grasping for quotations

 Labor Day

"The land seeks deep inside each person so as to gather together all their dreams.  Yes, we could say that life is the seamstress of dreams."  190 in Sleepwalking Land

a link there, the land, the earth, back to Handke's geologies and walking.  

miraginations   mirages  

Darlene stopped, bringing a small pot of yellow mums to cheer us up over the vanishing of our cruise dreams.  She also told of Joan Berstrom's terrible fall on her steps in the blueberry hill apartments a few days or weeks ago.  Broken bones; now in a rehab center in Milford.  Her son looking in, perhaps will care for her further.  

"Giddified, existentially retarded, she went on turning and twirling, moaning  all the while."  201

the notebooks  "Blown by a wind born not from the air but from the ground itself, the sheets scatter along the road.  Then, one by one, the letters turn into grains of sand, and little by little, all my writings are transformed into pages of earth."   

last passage, the end, beautiful image, incredible sadness  12:35 pm  

653 "it's strangely relaxing, isn't it?"   Max Lawton discussing The Beginnings  on page 653 of the book

back to it   out of Africa Mozambique   

Catholic vs Protestant schools of Translation!!  who knew??? 

booking the cruise expanded mind and imagination across the map, at the same time our daily lives contracted more and more over the past few weeks and months, even while the kids were here, working through their routines and dramas,  Ours were contracting and now with diagnosis hinted and about to arrive tomorrow morning we can even wonder of the contricted aorta, its valve, has brought the constriction, if our daily routines respond to it as to weather movements.  The air outside this evening, right now and all day, has been that splendid dry forest mountain cold air from the north, early September tasting already of early October.  

Going back to Moresco from Couto feels a similar expansion after contraction.  Couto packed enormous desperation into a slim line of anecdotes, tales, short scenes, compressed allusions, symbols, mythic echos.  The wars he was surviving so horrendous as to be beyond words of any kind.  Moresco has all the time in the world, all the space, vast canvas upon which to slowly trace figures and letters.  strangely relaxing is indeed correct, strangely so.  Trauma tightens, Couto, binds; ecstasy releases in preparation for song, endless song.  

holiday ritual weekend

 Yesterday straight out of previous templates.  Visit to Tracy at Refresh and then drove over to Gusto's. Labor Day weekend traffic everywhere; holiday clusters of end-of-summer people everywhere.  We got a table at once, in front of the pastry case.  Same as last year.  Same as how many years before.  Paninis and salad.  We had phoned ahead to reserve a fruit tart.  The blonde woman with accent---British? New Zealand?--said they never listen to phone messages.  We got one of the few remaining strawberry bengnes. Back home for naps.  Bela finished the Mexican soap after GH.  In the evening we watched a German thriller filmed, beautifully, in Mallorca; terrible acting but beautiful young people.  About a land selling scam.  

Bela on the piano now; about noon.  Note on twitter about long awaited new book by Donald Antrim.  Totally missed his career; over fifty electroshock treatments for long struggle with suicide.  Brown, tons of accolades including genius grant.  DFW, bud, assured him electroshock ok, helpful.  DFW did the job two years later.  Antrim has survived, written about it lots.  Brilliantly many have said, but I'm not going to look up his books.  Reviewer in the London tablet? said the medicalization of suicide still does not satisfy more than what art, philosophy and spirituality have said about it over the centuries.  Another too easy take?  Or what we are left with, no matter what we try to say.   Case in point:  continuing to read Cuoto's Sleepwalking Land.  Crazed, grim, astonishing journey of tales and people; after devastation, unspeakable violence, how to people go on?  

Meanwhile Matt K. Parker loves Stig Dagerman's Island of the Doomed.  Also loved Max Blecher's Adventures in Immediate Reality.  

Earlier Bela had Siri play David's song If You Break My Heart.  A sad song now; when composed I guess it was playful, joking, loving ironic musical indulgence, but in the current state of dissolution it feels prophetic about inevitable fissures under the surface.

So much energy invested in imagining every details of the cruise, worrying about it, anticipating it, wondering how it would have gone, now a sense of deep grief, the air popped out of the balloon, the shrinking of possibilities, expansiveness contracted, erased, ceased, like a death.  

