessness, and lack of courage.  'What then must we do?'  Friendships abandoned to my shame and deep regret.  Military life, academic life, private practice, marriage and parenting, HOP, religion.  Larry Stack, Cathy Semrau, Notches, Bob Hillary, Ron Kendall, Ara Cherchian, Vicki Conte, who and what have I omitted.  Not a pretty picture.

From Life Work:  Feeling miserable over work that fails is preferable to depression which makes work impossible.  When I feel overwhelmed by too many things to do, or frustrated by my inability to sustain work . . . I suspend discontent by remembering months and years of anguish and lethargy, lying on twisted sheets, painful, too miserable to get out of bed. . . .  Writers are bipolar by nature and by nature extreme. . . . . Thinking of my death was thinking of paradise or at least respite from pain.  Self-medication by alcohol gave temporary relief, brief lethal holiday, and a foretaste of death.  (Work, as Oscar Wilde reminds us, is the curse of the drinking classes.)

More Camille today.

It's a bad sign that I liked what I had before today's additions.  I should have stopped where I was.  I'm hoping some glazing will help with dark/light values but can't do anything about the face being too round.

8 more mass shootings over the weekend.  M'ah nishtanah? 9 dead, more than 30 injured,  371 mass shootings so far in 2023.  Tsuris & tsuris mit eingemachts.  A nation unable to govern itself.  I see a bad moon a-rising.  I see fascism on the way.  

 . . .