Art and the end of the world

In this isolated new world of video mentoring, I talk with artists all over the country. One of my favorite pep talk mantras is the world needs your art. I usually say this in response to their complaints that they are afraid to put their work out in the world so people can buy it. "What if no one likes it?" they say. They are afraid to set prices. Posting their art to social media is terrifying. Anything but my art! Such tender self-centeredness. As if anyone cares. 

"The world needs your art," I tell them. "We are given creative gifts to share them with others."

Of course, this is total hooey. I am implying that whatever "gifts" we are given are magically bestowed upon us by some sort of power outside of ourselves. Call it the Universe, call it Goddess, call it the Muse, the assumption is that our creative "gifts" came out of the womb with us, like our skin and bones. 

Moreover, it's our job to make our creative gifts manifest. Didn't some old dude say if we don't bring forth what is within us, what is within us will destroy us? So refreshing. Nothing gets me inspired to make art like the threat that I'll be obliterated if I don't.

Anyway, the point is, I tell artists it's their job to make art. 

I think I need to stop doing that. I'm reinforcing their delusion that their creativity is something special. It's not special. Everyone is creative. Not everyone is an "artist," if you are using a strict definition of the term, but every person alive must exercise creativity in order to stay that way. As soon as they learn how to scream, kids are masters at creative manipulation. Adults don't usually resort to screaming, but they are equally manipulative in their efforts to get their way. That sometimes takes ingenuity and innovation. In other words, creativity. So, just because you think you are an artist doesn't make you special. In that sense, everyone is an artist.

A few days ago, I realized I've committed a sin even more egregious. In encouraging artists to produce more art, I am indirectly contributing to an unsustainable pattern of production and consumption that relies on manipulation in order to function. It's a self-destructive cycle. 

Sut Jhally identified this cycle years ago in his film Advertising and the End of the World. I used to teach marketing and advertising at a career college. The marketing program was on its last legs, so usually there was no more than a handful of students in the program at any one time. Sometimes I had classes with only one student. Once every ten weeks, I rented Jhally's film from the library and showed it on a VHS player. I don't remember my students being terribly impressed. The message scared the living crap out of me.

Over the past few years, I have moved from fear to despair. It's too late to save the human species. If there is some sort of rescue coming, perhaps from space aliens or a magical melding of human consciousness into one wise mind, it will likely happen after I'm dead. (I'd love to see what American politicians do with an influx of extraterrestrials.) Meanwhile, what does it matter if millions of mediocre artists create millions of Sculpey animals, acrylic pour paintings, and plastic-bead portraits of Mickey Mouse? Who cares if our creativity ends up in landfills? Who cares if the oceans are more plastic than fish? Oh, poor whales, poor turtles. What's a few species in the big scheme of geological time? Species come and go. Nothing and nobody is special. I find it reassuring to realize the earth will remain until the sun goes pop. 

Artists, I'm doubling down. Go ahead, fill up your garage with oil paintings nobody will ever buy. Promote your crappy art on websites nobody will ever visit. Post your stuff on social media in the deluded belief that you have control over the algorithms. Who am I to rain on your parade? If it makes you happy to believe you will become rich and famous selling your insipid pour paintings, go for it. We passed the tipping point a long time ago. Choose your deck chair. 

Blood on the keyboard

Oregon gave away free money earlier this month. I didn't find out I qualified for some until a couple days ago, long after the funds ran out. I don't care. My main concern is laundry. I haven't been able to get near the bank to replenish my stash of quarters for two weeks because of that free money giveaway. Long lines of unsocially distant desperate people wrapped around the bank every time I trolled through the parking lot. No way am I going to stand in line for quarters. So I'm doing my laundry by hand in the tub.

I guess in a pandemic I need to make some allowances for comfort. Wearing cardboard underpants is one of those allowances. My skivvies are stiff and ripply like crepe paper but I'm getting used to it. Once I've broken them in, it's really not much like wearing hair shirts. I'm not suffering. It's like being back in college. Back then I was oblivious because of substance abuse. Washing clothes in the sink was part of the adventure. Now I'm oblivious because of exhaustion and old age.

Speaking of self-flagellation, I am hopeful that my family and I have found a new facility to receive our maternal parental unit. With the expert help of a placement advisor, we have located a care home in my neighborhood. We haven't signed anything yet. We have some questions to ask. But I'm hopeful that the search is successfully ended and in about thirty days, the chore of moving the old lady and her stuff can begin. I wish I could just put her into storage. I wonder if my vertigo will ease up when this task is finally done. 

Speaking of exhaustion, Portland is coming undone. It is unsettling to see Portland in the national news for so many weeks. My first thought is, ha, the joke is on you, to all the people who moved to Portland for its mellow laid-back vibe. Then I remember violence is a tragic expression of an unmet need, and I feel sad. I can't unravel all the needs entangled in the nightly riots I see on the news. I can't stop picking at my cuticles. Yesterday I felt something weird while I was typing and saw blood on my keyboard. 

I'm starting to create conspiracy theories in my head to explain the madness. Unsubstantiated theories comfort in times of distress. Maybe liberals are a little behind in the production of creative conspiracy theories, but I'm sure if we do a little brainstorming, we could catch up. Like, for instance, what if the rioters who are looting and breaking things are really minions of Mordor out to make the peaceful protesters look bad? Yeesh! Would humans actually do something so cunning and cruel? Today my brain wandered into the bizarre possibility that they sacrificed one of their own for the cause. How insane is that? But, I ask you, is there evidence to the contrary? I mean, can you prove the moon isn't made of green cheese? 

My protection is to hide in my burrow, keep my head down, and attract as little attention as possible. I wash a few pairs of socks and a couple t-shirts every night, marveling at how everything I wear is some shade of gray, even when it started out white or black. After I wring out the water and hang things to dry on hangers from the window sill over the tub, I watch the news and cringe when the Eye of Sauron looks our way. I feel sick when I realize how many wackjobs live in this city, possibly just yards away from my doorstep. My illusory bubble is evaporating. I wear my pastel plaid face mask and imagine I have a target on my back.

Summer is ending and I haven't properly sweated yet. I've cried some, though. I miss my cat. I miss my mom. I never thought I'd say it, but I miss being around people. 

Almost time to roll credits

Near the end of most romantic comedies, a moment arrives that lets you know a change has occurred. The hero has been driving all night. The montage of headlights, dotted lines, and highway signs flows into a calm sunrise to represent the hero emerging from the dark night of the soul into a new day, transformed somehow, usually by grief or remorse or chagrin. The hero realizes the answer was love all along, or moving home, or apologizing, or singing outside someone's window holding a boombox. The music swells—usually violins—as the hero crests the hill or lands at the airport or whatever and sees the ocean, or the city, or the house, or the love object. When that moment comes, you know credits will soon be rolling up your screen and you can head for the bathroom.

Lately I'm hearing that music when I drive home from my mother's nursing home. I used to call it her retirement home—an unsettling euphemism for a warehouse where old people are sent to die. Now I call it the nursing home, because as she slides deeper into dementia, she's clearly way past the retirement phase of her stay there and there's no use pretending she's going to suddenly start knitting again or playing bingo with the other old ladies.

The music isn't anything specific, usually. Usually Marketplace is on when I get into my car and turn on the radio. It's not like my drive has changed. The restaurants with their optimistic welcome back, we missed you signs look pretty much the same every day, rain or shine. A smattering of cars in their parking lots, a few aggressive drivers on the road, and the sun setting in my eyes over the mountain I live on. Same destination, nothing fancy, nothing new, just my kitchen and my computer and the bad news about the corona virus. It's more of a feeling that a change is coming. 

I visit my mother's window every evening like a hopeful peeping Tom, peering through the screen with the sun reflecting in my eyes. What I hope to see is my mother just arriving from dinner, still alert enough to visit for sixty seconds at the window before she sinks limply on the couch. Earlier this week the nurse called to say they were going to let her take her meals in the dining room. Mom wasn't into eating her meals all alone from a tray in her room. Losing weight, headed south, yada yada. The past couple days she's been more alert. If I time my visit right, I can catch her before she fades.

Yesterday I was too late and she'd already settled into the black hole. I thumbed the button on the parental baby monitor unit and said softly, "Hello Sleeping Beauty, are you awake?" 

She opened her eyes and looked at me. I moved from the screen to look through the glass and pulled my mask down so she could see my face. She gave me a childlike grin and waved. 

"Hey, Ma," I said, waving. "It's me at your window again."

She gazed at me, smiling. After a long moment, her voice came through the monitor in my hand: "There's my Carol." 

"How ya doin', Ma?" I asked, hands cupped around my eyes, trying to see through the reflection. 

"Not too bad," she said as her eyes were closing.

"Okay, I'll let you sleep," I said. "I'll see you tomorrow. Tomorrow, tomorrow . . ." 

"Tomorrow, tomorrow," she sang back, and opened her eyes to give me our version of the high-five—the peace sign. I returned it and leaned over the waist-high bush to put my nose on the glass. I can't quite lean far enough to kiss it, and you know, cooties. I try not to think about all the bitty spiders that are jumping from the bush to the front of my jacket.

