0804

August 4, 2022

Down around 10, up around 6, 3 or 4 pss, 1 and 1/2 glass of red.

    Feeling listless, useless, this morning.  By mid-afternoon, largely a wasted day of existence.  Washed and replaced my bedding.  Washed my body in the shower but no replacement was available.  Started to watch a South Korean film called "Why Has Bodhi-Dharma Left for the East," about a trio of monks in a remote mountain monastery.  One old and preparing to die, one very young, one in the middle.  I watched half of it, relishing the Korean setting, stunning rocks, pools, streams, and small waterfalls, but understanding nothing.  Semi-brain fog all day.

0803

August 3, 2022

 Down at 10, up at 6, 4 pss, snifter of cognac before bed.

    Kansas voters rejected, by a 19 or so point margin a constitutional change that would have permitted its Republican legislature to ban or sharply limit abortion.  A lot of Trump-supported fascists won their primaries, and some lost.

    I fell this morning, or did I?  In moving between my chair and the ottoman in front of it, I did some awkward move toward the Venetian blinds on the window, lost my balance, and fell into my chair.  Does this count as a fall?  I think it does.  Loss of balance, and unintended movement from standing to sitting, even though it was into the comfort of my regular chair.  

    I watched a documentary the other night titled "Germans and Jews."  It focused on the relationship between Germans and Jews since the Holocaust.  At the very beginning of the film, a Jewish man says "My father told me there were only two kinds of people in the world, Jews and Nazis."  I thought at the time that the statement properly understood was correct, that the world can be divided between the exploiters/oppressors and the exploited/oppressed.  I think of it now though along with the statement by Alexandre Solzhenitzen that 'the battle line between good and evil runs through the heart of every man.' There are times and circumstances when I fill the role of the Nazi, and times when I am the Jew.  I think about this now because I have become so conscious of my complicity in so much badness throughout my long life.  It must be why for so long I have considered as my 'favorite' (a bad choice of words) bit of poetry are Yeats' lines in "Vacillation":

Responsibility so weighs me down.

Things said or done long years ago,

Or things I did not do or say

But thought that I might say or do,

Weigh me down, and not a day

But something is recalled,

My conscience or my vanity appalled.

As I think these thoughts I am reminded of a theory I heard some years ago about the Last Judgment, i.e., that the Judgment will not consist of  God or Christ weighing our deeds and separating the sheep from the goats as in Matthew 25: 31-46, but rather simply facing a mirror which reveals each of us as we were and are, no ignoring or hiding from the truth of our sins, our faults, our failings, our cruelties, our indifference to the suffering of others, just in living a life in a Consumer Culture, an America First nation.  L'enfer, c'est les autres et l'enfer, c'est moi.  We have met the enemy and he is us.  A jumble of thoughts in an old mind.

   I filled two pages of my current Canson watercolor paper booklet Chronicle.  One is a tracing and drawing of Alfred E. Neuman, and the facing page is a list of distressing current headlines regarding 1/6 coverups, gun culture, climate change, and the pandemic.  What, me worry?

    Nancy Pelosi stopped in Taiwan today with what? to gain and potentially so much to lose.  Feet of clay.

    I watched another documentary on OVID, "Wifi Howls from Happiness," about the Iranian artist/painter/sculptor Bahman Mohasses, released in 2014.  Excerpt from his conversation/monologue with the director: "I am a human rights prisoner.  A worm has the right to crawl the earth, but I don't have that right.  So when they say, democracy or dictatorship, it's all the same to me.  Democracy is just as rotten as a dictatorship.  One loses one's faith."  Reminded me, but by way of contrast, with the op-ed in this morning's NYTimes "The Violent Fantasies of Blake Masters" by Sam Adler-Bell about Masters, Peter Thiel, Curtis Yarvin, and (unmentioned) Ayn Rand.

 

0802

August 2, 2022

 Down at 10, up at 5:30, 4 pss.

     Spent quite some time messing around with a wretched attempt to paint a piece aping Munch's Madonna, not the whole figure but rather the upper torso and head.  As I expected the dark eyes, looking like adjacent coal pits, did me in.  Plus I don't know what to do with the skin tones on the torso which looks like a broad sand desert completely unlike the face.  Paint over the whole thing and save the canvas or keep seeing if anything is salvageable?

    Read Elizabeth Bishop's "A Miracle for Breakfast" which I didn't understand at all till I found a couple analyses online.  Also stumbled upon a book review in The Irish Times with a photo of Bishop with a Siamese cat on her lap, which I emailed to Sarah.

    Watched the 'town hall meeting' on Channel 12 last night featuring the Republican candidates in Wisconsin's gubernatorial primary next week.  Rebecca Kleefisch, Tim Michels (endorsed by Trump, multi-millionaire, home in Greenwich, Connecticut), and a nebbishy 3rd candidate, Tim Ramthun, who seems sincere but a bit impaired and delusional.  Michaels appears to have all the psychological makings of a total fascist, with Kleefisch not far behind.  One of them will probably be our next governor.