Looking forward now only to more tests and talks with medical personnel.  And daily bread and cacao.  

No word from Doug and I'm shy about calling him to ask how Patsy is doing; probably holding steady and finding out how blank holiday weekends at rehab places can be.  No car in the driveway, I guess Doug is staying down there for a few days.  

12:30  trying to rain; heavy, dark clouds over the house.   I ordered the 12" wide Garvee aisle chair; surely it will be too narrow!!  Should I order the 16" one and hope to return the first when it arrives---without opening it; or open it and see and then try to send it back.  

decision day

Thursday 3 September

On the way home from walmart to buy miniature toiletries for the trip, took a call from MidState, Danielle saying since Dr Philips is away this week, my message asking about our trip went to Dr Fagan and he advises we not take the trip.  I had Danielle call us back twenty minutes later so Bela could hear the whole report and advice for herself.  We had lunch and talked it over a bit and decided to cancel the trip.  

Feeling now a few hours, and GH, later, a strange mix of relief and sadness and new worry about the report that her aortic valve has a new, severe restriction.  Dr Fagan indicated that was the primary concern in the decision to recommend travel.  Now some fear about whether a second heart valve procedure will take place and how well Bela will recover from it.  

DNMC just called to cancel the MRI scheduled for Saturday.  They want to dig into the history of the shunt before proceeding.  

Volvo Lebanon called earlier to explain the tech found a glitch in the software update involving the module for the brake, the emergency brake, so they have to order new parts and it will be a while until they get the fix for that.  

Who else called today?  Seems like someone else.  I canceled  the delta tickets and the full refund there will pay for the new HVAC in ABQ.   Yes, Juan had called early in the morning to say they were heading off to install all of that at 3601.  

Cool and rainy day, overcast.  Drizzle a bit when I was out to the store.  

6:51 pm  Juan just called.  Installation complete.  Gave him card number over the phone.  

No message from Lisa, don't know if they drove over or not.  

Well, with the trip off, am I now able to relax a bit more and not stress about it, which I have been doing these past few months whether I admitted it or realized it fully or not.  Didn't I keep brushing off the worries, trying to ignore them, face them down, chill them out with meditation.  And Aswaganda, etc.  Cacao.  

Relief too to have the MRI canceled at DHMC for Saturday.  Though they will reschedule.  

Main worry, then, is the meeting with Dr Flynn on Tuesday and his recommendations.  Also Dave and his future weeks, months, and years.  Bela's health.  Winter.  Air Travel at all??  going to Abq out?? 

Will we have a whole winter here after all?  Plant-based cuisine will save us.  

Mexican serial about love now on.  

George had a large article on the Dems in the Concord Monitor.  He sees his new career as "AI Prompter."

Dick Mertens wrote back that it is a great article!   Phil thinks it applies to all parties these days.  

so now we have all these cute little things to use up;  Rachel can use them at the pool 

watched the youtube about the vegan twin study; found out it was a hit on netflix in a longer form 

I wondered to myself if Dr Fagan when pondering our request and reviewing info about Va considered also my request for an MRI to investigate my persistent headache problem.  Most likely a little bit.  But I have no idea how doctors think about things.  

Read a little bit in Sleepwalking when the pianists were playing.  A shocking scene where the boy is raped by some dancing old women.  Tuahir later explained it as some ritual that had been interrupted and so made up for; he comforted the boy.  

different take

post on bluesky this morning:  66 Fairy Tales written by 40 different authors in three different languages, on three different continents, over approximately 1600 years.  The Bible.  Well, ok, if you put it that way . . . . .   in a class with the tag I saw in The Guardian a few years back "monastic religion headed by a prince in vatican city, Italy

talked with Doug, nothing specific yet; speare would send her on to a rehab hospital/center; she hopes she can do it here at speare rehab here

Monday 31 August  

Spoke with Richard Dannenbaum earlier today.  505-697-9471  Juan and team will do the hvac work on Thursday of this week.  They will also file with PNM for electric board upgrade; that has to be approved.  

Victoria texted to say hello.  I texted Lisa but no reply yet from her.  