"Tomorrow, tomorrow, I'll love ya, tomorrow," I sang, off key of course, because I can't sing very well. Who cares, not me, I never see any other family members out there peering in their loved ones' windows doing their best to keep them alive by sheer force of willpower. I'm alone except for the occasional dive-bombing crested blue jay guarding a nest I suspect is in the gutter overhead. I wave goodbye, pull up my mask, and head back to my car.

She's pulling away, she's receding from me. It tears me up but I'm doing my best to be there for her. I read that our hearing is the last of our senses to leave us when we are dying. I hope that I'll be with my mother when she leaves. If I am, no matter who is listening, even if I'm bundled head to toe in PPE, I'll be singing the Happy Wanderer into her hearing aid as she goes over the crest of the hill. Roll credits, but not yet, not quite yet.

Looking for the new normal

Ah, ah, ah, ah, stayin' alive, stayin' alive. Sing it with me. Come on, Blobgots, I mean Blogbots, you know you want to, let me hear you bellow it out from your Zoom rooms. All you tiny squares, you. Dance too, if you feel like it, because I guarantee you, few of us are watching. It's too hard to see you against all your household detritus. You might consider noticing all the knick-knacks and gewgaws on the shelves behind you. Because we are. Oh, and please, some of you should dust off that ceiling fan, because that is all we can see of you when you Zoom on your smartphone.

I Zoom in front of a black curtain, because, well, you know, it's basically curtains for the human species from here on out. I don't know about you, but I am finding out a pandemic definitely complicates the chore of living. Everything seems more difficult. Maybe because everything is. I deserve a medal for just getting out of bed.

Being stuck at home means I'm excruciatingly aware of my physical presence in relation to the outside world. Did I bring the virus home with me today from the grocery store? Are my surfaces clean? Did something come in on my shoes, besides the usual bird poop and pollen? Did I scoop some of the virus into my lungs this week? Is this violent set of ten sneezes from breathing in birch tree pollen or COVID19? Did I transmit a tiny bit of virus to my mother's hearing aids, even though I wore a mask and gloves and sat outside the nursing home on a hard wooden bench when I swapped out the batteries last Sunday?

This stupid virus has made me ultra-conscious of my body. I'm experiencing corporeal disintegration  in real time. I can't point to any specific injury or illness. Rather, I'm riding a slow decline. The changes I see and feel are so gradual, I hardly notice them, until suddenly I realize it hurts to stand up, it hurts to bend over, it hurts to stretch, it hurts to breathe. Every damn thing hurts but not enough to take a pill and not enough to conclude it's the end. It's so odd to witness my activities become more and more constrained, like I'm standing outside myself watching the erosion of a shaky earthen dam. Do I try to patch the holes? What would that look like? People much older than I am push back against age. I doubt if I'm one of them. One marathon was enough for me.

Life as I knew it ended in January when my cat died. Already reeling from shock, it didn't really feel much more shocking when the virus came to town. First my cat, and then the pandemic. My response was, right, that makes sense. Total catastrophe is the only logical outcome. Finally, the chronic malcontent is vindicated. Since COVID19, it seems as if the world has joined me in my grief. My sadness is magnified a thousand fold everywhere I look. Even the stories of heroes, supposed to be uplifting, make me weep with despair. Nothing will ever be the same, not for me, not for any of us. I'm grieving a loss of innocence—I guess it is the illusion that the world was safe, that I was in control of my life, that I could predict what would happen next.

For some reason, I woke up the other night at exactly 3:45 a.m. and saw the final super moon of the year at its apogee, blazing brighter than a streetlight through the trees over the shoulder of the mountain. During the four-hour lull when the buses stop running, nights are dead silent up here on the hill. It's so loud I can hardly think. I am both alive and dead, like Schrodinger's cat, hunkered in a box originally of my own making but perpetuated by obligation, circumstance, and COVID19. I can't fully live until the maternal parental unit dies. But once she's gone, the box is open. I'm set free (assuming I outlast her), but the price is her death. And where would I go, how would I move, in a pandemic?

She's having a harder time getting up from her couch to visit me at the window. She shifts her fanny , then leans forward until she's got both hands flat on her coffee table. Slowly she gets her feet under her. I say, “Use your walker!” She pretends not to hear me. Bent at ninety degrees, she shuffles toward the window by hanging onto to her coffee table, then along the top of her flat-screen TV (pausing to read the sticky note I put there many months ago: Turn the TV on and off here, with an arrow pointing to the button), and finally, reaching the window. Clutching the window sill, she straightens up to look at me and smiles. She knows me. I'm never sure, until she smiles.

I remember when she used to walk me to the back door and we sang She'll be coming round the mountain together, me the thready alto, her the raspy tenor. The past two nights, she hasn't felt inclined to come to the window. I don't know if two data points make a pattern. Maybe we have a new normal. Every damn day is a new normal. After a while, normal ceases to have any meaning.

Manifesting introversion

The world has gone mad. Blogger has zeroed out all my view counts. It's official. I have ceased to exist. I always suspected I wasn't real. Now I know. All sound and fury, signifying a failed attempt to garner attention. Clearly, no one cares. I guess we all have better things to do with our time now, right? Like worry about our unkempt hair. I have to laugh when I see shaggy-headed women carrying placards reading Open up the country. I need a haircut. Poor dears. It's moments like these I am grateful I am so self-contained. Not only to I do my own nails but I also do my own hair. I have the photos to prove it.

There's only one thing I want and I can't have it, so as a second choice, I have decided to see if I can practice my visualization technique to manifest something. I'm willing to start small. Manifesting stuff hasn't really worked before but I'm feeling lucky. Today, I would like to manifest some glow-in-the-dark paint. I'm not sure why, exactly. I just think it might be entertaining to have arrows to guide me around my dark apartment at night when I am wandering with insomnia.

I often wake up thinking about my mother. Usually I have a playlist running in my head, whatever I listened to before taking my nightly bath and going to bed. Last night I watched a YouTube video of the life of Cher so I woke up humming If I could turn back time. I'm not a big Cher fan; as a former fashionista, I was more focused on Bob Mackie. Still, that song seems like a good theme for an insomniac during a pandemic.

The news is not all bad. I'm heartened to see images of wild animals taking over empty roads, city streets, and yards, raiding refrigerators and busting into cars. Right on! I read that birds are altering their songs now that the world is quieter. I saw video of jellyfish in a Venetian canal. If we humans all just go away, the world will be fine. I'm willing to consider going away.

Then again, half the population would be delighted to kill off everyone over sixty. I reconsider my willingness to consider going away. I won't go willingly, I just decided. You'll have to take me out back and shoot me.

I did my part to tickle the economy by replenishing some footwear I have needed for several years. I didn't want to buy from the big mean online megastore so I bought from a different online megastore I hoped was less mean. How can you tell? I heard some American brands aren't paying their overseas contractors. This is not a good time to be poor. Hmm. Is there ever a good time, I wonder? Before I clicked the button, I gave some thought to the plight of the workers who would pick and wrap my package and the delivery driver who would drop the box on my porch, pound on the door, and run. Then I clicked the button. I could almost hear the funds draining out of my bank account into the pockets of the big online megastore.

I wonder how much my insurance rates would go up if I decided to become a delivery driver? Several months ago, I applied to be a Census taker, just for the experience. That so far has tanked; for me, I think that ship sailed over the edge of the earth. I could probably be a candidate for contact tracing training. You know, calling people to ask them where they went and who they talked to before they got sick. Ugh. Yeah, probably delivering footwear would be a better fit for me. I don't really like people up close, and I really dislike them on the phone.

Speaking of phones and people, I video chatted twice today, once with a friend and an hour later with my sister. I told my friend I thought that over the next several years, families with children (and resources, of course) would start migrating out of cities into rural farmland, seeking safety, space, and sustenance from the land. My friend listened thoughtfully and said, wow. We discussed the possibility that red counties could start turning purple. In contrast, my sister said she didn't think that would ever happen. I get the feeling she doesn't like to think about the possibilities of large cultural change. I mentioned my belief that we'd soon have robots doing personal care. She rolled her eyes. (Don't you love video chat?) I didn't tell her my other predictions about how children will learn to distrust people from outside their family tribe, or how there will likely be less personal privacy, or how new houses will be built with self-contained quarantine units.

I admit, I don't like change either. I'm still pissed off that all the hair on my legs has migrated to my eyebrows, nostrils, and upper lip. But like I said last time, what is fair to the cat is not always fair to the mouse. Or the other cat.

An acquaintance who works in the alternative wellness industry called me last week. As we were talking, I coughed. A short dry cough. Twice. Sounding alarmed, she asked me if I was sick. I said no, I just have allergies. Later in the conversation, I told her that I would be disinclined to sit in a small meeting room with a group of people anytime in the near future. Sounding amazed, she asked me why. I said because I would feel bad if I unknowingly spread the virus to someone in the group and they got sick or died. She had no response. I chalked it up to her youth.