    We are both going through some pre-grieving, much like I did for months with Kitty.  Lilly will be 13 years old on October 8th if she makes it till then.  Each day or week it seems she shows more lack of energy and strength, especially around her hips and rear legs.  Geri had her in Cheri's backyard, visiting and playing with Oliver who is quite a bit younger than Lilly.  When Lilly got home from Cheri's, i.e., across the street, she was exhausted, panting heavily for 10 or more minutes.  At on point while playing with Oliver, her rear legs splayed outward.  We never assume she will be successful in jumping up on the couch to be next to Geri, or in jumping onto the bed with her.  We take nothing for granted about her presence in our lives, her part of each of us.  

This afternoon, Geri spent time caring for Jimmy (replacing his lost wallet, ID card, etc., shopping, etc.) and then tending her vegetable garden at David and Sharon's.  Lilly was outside for about an hour at her new 'post', in the shade of the west tree in the north yard, looking down County Line Road for Geri to return, declining my invitations to come in the house until I lured her inside by promised treats.  We are living in dread of her declining condition and of maybe soon losing her.  Kitty, Jimmy, Lilly, .. . Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death . . .

0731

July 31, 2022

 Up at 0630.  

    I turned on the TV to check out the guest and panel lineups on the Sunday morning talk shows.  I was, perhaps naively, surprised to see that Joe Manchin is the headliner on every major network. Hero/goat. Everybody is wondering whether Kirsten Sinema will get on board the Manchin/Schumer/Biden climate, prescription costs, etc., bill.  I switched to WITI local news to see how many people were shot and/or killed by gunfire last night and what the weather forecast looks like, realizing that there is a correlation between inner city shootings and homicides and summer heat waves.  The temperature and humidity go up, the killings go up.

    Watching the local newscast, I am struck, as I always am, by the tremendous vapidity of these programs.  All the on-air personnel are so very happy, happy, happy.  "We had 4 overnight shootings in Milwaukee last night, with 3 deaths including an 8-year-old girl" but, as you can tell by our lighthearted banter on the set, we won't let that sort of thing keep us from our perpetual state of on-air lightheartedness and being happy, happy, happy.  Nor will we let the shootings and homicides, the freeway drive-bys, the paralysis in Washington, the slaughter in Ukraine, the fires and floods occasioned by climate change, or anything else, prevent us from pretending to you, our viewing audience, that we are happy, happy, happy, and that we think that you are all gullible idiots.

    Finished watching the film "Memoir of War", the film adaptation of Marguerite Duras's semi-autobiographical novel  'The War: A Memoir.'  Protagonist's (Melanie Thierry) husband was deported to a German concentration camp, a reflection on the emotional turmoil, spiritual death after Germany surrenders and she waits to see if the husband will return.  "This is the end of the world. . . . A foreign land will rise out of this chaos.   Me? No place for me on this earth."   

    I tried again to do a very rough copy of Munch's Madonna, this time using grid lines.  I didn't expect the product to be very good and it isn't but I enjoyed painting it and am not finished yet by any means.  I left the big very dark eyes for tomorrow as well as the very dark bottom of her nose which looks pretty much like just a very dark triangle.  I can see now that the eyes and the nose have the potential for rendering the whole effort an occasion for a total paint over/reuse of the canvas.

0730

 July 30, 2022

A sunny Saturday, warm, humid.  Dinner with J., chicken casserole.  J. asked if he remembered correctly that 'he was moving' or 'being moved'?  Conscious of his lack of control over his life circumstances, thinking for some reason that he was moving to the west coast, to California, rather than to Virginia. Troubled by bladder urgency after dinner, though voided bladder before leaving apartment and had only a bit of iced tea at dinner.  He lives with uncertainty, confusion, discomfort and pain every day of his life, but still has the considerable residual intelligence, cognition, long term memory, and thankfully humor. 

    I drew an image of Pandora's Box in 'The Reign of [T]Error.'  Skulls emerging from the open box, issues to fight over on either side of Pandora image: rape, incest, police reporting, life of mother, health of mother, conception, implantation, fertilization, 6 weeks, 15, 24, first trimester, interstate travel, federal employees/military on federal land, etc.  Trying to find some suitable entry re loss of voting rights, assaults on what passes as 'democracy' in the U.S.

    Earlier attempt at aping Munch's Madonna a bust with lack of drawing skill, use of acrylics but may try again with grid lines, and perhaps oils.

    In bed at 9 after watching half of a pretty vapid movie about an Italian immigrant family who ran a little diner/restaurant.

Am I Still Here???

 Am I still here???

 Wondering whether my blog is still alive.