blotter

about to tear july off my desk (as always, the requisite 2 week delay applies, my usual inability to let go) and i had a sudden memory of cleaning out my mother's office at her work the week after she died. her notes to herself of things to do three weeks hence. three weeks that never arrived. or did, without her. what happens to the consciousness in those always arrested plans? me and d. due to arrive for a visit a week and a half after her death. d. set to come in the night before me, my mother with a note to pick her up, with flight info. a note to pick me up the following morning. shorthand blotter scribbles noting vacation time for the visit that ended instead as bereavement leave.

it doesn't go away, this missing. this grief is not a wound, or a scar. it's something more like mercury - poisonous, beautiful, never solid, never stable...

rain, finally

i have a sneaking suspicion i've been overly optimistic about this new job of mine. i mean i like it better than my last one - don't get me wrong - but it's still sales. it's still trying to get people to notice us. it's still cold-calling and publicity and talking to authors who are way way smarter than me and often see the marketing of their damn books as beneath them. and then there's the money thing. there's the figuring out how to live on less money a month than just about all of my friends, and the arrogant part of me that thinks that just because i'm as smart than most of them, i should make as much (never mind, of course, that i don't WANT to do law and i've not the discipline or the personality for full time freelance). sigh. the maw of the house, too, stretching me at every turn and j and me incompatible on that front. she seemingly so much more comfortable with living on the edge of what we have, and spending into credit world. i've not, in the end, that much faith in us to make it back and can imagine us in a mountain of debt in a few years that we need a backhoe to get out of.

which is not really fair of me to say. she certainly does adjust her expectations, even as i know she wants to be other. had a conversation with susan the last time we saw each other about this - the different relationships we (who grew up in financial comfort) have with money than our partners (who grew up with none). anyway. i'm fussy still at j, which is annoying me no end since she's being very kind to me, and since i spent so much time missing her while she was away only to .. what? be bitchy at her once she comes home? that's mature...

anyhow, it's friday and i should hightail it to work and do some invoicing for freelance work and put a plea into my old boss for some more, cause this life i'm leading is costing more than i make. and that makes me anxious. and irritable

as does the fact that i met d. for lunch yesterday. and we still get along, and it still smarts to see her.

a kinder gentler

just back from the jane siberry show at hugh's room. three words. oh my god.
it was truly wonderful.

i guess there are miracles

in the shapes of planes that come skidding to the ground, all smoke and fire, scorching the side of the highway, with all passengers walking away alive, and no one on the ground even scratched.

and so this morning, even as i know i'm going to be late for work and those cursed heat bugs are buzzing on the trees and signalling yet another boiling day in the smog, i'm gonna say a small prayer of thanks to whatever god or force or stroke of chance that lets things not turn out as bad as they might.

tonight to jane siberry at hugh's room, last night out late at the 3-day novel launch. met up with barbara, and then also a whole lot more of claire's friends - tom, iman, people i fear know of me only because of what's been said. but connected more with peter, who i like more and more every day. on the day he came in for his intern interview, he wore a tie, and glasses i haven't seen since. he sat on our low couch, knees to his chest, and was a little awkward. i remember being unsure of him, both paul and i slightly wary, but willing to be convinced. funny how quickly our first impressions can be discounted if we're open to it.

anyhow, the long and short of it is that i've become quickly very fond of peter, and protective. which is funny, cause i don't usually have a way of talking to the gay boys... maybe i'm learning.