Since then, I have asked several people how comfortable they would be going back to the old way of gathering in groups. Even my older friends are itching to hug their friends. I seem to be the only one reluctant. I guess in my case, introversion is sort of like a disease. Too bad it's not contagious. It could save your life.

What's fair to the cat

It's a great time to be a microbe. Seven billion humans on the planet means lots of moist juicy lungs to explore, conveniently crowded into densely populated cities. All you can eat, always open, never closed! It's spring break on the beach for COVID-19. The umbrella in the drink is humans' confounded propensity to move from place to place even when told to stay put—free mass transit, bring your family! Over eons, microbes always win the day, mostly by stealthily being too tiny for humans to see. However, humans are crafty, too, so I wouldn't count us out just yet.

It's hard for one person to eradicate the invisible. Just because I can't see it, doesn't mean it isn't there, lurking on my doorknobs, infesting my gear shift, congregating on my gaudy tatty plastic shopping bags. I should invent a bug bomb for humans, like we have for buildings. Just zip yourself into this here plastic body bag, hold your breath for a minute or so, and (if you don't suffocate), you will emerge sparkling clean, disinfected of every germ, even the ones you need, whoops. Well, I'll let you know when I have a working prototype. Maybe it shouldn't look like a body bag. The images I'm seeing daily on the news would probably not do much to boost sales. 

This pandemic is a slow-moving tornado, scouring the entire world. All we need now are a few real tornadoes to really put paid to the futility of human existence. The terrible choice is to find shelter together or die alone. Maybe more like, die now or die later. What are we surviving for? Does it matter? The U.S. economy is bleeding commerce, cash, workers, and customers . . . seeing a tornado kick a dead carcass isn't exactly a top headline. I hope no one dies, but well, like I said, die now or die later. 

Just a few long months ago, I used to drive the back road to my mother's nursing home. As I drove, I often said to myself, someday I won't have to do this anymore. I won't park under this tree. I won't stroll to the back door and enter the code. I won't stride along the hallway past the dining room, greeting the same people everyday heading painstakingly back to their rooms. I won't stop and check my mother's mailbox. I won't enter her room, saying howdy, howdy, Slacker if she's sacked out on her couch. I used to think, someday all this will be in my rear view mirror, a blur blending with all the other actions I've repeatedly taken and then suddenly stopped. Jobs. Schools. Relationships. The habit of participation seems forever engraved in my behavior until suddenly it's not. I'm amazed at how quickly I can let those old “habits” go, yet how stubbornly my compulsions live on.  

I expected my nightly ritual would end when my mother died. I did not anticipate that the ritual would end because of a pandemic. Now my ritual has shifted. Now I park in front, in the near-empty parking lot. I put on a mask. I gather a few items into my pocket and head past the front door, along the side of the building to my mother's window, where I peer into the gloom. I want to say, this is so unfair (to me). Then I remember, what's fair to the cat is not fair to the mouse. Right now, I'm the mouse. I have the whiskers to prove it.

She's always on the couch. Sometimes she's sitting up, eating her dinner or watching TV. Sometimes she's stretched out under her blue plaid blanket, eyes slitted, mouth open. When I tap on the window, she jerks to awareness like a wind-up doll. In slow motion, she gets to her feet, bent over at a right angle, and totters to the window, holding onto the coffee table, then the arm of the couch, then the top of the TV (I know!), and then the windowsill. She's a fall risk, a disaster waiting to happen. But aren't we all, these days.

The spring weather means her window is ajar just an inch, enough for her to hear my voice if the TV is not too loud. Some days, she doesn't seem inclined to engage. Other days, she's alert and talkative. I don't know why. I show her whatever little photo I have brought to add to her window collage. I tape it into an empty space. So far the one she seems to like best is an old photo of her as a child with her older brother and their dog, Tippy. She didn't mention her brother, but she murmured Tippy a couple times. 

A few days ago, one of the nursing home residents was sent to the ER where he/she/they tested positive for COVID-19. The nursing home administrator sent out an emotional email to family. Kudos to her for keeping us informed; bad news is better than no news. I'm doing a pretty good job of staying out of the wreckage of the future. Everything depends on how vigilant the staff have been. It's out of my hands. Symptoms take time to appear. So now we wait to see if a few wild viruses will make the leap to party in my mother's fragile lungs. 

Alone. Alone, alone, alone

Foraging for food has taken on a new tension in this surreal new world order. Never my favorite chore, now going to the grocery store means venturing into an enclosed space that could be swarming with hungry viruses. Certainly, the store is swarming with tense, anxious, fretting, hungry humans, all bent on cornering just slightly more than their fair share of the last box of whatever. Fear and greed make a frightening combination.

Yesterday, I prepared my purple rubber gloves, put a face mask in my pocket just in case I started coughing, and drove to the store, ready for anything. I put the gloves on and trudged to the entrance, keeping a wary distance, thinking to myself, am I six feet from that guy? Does it matter if we are both facing in the same direction, or is it more dangerous if we are facing toward each other? Wait, why is he stopping? Should I stop too, like keeping two car lengths from the guy in front of me?

Oh, no, can I go around this slow guy without getting creamed by cars pulling up to the front door to disgorge a horde of people of all ages who I assume are all part of the same COVID-19 death squad, wait, I mean, family?

I guess if you are all part of one COVID-19 pod, you sink or swim together. That is sort of sweet, in a Three Musketeers kind of way. All for one, one for all, together we die, although we'd have a better chance if we spread out a little. But hey, we're family, and family stick together, right? I wouldn't know. My family has always preferred being far-flung.

Inside the door, the cart arena was almost empty. Most of the carts were apparently out in the parking lot. As I grabbed one of the last carts, praying it didn't have a hitch in its gitalong, I saw the cart wrangler leading a caravan of carts from the hinterlands. Ah, replenishments. Now if only the shelves were equally as replenished.

I donned my purple gloves but left my face mask in my pocket. We don't need the mask unless we are spewing germs, right? I'm not clear on the purpose of the gloves and face mask. Am I trying to keep viruses in or out? This is so confusing. Of course, I don't want to transmit something to someone, especially if I don't know if I'm sick with something gruesome like a killer virus. If I am going to transmit something to someone, it better be for a good reason, you know, because I don't like them and want them to feel as wretched as I do. But I'm not sick. I don't think. At least, before I went to the store, I could say with some certainty that I wasn't sick. But who knows now. I went to the store. Who knows what I touched. All my zucchini and apples could be contaminated with viruses just waiting to jump onto my unprotected hands. From there, it's an easy jump to my mouth. Agh, I rubbed my eyes once or twice yesterday! I washed my hands, multiple times, and I wiped down surfaces inside my car, but did I wash up after transporting the zucchini into the fridge? Oh my god, I'm doomed.

In the store, I observed some shocking behavior, mostly from myself. I drove my shopping cart with purpose, making eye contact sparingly, as if minimizing eye contact equated with minimizing air space. I think I read that the virus needs prolonged contact to make the leap between respiratory tracts, so if I whizz by a shopper in the frozen vegetables aisle, I'm probably okay, right? Especially if I don't make eye contact. I can do this. I quickly filled my cart with all the items on my list. I was especially happy to see there were some boxes of facial tissue on the shelf. Bigger boxes than I would normally buy, but in allergy season, I've been going through tissues like, well, like the virus going through a crowd of drunken teenagers on a Florida beach. I grabbed three boxes because I was running low.

No lollygagging in the produce today, wondering what parsnips taste like. I made it to the checkout line in record time. As I waited my turn, I felt a nudge from behind me. The old guy in line behind me at the checkout, ungloved and unmasked and wiping his dripping nose with a tissue, seemed to be trying to push his cart past me, even though there was no space for two carts.

“Hi, are you okay?” I asked politely, thinking I could get irate, but now is the time for compassion, let's practice your promise of being loving and kind in this challenging new world.

He smiled and mumbled something. I realized English was not his first language. I nodded my head and started putting my vegetables and tissue boxes on the conveyor belt. He backed off.

The customer ahead of me wore a face mask but no gloves. He poked the credit card gizmo with his bare fingers. That strategy was exactly the opposite of my strategy. I wondered if I had got the whole thing wrong, that I should be protecting my lungs rather than my fingers? Oh boy. This apocalypse is confusing.

I did my best to show appreciation to the checker, an older gal who wore her glasses on a string. I wondered if I was old enough to start doing that and if it would help me cope with my trauma.

“I sure do appreciate you being here today,” I said as she started scanning my modest collection of items.

“Essential workers,” she said grimly. “That's what they are calling us.” I got the impression she would rather have been at home. Not much I could say to that.

“Oh, you can only get one paper product per household,” she said after scanning two boxes of tissues. She put two boxes aside. I forlornly bagged the one box that passed the scan, thinking, dang, I hope my allergies will be calm this week or I'll be honking into my fingers over the sink.

When I got home, once again there was no place to park. My neighbors have embraced the shelter-in-place order by taking all the parking spaces. Not only that, they seem to spend all their time doing laundry.

