Home alone

My mate has gone to Baltimore for work and in preparation for his departure I have made myself a list of cheering things to do while he is away. It’s not just that I miss him when he is gone but that so many of the projects I work on seem to have a macabre or sorrowful element that I don’t like to work on them when I am alone nights.

In recent months I have been accidentally reading books about children with mentally ill parents. In these two books, “Swallow The Ocean” by Laura M. Flynn and “Rescuing Patty Hearst” by Virginia Holman, both stories are told by the compassionate daughters of schizophrenic mothers. The daughters are essentially my peers, and they so vividly bring to life the era of our childhoods, especially Virginia Holman who grew up in that coastal Virginia area which was so like the Virginia and Maryland of many of my formative years.

Is it comforting or voyeuristic, is it helpful or is it like pouring salt in a wound or picking a scab to read these books? Is one part of me doing research for telling my own story while another part of me balks at beginning the writing of it?

As for these books, it was I who chose them, and yet it is as if I am still reading them by accident.

I have also been reading about adventurous lives and tragic deaths in Africa and in Texas desert settings. I am attracted to tv programs like Dateline and 20/20 or to survival shows like "I Shouldn’t Be Alive".

The kid’s book I am writing on has some very frightening supernatural scenes. Meanwhile I have been transcribing WWII documents.

So these projects will be put on the backburner for a few days and I will focus on other tasks. I have picked out two easy on the heart and mind books from the library: Nora Ephron’s "I Remember Nothing" and Gretchen Rubin’s "The Happiness Project."

And I intend to work on household projects and the feral cat project.

Out with winter and in with Spring. Out with Fall actually. I found a beautiful basket of red and gold leaves and acorns on the counter so I will take them back to the outdoors.

Winter and I could be best friends if it would just leave after two weeks.

But it’s been a nice weekend. We went and heard some Schumann, Chopin, Schubert. I particularly recommend listening to Chopin’s Ballade No. 4 in f minor, op. 52.
You know the one:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=br1HnIqflt0


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DqihZwPkkGo

My mate walks in from the grocery store and tells me he wanted to bring me a present from the store and couldn’t find anything so he made a donation to fight Muscular Dystrophy in my name. I tell him thank you. One of my best girlfriends in high school had MD, and one of my favorite adult friends also has it. Both are individuals with incredibly admirable unstoppable spirits. You must know folks like this too.

Today my mate and I are off to look at birds on the Navesink. A flock of something has landed on the water and we shall go investigate. (They turned out to be incredible flocks of greater scaup, with some ruddy ducks and brants thrown in, and also many swans.)

I want to see an art house movie and I wish one of you, my girlfriends, was here to see it with me. My man likes action movies. I already subjected him to "Blue Valentine" and "The Girl Who Played with Fire" recently. This will be two hours in pastoral England I think. Care for a cup of tea? Want to come over? If you can’t make it I understand.

But I will be thinking of you and wishing you were here.