It Waxes Wet

It's raining today, for the first time in memory it seems (when did it last rain on a weekend?) and rainy days, when I can be inside my room with a few dim lamps to cast a warm glow, make me contemplative. I'm so contemplative now, peacefully so—thoughts keep meandering in and out of my head, some sad, but not painfully so. Plaintive are my thoughts today.
I don't know where I'm going. Or who I am. But I don't want to wrestle with these questions, especially not now. I thought, I need to get out of my own head. So I volunteered, briefly, at the Hospice of Leesville. I was assigned to three women, two of them dying in the Alzheimer's Ward. It's so depressing going there that I haven't been in nearly a month. That makes me feel selfish. Getting out of my own head put me back there with a vengeance.
I want to be useful to someone. I watch my sister with her baby and think—I want someone to need me that way. I want to me a mother. I taste the word mother in my mouth and it's foreign but somehow it feels like it could be right. A squeeze into a shoe too small, but once you've worn it around for a while, it becomes your favorite pair. I love wacky metaphor.
But how to become one? Of course I want love, romantic love. I want it in and of itself, not as a means or an end to a baby. I want my wish for a baby to be a mirror of the love I have for this phantom-father. A person I love so much that to have his child would be the greatest thing I could think to do for him. Something like that. Do I romanticize things too much? I think I do. I think I'll read this a day from now and roll my eyes at myself.
I'm so longing. Every cell in my being is longing, pulling outwards for something else than just me. It's like I'm magnetic and being pulled towards another magnet but I can't see it or know what direction it is. And I think this feeling is pulling me towards love, but maybe it isn't.
It's a waxing crescent tonight and I want someone to gaze at the barely-visible moon with me. Someone I like, not just anybody. Hardly anyone would please me. (Though I would never let on, feigning temperance and sweetness as I do.)
I'll stomp my foot and be done with this tantrum. Listen to the Icelandic lullaby and my pretty room and my dog, who loves me, and who I love, and be happy.

I Know Not Where I Go

I Know Not Where I Go

I'm lonesome for I know not what —
The North Star told me so;
though south I travel every day,
due north at night I go.

The sun arcs high from east to west,
its backdrops rearrange—
and during day the south is warm,
the north is gray and strange.

As dusk begins to blush such hues
as only fall leaves know,
the North Star gleams, it shines its eye—
it knows I do not know.

That bright star points my way back home
where those who love me best
are deep entranced in this and that
and leave me to my rest.

I'm lonesome for I know not what
the sun climbs towards the west—
according to our deeds, we live;
at night the robins nest.

But I can't help but wander to
and even further fro;
the North Star disappears in day—
I know not where I go.

A Visit to the Alzheimer's Ward

The old woman in the Alzheimer's ward wore a wide-brimmed straw hat, affixed to her head by a tie that wrapped around her mottled chin. Her hair was thin but long. She wore a pair of khaki capris and a lavender knit sweater that was missing all but one button.

"I'm going to go home soon and get more buttons to sew on my sweater," she said.

"But home's so far away."

"How far away is home?" I asked.

"Five miles," she said.

"That's not too far," I said.

"It is if you're in a wheelchair."

Then she said, "Daddy bought me this hat. So I don't get sunburned in the fields."

"It's a beautiful hat," I said.

"He bought me these shoes too," she said. "Daddy loves red. He has a pair too."

She sported a pair of red tennis shoes, and lifted her leg, her calves purple from poor circulation, to show me.

We sat in silence for a few minutes. She reached for my hand and I took it. I rubbed it gently but didn't say anything. I couldn't think of anything to say.

Then she said, again, "Home's so far away."

Her eyes glazed a little, but then she focused on me; she spoke of her brothers; she said they were too young for school.

"How old are they?" I asked.

"Two and four," she said.

"That is too young," I said. "Who else is in your family?"

"I have two grandmothers. Elizabeth's the name of one of them, but I can't remember my other grandmother's name. They're nice to me but they don't visit much."

A few more minutes of silence, then, for a few moments back in the present, she said, "They're both dead now."

I kept hold of her hand. "They're still with you, though."

She didn't seem to comprehend me. She only repeated, "My daddy bought me this hat. I won't get sunburned in it."

"I know you won't. Your skin is so fair you wouldn't want to take that chance."

She laughed and I laughed with her.

I sati with her for a few more minutes, then hugged her and said I had to go.

"Do you really have to leave?" she asked.

"No, I can stay a little longer."

We sat in silence; she noticed lights reflecting from the windows. She sat and gazed at me.

I asked her what she was thinking and she said, "My daddy bought me this hat."

"Your father's a good man. He must care a lot about you to buy you such pretty things," I said.

"He is," she said. "I think he'll come visit soon."

"Well, until he does, you have the hat to remind you of him," i said.

Finally, I released her hand, gently, and got up to leave.

"I'll come back tomorrow or the next day and we can talk some more," I said. "If you wouldn't mind talking to me."

"Just come find me," she said, and leaned in as if to hug me. I embraced her, then kissed her gently on the cheek.

"it was good to see you. I'll see you again soon," I said, then walked away from her.

Love is not love which alters

"These violent delights have violent ends and in their triumph die like fire and powder, which as they kiss, consume."

I love Shakespeare. Why don't I read more of him? Right at this very moment, at 9:34 central standard time on March 29, 2010 I'd gladly admit to Shakespeare being my favorite poet/playwright/author/muse of all time.

"It is the cause, it is the cause my soul." Okay. Enough hackneyed quotation. I ought to break open my Shakespeare anthology and do some reading, but it's so time intensive; I like to study the character list at the beginning for a while, so I have a gist for who is who before the play begins. And that's an hour. Then the play, which is not hard reading, once you get into the Elizabethan language, but Shakespeare's one of those authors you can't skim. Well, you can, but you're just a pontificating ignoramus if you do it. So don't. Savor the lines. Iambic or blank.

Sunset

Who was the first person on earth to describe a sunrise or sunset as fiery? What a revelation it must have seemed at the time. to be the first to compare the dancing orange of flame to the sky at dusk and dawn.
The comparison is so trite now, but is it any less true? Can we still sing the same song over and over and over again and take pleasure in the hearing, in the performance, in the song? Or does the ecstasy we find in the music depend not in the times we hear it but in quality of the melody?