After disinfecting my car, putting away my possibly contaminated apples and zucchini, and washing my hands several times singing the Alphabet Song, I checked my receipt. Of course, I was charged for two boxes of tissue. I now possess a very expensive box of tissue, perhaps the last box of tissue I will ever be allowed to purchase, if the world of paper products implodes along with everything else. I should probably have the box bronzed or encased in resin or something, a testament to a time when we bought expensive products to wipe our noses and then discarded them into the every-growing waste stream that will eventually choke us all to death.

Tonight, as I've been doing for the past two weeks, I'll drive over to my Mom's nursing home, wave at her through the window, note how the pace of her decline seems to be accelerating, and drive home.

Well, on that happy note, I'm signing off from the Love Shack, wallowing in self-isolation, which for me is pretty much no different than the life I normally lead. That is to say, alone again, naturally.

Don't cry, it's just the end of civilization, not the end of the world

Today was a lovely spring Wednesday in Mt. Tabor Park. With all this extra time on our hands, and all this lovely sunshine after last week's bizarre snow storm, a walk in the park seemed like the thing to do. On Wednesdays, no cars are allowed to drive in the park. Thus, one day a week, the roads are filled with bicyclists, pedestrians, runners, and skateboarders. I walked diffidently along the park roads, rather than along the foot trails where I usually walk, making sure not to spew germs. As I walked, I watched to see if others were maintaining proper social distance.

I wasn't surprised to see families clustered together, walking dogs, riding miniature pink bikes, skipping and singing. I smiled at the little vectors of disease as they pedaled by, giving me sidelong glances. School has been cancelled for what, a week, now? Any moment, some of those little vermin will start to whine and cough. Wonder how that will work out. I have visions of virus sheriffs nailing doors shut, guns at the ready. These families walked near me, not three feet away in some cases, apparently not caring that I myself could be a vector of disease, a carrier, a spreader, a Typhoid Mary.

Lots of couples walked close together, some actually arm in arm! I can't look at television images of people shaking hands or kissing now without feeling queasy. It's the same feeling I have when I see old movies in which people drove without seat belts, smoked like chimneys, and littered without thinking. Eeewww. How could they have done that? I predict in only a few months, movies showing people snuggling and kissing will be X-rated. Images of men shaking hands will elicit groans from the audiences now too freaked out to watch movies with anyone else but still remembering how great it felt, sort of, to be touched by another person. No big surprise, the couples in the park ignored me as if I weren't there. Nobody notices old women.

In fact, the only park goers who stopped, stepped off the trail, or made wide detours near me were old women like me. We came close enough to make eye contact, but just a wary glance, as if we were assessing the risk of a rabid rush, a bite on the leg, a cough in the face. I smiled the thin-lipped smile I reserve for times when I am anxious but determined to acknowledge another person's presence despite my discomfort. I tried not to feel rejected or disappointed that my airspace was no longer tolerable.

The desire to make others feel okay is strong in me. My codependent nature wants everyone to feel safe and happy so they won't kill me. That used to mean smiling, waving, moving closer, patting, touching, shaking hands. Now taking care of others means avoiding them, shunning them, keeping my hands, voice, and breath to myself.

I'm finding some comfort in the stories of earth's ability to bounce back now that we have quit polluting the air and water. We thought it couldn't be done, that pie-in-the-sky climate agreement in which we cut our consumption so the earth can survive. Look at us now, cutting our consumption in half, at least. It's a sad but delicious irony that this pandemic will reduce the world's population and pollution load to the point at which some of humanity might survive.

Mom didn't have a great day today, I heard. She was asleep on the couch when I peered in her window this evening. Her eyes were closed; her mouth was open. Her dinner was untouched on the coffee table. I taped a little photo of a bouquet of daisies to the outside of her window, adding to the growing collection of clippings: flowers, a leprechaun, and my siblings faces taped to pink hearts. Then I just stood there and watched my mother breathe, as if I were watching a movie of a quiet peaceful moment in someone else's life.

The Chronic Malcontent does her part to flatten the curve

Last week I did a stupid thing. I went to the hospital lab to get my blood drawn for a cholesterol test I've been postponing for months. I guess I'm trying to check all the tasks off my list before the virus kills me. As I sat in the waiting room watching people who arrived after me be invited into the inner sanctum, I had some time to reflect (indulge in self-pity). I had some trepidation that a hospital might not be the safest place to be. Now looking back, my fear seems so quaint.

A tall, heavy young man came into the lab and approached the check-in iPad. He might have been Hispanic, Samoan, I don't know. Something slightly darker than pale. He looked like a wrestler. I noted his baggy red shorts and floppy team jersey. I bent my head back to my fingers. I missed the moment when he slapped the tablet, knocking it off its perch and sending the table sign flying onto the floor.

“I can't figure this out,” he said in disgust. One of the check-in staff left his cubicle and hurried to get the young man checked in. In an effort to distance myself from emotional drama, I moved to a chair directly outside the door I was trying to get through and stared at it, willing it to open and admit me so I could move on with my day. The young man took a seat to wait for his turn in the x-ray machine. My back was to what happened next.

“What's the problem?” I turned around briefly and saw two uniformed security officers flanking the young man, who now was on his feet, towering over both of them. I quickly bent my head and pretended I didn't exist.

“What? Why are you hassling me?”

“Let's go into the hall and talk about it.”

“What is your problem?”

The back-and-forth continued. I thought, this is how it happens. Arrogant people in power make assumptions in the name of public safety. Next thing you know, multiple people are dead. In a few minutes, the encounter was over. I couldn't hear all of it, and I didn't want to. I sat still, adopting a freeze and maybe they won't notice me strategy. We all survived. If that young man had been a few shades darker, it's likely the outcome would have been different.

After the drama ended, I meandered diffidently over to a check-in clerk, who looked up my check-in information and confirmed, yes, I had indeed somehow fallen off the list, so sorry. In a few more tedious minutes, I was invited through the door. Soon, I was punctured, patched, and on my way.

In for a penny. Time to address the next item on my task list. I headed over to the pharmacy nearby to get my second shingles vaccine. The wait wasn't as long.

“Getting it all in one arm, eh?” The pharmacist noted the cotton taped on my elbow. He looked like a young Ben Affleck. I could feel my smile returning.

“Yep. Luckily I have two arms, I can afford to lose one for a while.”

“You probably remember the side effects of this vaccine? Relax your arm. This will burn a little going in.” I looked at the ceiling as the needle went into my shoulder. “It can make you feel like you have the flu.”

I stared at him in dismay. No, I had completely forgotten.

“I think it was just a day,” I said slowly, totally not remembering.

“Hope so. Some people have five miserable days.”

My mother's nursing home instituted a no-visitors policy that afternoon. Despite my increasing muscle aches, I visited with her outside her window, scribbling and holding up notes for her to read. No, I can't come in because of the virus. I got a shingles shot today, ouch! I miss you. I love you. I'll see you tomorrow. No, I can't come in. 

Our visit was cut short when she pointed to the bathroom. I waved and walked away, loathe to watch my mother struggle in the bathroom with no way for me to help.

Regular doses of ibuprofen kept me going as the shingles vaccine ravaged my body. I moaned and groaned through two long nights and emerged on the third day feeling refreshed just in time to see the stock market tank. So long, IRA!

Now it's a few days later. The no-visitor policy remains in effect at the nursing home, and the staff are screened and masked. If that virus gets in, all those old frail seniors will drop like flies. I'm staying home from everything but visiting Mom outside her window, doing my part to flatten the curve. The two inches of snow we had yesterday definitely inspired me to lay low. Not to mention my near-constant allergy attacks. My brother says tree pollen, but I suspect indoor mold. The libraries are closed. I hear there are lines outside the grocery store. My sister is flying to Boston from France next week. I hope she makes it. I'm freezing and scared. I miss my cat. Every damn day feels like a snow day.

An acquaintance told me (on the phone) that she wasn't curtailing any of her activities. She gets around on public transportation. I pictured her boarding buses with her wheeled suitcase, spewing germs. Appalled, I said, even if you know you could be spreading the virus? She said she believed the world was coming to an end soon, so it didn't matter. I said lamely, well, at least your behavior is consistent with your beliefs. I wanted to say, I don't care if you are ready to die, but I'd prefer if you didn't take me down with you. But I didn't.

This might be the end of civilization, I don't know. I think we are seeing how fragile the veneer of civilization really is as people yell at Asians and hoard toilet paper. At some point, I'll have to go forage for food at Winco. Meanwhile, I will hunker down in the Love Shack, mopping my dripping nose and compulsively reading the news.

Stay safe, blogbots.

Not quite over it, thanks for asking

Life goes on. I'm adapting to living life alone, just me in the Love Shack, bouncing from project to project, moment to moment. Now that I don't have to worry about disturbing a slumbering cat, I've vacuumed more in the last week than I have in the previous year. I can rearrange the furniture. I can pound on things. I can play loud music. I admit, it is nice not scooping poop or sweeping up cat litter. Once I've absorbed the cost of Eddie's demise, I predict I'm going to save a lot of money at the grocery store.

It's been just over a month. I'm not quite over it. That horrible it I'd rather not think about. I divide life into BDE and ADE (Before the death of Eddie and After the death of Eddie). I'm still sleeping with the rice-filled cat pillow. I find it comforting. However, you may be relieved to hear, the grief is lifting. Seeing BDE photos of Eddie and me on my screensaver is becoming less of a stab through the heart.

I used to be such a pot-stirrer, a brazen risk-taker, a leaper into abysses. I was always ready to move on . . . new city, new job, new relationship, one little hiccup and I was packed and gone. Old age has tempered my willingness to explore the unknown. I don't like change now, I realize. When my perception is that I'm hanging on to sanity by a thin thread, change can look a lot like a sharp pair of scissors. Change happens; I know I'm not immune. For instance, losing my mother will be a drastic change. I've wondered if my intense reaction to losing Eddie has been heightened by the slow grinding demise of my mother. She's dying in slow motion. I'm grieving in slow motion. I don't know. I don't live with my mother. Eddie and I were roommates for thirteen years. You get used to something after thirteen years. When it's gone, you miss it, even if it's a cat. I'd miss a ham sandwich if I lived with it for thirteen years.

When I realize most of my life is behind me, what used to seem important no longer interests me. I continue the process of jettisoning stuff from the Love Shack. I'm like a rocket burning off its boosters as it launches into the stratosphere. Why did I think I needed all this stuff? The books and DVDs are almost all gone now, donated to the library. My wardrobe is in tatters; if I ever move to warmer climes, I will consider replacing some clothes, but really, how much does one person need, especially considering the unpleasant consequences of unbridled consumption?

Well, let's be realistic. I guess I'm not ready to let go of everything. I'd miss my bathtub, if I didn't have one. And my coffee maker, can't live without that. I wouldn't miss my television but I'd probably stroke out if I had to go without my computer. So there's that. I still eat food I buy in stores, so I won't be foraging in the fields or making campfires in the near future. I wouldn't call what I do cooking, but I do heat food before I eat it. Although if the big one hits, we may all be pooping in holes and cooking mush over fires made from our broken furniture. Well, I'll help my neighbors in any way I can, if I can extricate myself from the wreckage of the basement.

At least my cat won't have to go through that trauma. A strange kind of blessing, to count up all the terrible things he has avoided by dying. That may someday be my strategy, when dementia scrapes away the rest of my functioning neurons. I hope I'll have a few brain cells left to help me make my escape when it's time to exit, stage right.

A derailed life

Today I donned rain gear and risked a walk in the park. As I kept one eye on the clouds, I thought about how I would describe the evolution of my grief over the death of my cat. The fact that I'm thinking about words is a sign that I'm moving out of my broken heart and back into my crazy head.

Three weeks ago, my life was going in a direction. Yes, it was a confused, uncertain direction driven by my mother's slow descent into dementia. Still, it seemed like a positive direction . . . somehow I managed to keep creating, even in the limbo of my confusion. Then my cat died.

Now I seem to be derailed into a different direction, judging by the boxes of stuff I am preparing to cast out of the Love Shack. However, I'm aware it's possible I'm stuck on a siding. I can't be sure. Maybe the previous three years were actually a siding, and now I've been bumped back onto the main track. Who can say?

I've learned two things about myself.

First, I have learned I am capable of commitment. I wasn't sure. My track record of relationships seems to indicate otherwise. However, now I know I was fully committed to something. That seems reassuring on some level, to know I'm not devoid of a characteristic important to mature human interaction.

However, the other thing I learned is that I used that cat like an anchor, like ballast, to keep me on an even keel during the tumult of the rest of my life. He was the steady presence. What an unfair burden to place on another creature. Some part of me knew he would eventually leave me—nothing lasts forever, especially not a fat old cat. I just didn't think it would be so soon.

Reality seems nebulous now. As I walked today, I found myself mesmerized by the images of trees and clouds reflected in the mud puddles along the path. Sheltered from the wind, the mud puddles showed a dark alternative universe. I wondered what it would feel like to dive into that other world and sink into those black trees.

I can't yet occupy the middle of my twin-sized bed. To help me sleep, I made a cat-shaped pillow and filled it with dry rice. It takes up the space on my bed formerly occupied by my cat. Even though my cat was sixteen pounds, the inert heft of five pounds of rice resembles the presence of a sleeping cat. The first night I slept with my rice cat, it felt so authentic, I dissociated from reality. I wasn't sure if he was really dead or if he was there after all, pressing against the small of my back, and the horrible morning at the vet was just a horrible nightmare.

Now I say to myself, This is a pillow, this is not a cat. This is a pillow, this is not a cat. That seems to help.

A couple nights ago, I drove out to the emergency vet to pick up Eddie's ashes. The tech handed me a sky-blue box. I checked and saw Eddie's name and my last name on a label. I wanted to scream, but I thanked her and walked outside to my car. I patted the box and felt something like relief. Then I proceeded to get lost in the neighborhood trying to find my way among avenues, streets, and courts back to a familiar part of the city. Later that night, I saw on the news that there had been a shooting half a block away from the vet a half hour after I was there. Such is life.

When I finally got home, I opened the box. Inside was a nice wooden cube engraved with Eddie in gold letters. They also included a little clay tablet imprint of Eddie's paw and a tiny plastic envelope of his hair. I don't know what is in the box (could be sand for all I know), and I don't know if the imprint really is of Eddie's paw. However, I do know those little snips of hair are Eddie's.

I put his box on the shelf above my computer desk next to a photo. Now he's home.

My loss seems trivial in light of the losses people face daily all around the world. When I cry, I try to include everyone and everything in my grief. That seems only fair; the death of one cat means something only to me, but the world is full of sorrows worth lamenting. Off the top of my head: The death of democracy; the death of a basketball star; the deaths from famine, earthquake, illness, and war; the deaths of millions of kangaroos and koalas . . . don't forget the slow death of a planet no longer capable of supporting human life. How do we put all this suffering into perspective? I don't know. I can't.

Meanwhile, here I go, back to my Swedish death cleaning in preparation for my new life.

Take me with you

The death of my cat smashed a hole in my life last week, leaving me a shattered mess. I've done my best to ride the waves of grief as I clean up and reclaim my space. It's not easy.

Thank you to all who reached out to sympathize and console me. Thank you to my sister-in-law who carted off the leftover cat food and cat litter. And the toys, fleastop, and fur grooming devices. I hope she will come with a truck and take up the six-foot tall cat tree occupying five square feet of my living room.

This week, I've coped by staying busy. I felt compelled to move furniture around, to take down the cat perches in every room, to do all the noisy home projects I postponed to avoid disturbing sacred nap time. I washed four loads of cat bedding. I vacuumed cat hair tumbleweeds. Even so, tiny balls of fur remain, stuck like burrs to blankets and rugs and all my fleece pants.

A thirteen year relationship ended in the space of two fraught days. I still can't believe he is gone. That cat was my parent, my child, my spouse, my business partner, my interior decorator, my personal trainer, my meditation coach, and my best friend. He filled more roles than any human could, and he did it with something as close to unconditional love as you will ever find in a living creature. I would gladly trade a lifetime of cat litter in my bed to have that cat back again.

People who are not cat people have asked me when I will get another cat. As if cats are interchangeable. As if any random bundle of fur will do. I can't imagine another cat taking Eddie's place. Cats are no more interchangeable than are spouses or children. Maybe someday I will welcome a new cat, but it won't be to replace Eddie. He was one of a kind.

Grief has its pace and tone. I don't need to defend or justify my sorrow. Let me put it like this. I don't care if you think I should be over it by now. I try not to burden others with my sorrow. However, sometimes grief takes me down. Not for long. I can't breathe when I start keening. My congested sinuses don't allow much wallowing. Still, I feel what I feel. I can't be your Little Mary Sunshine. I can't get my face to fight gravity right now. Every part of me sags. If you spent thirteen years with something you loved, you'd miss it if it suddenly disappeared. The pain of loss is physical. I would gladly trade my mother to hold my cat in my arms again.

I dread coming home to an empty house. My heart tears open that moment when I enter and smell only mold and cooked onions. The place smells unoccupied now, like no one lives here. The absence of his presence is profound. For a small creature, he commanded a lot of space. He was sixteen pounds of energy, even when he was sleeping. That was never more clear than when the vet gave him a sedative. My weary sick cat sank into my arms, all sixteen pounds, nose in my jacket, finally at rest, finally out of pain, while I stroked his fur and dripped tears. I wish I could forget that moment. I wish I could freeze that moment in time. Stop time, right there, when he was alive but not in pain. Twenty seconds later, he was dead.

Maybe if I had had more time to let him go, this wouldn't be so hard. You know, months or years of pumping him full of treatments to keep him going so I could postpone this awful moment. We had thirteen wonderful years together, just us. He suffered two days and exited, stage right, leaving me in free fall. I don't know what comes next, but now I'm closer to finding out.

The terrible no good very bad king hell bummer week

I wish I could say it was my mother, but no, it was my cat. On Tuesday last week, I took him to the vet for his annual wellness exam. They cleaned out his ears and treated him for an ear infection. Somewhere along the way, he apparently had a stroke. By Thursday morning, I could tell he was going to die soon. I took him to the emergency vet. An hour later, he died in my arms.

I am destroyed.

Happy new year from the Hellish Hand-Basket

I'm relieved to have survived 2019. As I wait for 2020 to blow us all to smithereens, I am reflecting on some accomplishments, challenges, and surprises from the past year. I mean mine, of course. I'm not qualified to judge anyone else's, although that never stops me. I wonder, should I be looking forward rather than backward? Good question. I'll look forward some other time. The wreckage of the future always beckons. Tonight, I'm reflecting backward.

First, I've been a writing machine this year. I'm like the meat grinder of writers. Ideas in, content out. Of course, like any meat grinder, the quality of the output depends on the quality of the input. Luckily for us all, I never let a little thing like concern for quality stop me from grinding out words. Sometimes I string words together into actual sentences. I know. I'm amazing.

Second, I'm getting things done around the Love Shack. It is good to be proactive when one is preparing for homelessness. To that end, I'm ticking things off that have been on my list for twenty years. For example, this week I have been transferring my music audiotapes to digital format. I know! I'm a dynamo.

It was really easy once I figured out where to plug the cable. Thank you to all the wonderful people who post tutorials on the Web for idiots like me. So now I can throw away all these hissing compilation tapes of songs captured off scratchy albums I dragged to Portland from Los Angeles and then donated to thrift stores. As if Portland needed an infusion of Monkee albums. Downsizing is an incremental process—first the albums, then the tapes, then the computer. After North Korea's bomb destroys the power grid, I'll be completely free.

Third, I've learned some new words this year:  Shingrix. Costochondritis. Ganglion. Retinal artery occlusion. It's good to expand my vocabulary after many years of shrinkage. Where did all my words go, I wonder? Probably the same place my socks go. Inside my duvet covers.

I've learned some new skills this year, too. Taking my own blood pressure! How cool is that! It's so fun to wrap my arm in Velcro, one of the great human inventions, and then grimace as my arm is all but severed.

A few weeks ago, I made my every-other-year visit to my doctor for a wellness exam. I brought her a drawing I made of my naked body labeled with all the things I thought might be failing, head to toe. Cysts, warts, hiatal hernia, bladder, high cholesterol, arthritis, yep, the works. In moments like these, all those years of art school really pay off. She was surprised, perhaps nonplussed. Perplexed, confused, astounded . . . all words that might apply.

“Can I keep this?” she said, holding the drawing carefully between two fingers. I magnanimously said, “Of course, I made it for you.”

Finally, my major achievement for the year is showing up for my mother. Almost every evening, I drive over to her retirement facility, park my car, hike through weather, and enter the code on the back door. I stride down the hallway, noting which door name plates have come and gone. As I walk by the dining room, I dodge white-haired people heading back to their rooms, most assisted by aides, who smile at me and greet me by name. I look to see if Mom is still eating. Almost every evening, one old lady waves at me. Another one points at me and says, “Who is that guy?”

In Mom's room, if the lamp and TV are on, she's sitting up watching the Flintstones. If the lamp and TV are off, she's snoozing on the couch.

A few nights ago, the room was dark. She was lying on the couch under her blue plaid wool blanket. I entered with my usual greeting: “Howdy, Slacker.”

She opened her eyes and looked at me. She didn't say anything, which is not normal. I sat on the couch by her feet.

“Do you recognize me?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said slowly. “You're my daughter, Carol.”

I guess some days are better than others. Tonight, she was sitting up, laughing at Fred and Barney, as alert as ever. We enjoyed the rest of the Flintstones, followed by the last thirty minutes of Love it or List it, and then M.A.S.H. came on, my cue to leave. I drove home in pouring rain, wishing I wish I could freeze time.

Let me just stay here in this moment. This moment in which my email inbox remains blessedly empty. This moment in which my phone is silent. This moment in which my mother knows me and loves me. This moment in which I can let my mind wander among the dwindling choices in the word boutique. Tonight, in my quest to be prolific at the expense of quality, I will choose a few overused words and spatter them at this blog. Happy new year, everyone. You go on ahead. Let me just stay here in 2019, in this moment, before everything goes to hell.

Routines will not save us

I have fervent appreciation for the power of routines. Life is precarious, and precariousness is stressful. Routines hold us together. Routines give us the illusion that we are in control. These days, I find myself refining my routines, honing my tasks and plans to achieve maximum efficiency and effectiveness. I'm really into it. Just look at my custom-designed, color-coded calendar. Nobody can call me a slacker.

I realize now why Mom beat it back to her condo after moving to a retirement community didn't work for her. It wasn't the big impersonal place or the money or the lack of social interaction—all the reasons she gave for dragging up and moving home. I'm guessing it was the massive disruption of every single routine she had patched together over the years to maintain her life as her brain lost its ability to function.

She knew her brain was stuttering before 2014. In 2015, she moved to the retirement place. She was there a month and a half. Now I see it must have been a particular subtle form of hell. On the surface, it had seemed like a great solution to help her move into the next phase. Instead, it was as if she had voluntarily set off a neutron bomb in her life. Nobody anticipated the consequences, certainly not her. Well, how many of us have actually seen the consequences of a neutron bomb exploding in our kitchen, let's say, or in our home office?

For most of the next two years, she white-knuckled it in the condo, trying to keep it together, with increasing help from me. There were many clues, I realize now, looking back, but I didn't know what I was seeing. The dirty kitchen, the rotten food, the mice, the ants, the misfolded towels . . . all signs of her mental deterioration.

Now I realize how desperately she clung to her routines. Once the routines failed her, she had to let go and admit she couldn't maintain the facade, she couldn't manage the details of her life anymore—the preparation of food, the cleaning of kitchen counters, the washing and folding of clothes. All too much. It was as if she had been clinging to one little branch of a wizened shrub growing at the edge of an abyss. Whether the branch broke or she let go on purpose, she fell.

She came to rest in a retirement home with levels of care. Levels of care means that as long as she can pay for it, they will take care of her until the end, but of course, it will cost more as her care needs increase. She entered in 2017 at a Level 2. Now she's at the top end of Level 5. Soon she'll be a Level 6, out of seven levels.

I cling to my routines. I realize they cannot save me, but they give me comfort, a sense of false security, which helps whenever I reflect on the precarious of life, which I do daily.

As a researcher, I'm always reflecting. Given my current situation, I often reflect on life and death. Before I lose my ability to maintain my routines, I would like to plan my exit strategy. Knowing this about me, a friend gave me an information sheet about the efficacy of suicide methods. I thought that was very thoughtful. In this study, about three hundred people rated twenty-eight suicide methods used in about four thousand cases of attempted suicide according to their perceptions of lethality, time, and agony. You can look it up. I did. Just Google lethality, time, and agony, and it will pop right up. It's a 1995 study published in a journal about suicide behaviors.

If you are shopping around, the most lethal method, not surprisingly, according to this sample, is a shotgun shot to the head. According to this sample, that action would be almost one hundred percent fatal. However, about one percent of the cases would live, probably not too well after such a traumatic incident. Perhaps not even well enough to think, gosh, I wish I hadn't done that. I'm guessing. However, if you are in the lucky fatal group, you can enjoy a low amount of agony (5.5 on a 100-point scale) for fewer than two minutes. Not bad, as suffering goes. I know people who suffer a lot more than that just trying to balance their checkbooks.

If you are in a hurry, pointing the shotgun at your chest instead of your head will get you there a fraction of a minute sooner, but your odds of surviving go up a few percentage points. Darn. Not only that, it will hurt more too (16 points compared to 5.5 for the head shot).

If it's agony you want to avoid, overdosing on illegal drugs is the way to go. You can expect about 5.25 worth of agony on the 100-point scale, whatever that means. However, your time to die could be almost two hours, and you'll only succeed half the time. Which means you might live to tell your sad tale of enduring two hours of slight suffering before somebody saved you. However, keep in mind, this study was conducted way back in 1995, which means the opioid epidemic hadn't been invented yet. I'm pretty sure adding fentanyl and its ilk to the list of methods would knock shotgun to the head right out of the top five.

It's helpful to remember that the values are the respondents' perceptions about the lethality, time to die, and amount of suffering. As far as I can tell without paying to download the article, none of them had direct experience with the phenomenon.

Well, I'm off to visit Mom. If we are lucky, some reruns of the Three Stooges will be on MeTV. It's great to hear Mom laugh.

The risk of living

When I was a young adult, I dressed to be noticed. Being in the garment industry, I felt I had a professional obligation to experiment with norms of decency. I could design and sew just about anything, and I did. Appearance was everything. The goal was to shock and provoke.

In the late 1970s, I made strapless blouson dresses of gaily flowered cheap poly-cotton, accessorized with chunky beads and a crown of pigeon feathers. I let my artist friend draw circles of purple, white, and black makeup around my eyes and on my cheeks. The outcome was a weird white-girl interpretation of a generic African native dance ensemble. My best audience seemed to be old men at bus stops, who indicated their approval by . . . you know, letting it all hang out. My friend and I rode the bus to dance clubs, so we saw our share of weirdos. We fit right in.

In the early 1980s, jumpsuits made of vinyl with shoulders the size of small turkeys were my favorite for going out. Back then, I was about twenty pounds overweight; thus, I believed the wide shoulders made my waist look smaller. I didn't have money for nice fabric, opting instead for cheap vinyl, cotton chintz, and antique faded rayon crepe excavated from the attic of the fabric store that employed me for $4.75 an hour. With my spiky hennaed hair, I was quite a sight.

Gradually, over time, a few run-ins with crazies motivated me to shift my attitudes about attracting attention. I began to think it might be safer to be invisible. Age did the rest. Now I can go just about anywhere, at least in this white part of America, and be unnoticed. I have grown to prefer anonymity, except when I'm trying to get service at Best Buy or Target.

These days, I pray to outlive my mother. I am well aware that leaving the house is risky. I could slip and die in the tub, I know, but my chances of survival decrease the moment I walk out the door. To avoid incurring the wrath of other drivers, I drive carefully and courteously. I admit I sometimes drive too slowly, and that behavior on occasion has inspired people to honk and speed around me. So far no one has pulled a gun and taken a shot as they roar by, but I am aware it could happen. Hey, guys, I drive an old Focus. It has a top speed of 35 mph.

Getting out of my car in a parking area makes me a target. To avoid attracting negative attention and possibly tipping a passerby into a rage, I paste an inane smile on my face. I dress in shapeless unremarkable clothes. I have no bumper stickers on my car. I try to look harmless. I hope to be invisible. I don't want any random psycho to see me as a threat. I probably look like a nut myself, grinning and talking to myself. If you must know, I'm praying. My prayers are along the lines of please don't let me hurt anyone today and grant me the serenity. You know the rest. This is how I remain calm.

After the sad events of the past weeks, well, really of the past few years, well, really of the entire history of America, I realize I am always walking the moment between life and death. A stray bullet, a wildly swung blade, or a curb-jumping SUV could take me out in a few seconds. I could be a random victim, I could be a target. Wrong place, wrong time. Just another casualty of western civilization. It's not that I want to die. It comes when it comes. I just don't want my family to experience the grief and inconvenience of losing me. Mom would have a harder time getting her gluten-free cookies and cashew milk ice cream.

Last Friday evening I caught the tail end of a documentary on the 1966 Clocktower shooting. Reeling from the recent mass shootings, I found this show both riveting and horrifying. Oddly enough, I have compassion for people who come to believe the only way out of their misery is to take others out with them. From a certain perspective, their actions make sense. They aren't insane. They may have lost touch with the reality we all sort of pretend to agree on, but they aren't nuts. They are hurting.

Fear drives us to see the other as an enemy. Fear drives us to elect leaders who say they can keep us safe from people who don't look and think like us. I doubt if there is much hope for the human species if we don't figure out that love is the only path to peace. It's deliciously ironic though, that our effects on the climate will take us out before we can spread our madness outward into the universe. Maybe there is a god.

I can't leave it there, I suppose. Please don't text me to find out if I'm okay. You know I use this blog as a vehicle to express my feelings. Once expressed, they often dissipate. So weird how that works. Anyway, now that my fears are on the page, I can continue on with my day. For example, I washed some clothes this morning while I was cooking breakfast (multitasking, look at me go!). My next action item is to design a new course to help artists figure out . . . stuff. I don't know. I'm an artist: I haven't figured it out. But I will by end of day, I promise.

I don't subscribe to the idea that life is so precious, I should focus on sucking from it every drop of pleasure. I don't know what the purpose of my life is, but I don't think the end goal is just to be happy. I'd be thrilled if I could unravel the mystery of disappearing socks before I die. Happiness is dandy, but the real challenge is bringing more love and less fear with me as I go about the job of living. What do you do to bring more love and less fear into the world?

From self-awareness to self-obsession in two seconds or less

Howdy blogbots. Has this ever happened to you? You are busy grappling with whatever issue confronts you, no time to think. Then you take a bio break and while you are sitting there, you let down your guard and the weight of your life suddenly falls upon your hunched shoulders. In the time it takes to blink and take in one breath, you realize your world appears to be imploding and you say oh God out loud, forgetting for a moment where you are. No? Hmm. Maybe it's just me.

Meditation aficionados wrestle willingly with self-awareness as a path toward self-forgetting. For me, self-awareness is the kick that plunges me into self-obsession. I would like to launch myself off the cliff of self-awareness, metaphorically speaking, and find myself floating in serene detachment above the fray of my humanness. Self-forgetting sounds like heaven. Maybe it is, I don't know, I haven't been there. I'm not even sure such a place exists, but whatever.

Taking bathroom moments to reflect for me is dangerous. Washing dishes is another mind trap. My hands are occupied, leaving my mind free to roam. Roaming is not relaxing. Roaming is an invitation to reflect (self-awareness) and judge (self-obsession). What am I judging? Thanks for asking. Myself. You. The world and all its inhabitants. Life. Time and space. My mother and her slow demise.

The oh God moment emerges from a bone-deep certainty that everything is moments away from screeching to a halt. As if I knew the timing of the destruction of everything. Ha. There's an example of self-obsession for you. Everything is (probably) not imploding today. Therefore, my problem is my fear that everything is imploding.

Moreover, my fear of imminent implosion really applies to me, not so much to you, sorry. Of course, I would be sad if you imploded, but what I really care about is how implosion would affect me. What pain and suffering would I experience during said implosion? Oh, alas, alackaday. Poor me.

In movies, there's a moment sometimes when you can see the hero reach an emotional resolution. It's evident in the relaxation of the shoulders, a deep gaze, a nod, indicating an acceptance, a surrender to a new normal. Maybe there is a change of circumstance, a loss of something dear . . . the music swells, the montage fades to serenity, roll credits.

I have those moments sometimes: A sense of resignation and acceptance, a calm surrender to the strange limbo of my interrupted life. For a breath, I feel relief. Then I realize nothing has changed. She's still slowly dying, this could take years, and my life is not my own.

Life is not a movie. In my personal movie, the hero (me) goes home to her apartment and waits.

A few nights ago, Mom walked me to the back door after my visit. We perused the progress of two waist-high tomato plants planted in big clay pots. Someone had courageously planted one corn plant in another pot. Since then, Mom hasn't felt like walking much, not even when I told her the corn plant grew six inches overnight. I'm not keeping track of her decline, but my sense is that she's preferring her couch to walking about half the time now, when it used to be she would walk me to the door every evening. But it's not a linear decline; sometimes she surprises me with her alert conversation and peppy stride.

Death is gaslighting us both. Ha. There's my self-obsession again, making her death all about me. Her life really is imploding (in slow motion) but I'm the one choosing to suffer.

The Chronic Malcontent endures a moment of world sorrow

I rarely cry. I'm not prone to sobbing. When I do cry, though, to avoid prolonged sinus congestion, I try to get all my angst and sorrow out during one session. I weep over every tragedy that comes to mind, large and small, from a pancaked squirrel in the road to the slow demise of my mother. I don't cry so much over abused children, because they can eventually overcome their trauma with therapy and the Twelve Steps. But I wail over dogs left in hot cars. I really lose it over sea turtles with plastic straws up their noses.

My editing agency jobs have all but dried up. The agency guy decided he needs to spend more time with his growing children and his full-time job. Who knew this editing agency was his side gig! He could have said he was tired of wrangling unhappy dissertators complaining about paying four cents per word before I cut out half their content. I wouldn't have blamed him. In response to his long list of reasons (excuses) why he's stepping back from the agency, I wrote, “Family comes first.” That is my standard response when someone chooses family over meeting my needs. I really believe it.

Last night, in a bid to stave off homelessness, I applied online to work part-time at a local home improvement store. I like to build things; maybe I could sell lumber to older gals who aspire to build their own bookshelves. I was cruising efficiently through the web application when I encountered a date field that would not accept a date earlier than 1993. I laughed and took a screen clip of this reminder that I am old. As if I would forget.

I will be very surprised if I get an interview request, even though I'm an employer's dream. They couldn't pay to buy the qualities I bring in the door for free: I will show up, work hard, and never steal. The Universe will have to decide this outcome. I don't really want to work at a home improvement store, but since when have my intentions produced results. I'd much prefer to earn money writing and making art. At my advanced age, here's what I've learned: It's easy to say I want something but much harder to take action to get it.

I am frequently reminded that the people who seem to make money are the ones who tell the rest of us how to make money. There's something wrong with that picture but I can't quite figure out what. You've heard the conversation, no doubt, which goes like this: Person 1 says to Person 2, “Give me a dollar and I'll share with you my secret strategy for making money.” Person 2 hands Person 1 a dollar. Person 1 says (while walking away), “That, my friend, is how you do it.” The winners: PayPal, Etsy, Udemy, and all the (former) artists and writers who figured out their path to success was telling people how to find their own path to success. Who are the losers? The hopeful, gullible dreamers who don't know what to do with the “secret” when they get it. Or are too scared to try. Or who keep trying in spite of failure. Talent is highly over-rated. Success depends more on persistence and luck. That is why I don't give up.

I can't seem to generate much enthusiasm about anything these days. I waver between derisive humor, self-deprecating chagrin, and debilitating despair. On the days my mother is too sleepy (tired, weary, depressed, exhausted) to walk me to the back door of the retirement home, I walk myself, humming our favorite tune (She'll Be Coming Round the Mountain). I walk myself out the back door to my car. As I drive away, I always look back at the window where she stands to wave me good-bye with the peace sign and a big grin. When she's not there I feel sad, relieved, fearful, and bereft. I don't know what to do with all these feelings.

From day to day, I attempt to do the things on my to-do list. Hence, this blog post. It's on my list. Sometimes I avoid blogging because writing means feeling. Other times, I'm anxious to get all my angst onto the page but my brain is too fogged to focus. Spring is my S.A.D. fog time. Later I will go out for a walk in the sunshine. It's on my to-do list. Walking always makes me feel better, eventually, although sometimes I prefer the oblivion of napping. Sometimes I find it difficult to be awake. However, on my last stroll through the park, I had four satisfyingly creative ideas. I arrived home sweaty but so happy to know I have not lost my creative spark.

The chronic malcontent calls in sick

On Monday night I caught a cold. I don't remember the last time I had a cold. I had forgotten the misery generated by the drip, the scratch, the snot, the clog, the ache. I guess I thought I was a cold-germ superhero. On the upside, a cold probably won't kill me; the downside: at 3:00 in the morning, when I'm snuffling, coughing, and breathing through my mouth, it might make me wish I were dead.

I haven't been sick in years. All the witty words I had planned to write have been flattened under a pounding sinus headache. I wanted to tell you in excruciating detail (but funny, of course) about how wretched I feel. Then I realize, you've had colds before. You know what it feels like. Having a cold does not mean the universe revolves around you; it just makes you feel as if it should.

In accordance with the advice from multiple websites, I'm laying low today, resting and drinking lots of water. I called in sick to the care facility. I hope the nurse actually writes the note and puts it on Mom's coffee table. Although Mom might not even notice I didn't show up, the way things are going lately. She's been dozing on the couch every night for the past week. Yesterday I shuffled out to my car and drove in rush hour traffic to see if she might be more alert before dinner. She woke up when I came in but did not sit up. I sat in the visitor's chair on the other side of the coffee table and didn't touch anything.

“Do you want to go outside and plant seeds in your pots?” I asked her. My spirit was willing but I hoped she would say no. My flesh was definitely weak.

“Do you want to go outside?” Was she reading my body language? My mother is a master at the codependent redirect—I don't know, what do you want to do?

“It's up to you.”

“I don't think it is the right thing to do.” She was rubbing her stomach under the blue plaid blanket.

“Are you in pain?”

“Yes.”

“Is it your stomach?”

“I don't know what I need,” she said in frustration. Her eyes started to close. “I just want to sleep.”

I didn't kiss her forehead like I usually do because I didn't want to contaminate her with my germs. Although a tiny voice inside me said, hey, pneumonia, the old person's best friend. I told her I loved her and quickly left. I should not have come, but I felt compelled to see her. I only sneezed twice on my way out the back door. Into my elbow, of course. I drove slowly home, too slowly, apparently, because some guy in an old American car sped by me and flipped me off. I didn't have the energy to feel righteous anger. Besides, I drive slowly everywhere. I used to be a school bus driver. That is another story.

The weather is lovely this week. Unfortunately, higher temperatures means low humidity, which means not only am I parched but so are the forests. Two weeks of spring and now apparently it's summer. That was fast. The roses aren't even blooming yet. Now there's a fire warning for tomorrow night. Wind, low humidity, and high temperatures create the perfect conditions for wildfires. Sometimes when I walk in the park, I imagine what one carelessly thrown cigarette could do. In the city, with houses so close together, it wouldn't take much to generate a conflagration. On the upside, if the air filled with smoke right now, I would not be able to smell it.

The best way to endure a cold is to immerse myself in the screen. I caught up on a new CW television show last night. It's free TV, so every five minutes I was treated to a commercial of happy people cleaning their kitchen floors using special gizmos to capture dust and dirt. Clearly, the companies that make floor cleaning products don't know about my kitchen floor. In the distant past, some ambitious soul laid down a checkerboard of black and white linoleum squares. Over the years, these squares have come unglued in many places. Corners have broken, revealing the subfloor. Crumbs and cat hair collect in the crevices. Beige paint speckles the black squares from the many cupboard repaintings. The white squares are speckled too but you can't see it as well. The whole floor should be bulldozed. Swiffering is not a solution.

Speaking of bulldozing, on Monday, heavy equipment moved into the gravel road behind the Love Shack. Three little houses up here are not on the main sewer line. That means we all must endure the beeping and banging while the City digs trenches and lays pipe. On the upside, wiped out by this cold, I went to bed early the past two nights, so I was up when the bulldozing began. Early morning for me is like one of those plants that bloom once a century. I would appreciate dawn more if I could breathe.

Being sick has inspired me to take some chances. Despite my fear of dying from amoebas eating my brain cells, on Tuesday, I dug out my neti pot, figuring I could either suffocate now or maybe die of amoebas at some unknown point in the future. Early this morning, I found some expired Tylenol in my medicine cabinet. Turns out ten-year-old Tylenol still works. What do you know.

All of this is happening while my mother is fading. I am confounded that so many things can happen at the same time. You would think the earth would cease turning out of respect for the loved one who may soon be exiting the earthly plane. You would think cold germs would hold off until a more opportune time. You would think digging a sewer trench could wait until the tears have been shed. But everything happens now.

I think she is leaving but of course I can't be sure. Maybe it's just the humidity.

Coming apart at the seams

Last weekend, four out-of-town friends came to Portland for a reunion. We were a small group, just six in all. Two locals served as drivers; we split the passengers between two cars, one of which was my dinky old Ford Focus, emptied of trash and toothpicks for the occasion. After getting lost, driving in circles, misreading road signs, and driving east when I should have driven west, I am supremely aware of my failings.

On the bright side, the other driver (a man ten years my senior), got lost, drove in circles, almost crashed his car, and upon arrival at what he thought was the correct house, led his two passengers up some steps and through an unlocked door into a stranger's house—clearly not the correct destination. Quick exit, stage right! This week I have prayed the party of three were not caught on security cameras. Just in case, I've planned my defense: We plead early onset dementia, Your Honor! The busy weekend is over. No one was jailed or killed.

After two days of above average temperatures, by Saturday my limited wardrobe was exhausted, forcing me to stuff myself into a pair of old Levis jeans I have been saving should I ever lose ten pounds. Luckily, the groaning seams on my authentic (not knock-off) non-stretchy, faded blue denim jeans did not fail me as I diligently played tour guide, chauffeur, host, and organizer. Added bonus: My jeans made me sit up straighter in my chair and eat somewhat less at the restaurants we seemed to patronize every two hours.

The sun is shining today. I finished editing a paper early (misread the deadline, argh). That means I have some extra time to get some things done: change the sheets, do some laundry, and write a blog post. Spring is finally really here. Baby birds are nesting in a flowerpot at the care center. Brilliant leaves have burst out everywhere, glowing a color of green I spent my childhood desperately trying to mimic with yellow and blue tempera paint.

As a former fashion designer—well, okay, seamstress—I know a bit about seams. When I think of seams, I usually think of clothing and the thousands of seams have I sewn in my lifetime, trying to cajole other people's poorly sketched ideas of style into something real they could display to their envious church friends. Governments have seams too, I think. I don't notice seams much except when things fall apart. Then I realize how some poorly sewn policies leave us naked and undone. For example, we are now seeing the seamier side of healthcare.

I notice that the seams on many of my clothes are failing. When I fold my long-sleeve t-shirts, besides the occasional broken seam, I see stretched necklines, unraveled hemlines, faded colors, and frayed edges. I don't mind. These butter-soft remnants remind me I used to have a job that required me to think about clothing. I am glad that job is gone while these old t-shirts just seem to get better.

As I get older, in every way conceivable, I seem to have less stretch. In obviously visible ways, gravity drags everything south, but in my mind, too, I perceive less flex, less give. My brain seems to be coming apart at the seams. Maybe it's just stress pulling my mojo down with my butt and boobs. A friend told me I would gain 10 IQ points after my mother dies. She spoke from experience. I fear I'm sloughing off brain cells at an increasing rate. Where do they go, I wonder. Into the same void that disappears my socks, I suppose. If I ever find the gravity well that is hoovering my neurons, no doubt I'll find the mates to the socks I now wear in mismatched sets because I refuse to buy new socks. Ponder this: Socks have no seams. Unless I count the ridge across the toe that produces blisters if my shoes are too tight.

I think of my mother's brain and body coming apart at the seams, as if she's a cartoon character exploding from the inside from accidentally eating a bomb. Ooops, it happens. I imagine the core of her personality, the essence of who she is, still glows deep in her center, like a melty pool of maternal magma. I think I see it now and then, when she laughs at Klinger sewing the stylish frocks that never seem to get him kicked out of the army. Almost ninety years of psychic dust, detritus, and clutter obscure the sun at her heart.