Good walk for Bela at Walmart today; up to prescriptions and back with stops at customer service.  Swim tomorrow.  Philips' office called this morning to have us get a "rush" appointment with cardiology at Speare next week.  

   

Tuahir

the old man in Sleepwalking Land.  He says to Muidinga on p 65:  "Never trust a man who doesn't know how to lie."  A hyena then lies down next to them, most uncharacteristic behavior.

Moresco, I thought earlier, noticing my painting in the bedroom, of course, he is the Giorgio Morandi of post-Post Modernist Italian literature.  Is there a new slogan for his work?  wiki gives him this line "Defined as one of the founding fathers of a new line of Italian literature that moves beyond post-modernity, and then mentions DeLillo and Pynchon but no clear slogan.  

I listened to theta waves sleeping chimes with my earphones about 3 am this morning and enjoyed that, went back to sleep, up and down, through at least two selections.  

Bela ready to order a custom house at the Fairgrounds road colony called Mountain View, for down the line in the future perhaps.  Earlier morning coffee thoughts.  

Muidinga is 11, lost his memory.  The notebooks they found in the burned bus were written by Kindzu, who died in the wars.  Survival in devastation, words, names, on pages, carved into the bark of trees.  Divorce is a kind of micro civil war, the slow dying out of earlier passionate "mutual enthusiasm" ( Handke's phrase).  

Having the cruise on the horizon is a great distracting project; anticipation, preparation, packing, imagining.  Something to shift the mind onto away from the new sadness, the news we were most likely the last to have been apprised of, even as we could sense the tectonic under rumblings much longer ago than we wanted to feel.  

"that miraculous hairclip of hers . . .was the cat's paw."  154 Beginnings

Friday the 28th of August

Wonderful movie last night, Jeanne duBarry.  Great rendition of life at Versaille under Louis XV, touching love story, study of class and wealth, rigidity and play.  The age.  

Chapter 8 featured the wrapping, unwrapping, care of, and rewrapping the circumcised penis of our narrator.  Some fish were smacked against the floor and then gutted and a poor cat similarly killed to get a souvenir cat's paw talisman.  The other characters ambled about the villa and park; the wedding dress being readied for the coming wedding.

Bela deep into another novel by the Spanish writer, Duenas. 

Crazy mind continues to speculate wildly about the separation-divorce; theories abound; ignored emotions come up with yarns and scenarios and flashbacks and entwined narrative arcs and threads.  The spaghetti of drama heard from a long tunnel or viewed through a periscope, a telescope.  Can understand Versaille better than our own family.  Thank you history and art.  Life itself that tsunami river wave crashing down from the mountains in Nepal wiping out everyone and everything.  

Sky did a terrific job repairing the toilet and then sat and talked with us for a while.  Wonderful guy.  His parents live out in Bridgewater, they came here as hippies (boomers).  Blakeley D grew up in DC, St Albans prep (National Cathedral), UPenn and Harvard architecture.  Sky's oldest, Wyeth, has gotten big into sailing this summer, day camp at Lake Winnepesaukee. 

End of summer week, everything happens.  Kim sent a market analysis of homes comparable to ours; prices have flattened and some dropped slightly.  

Would I want David to come back in a year or two and join Sky in his plumbing business?  

Got a proposal from TLC to work on Casa Alegre.  Will call them on Monday to talk with the sale person, Richard Dannenbaum.  Had never seen a document come on pandadoc and thought at first it was spam!!

Might be best to go back to one book at a time.  Finish Sleepwalking Land first?  Or go back and forth?

They move at such different paces.   

mid week

watched Bela's PT session with Joel.  Set up three more appointments with him.  Beautiful day now.  Time for after lunch nap.  FIP has been playing lots of Dolly Parton in honor of her, she died yesterday of cancer at 80 in Nashville.  

Apple Maps just drove down our street.  Dick sent a piece about translating the Odyssey.  C&K have invited us to meet them for dinner this weekend.  

Our narrator has just clipped off his pubic hairs with scissors, standing in the moonlight at his window.  Next chapter titled "Circumcision."  Time to nap.  

Thursday

Echocardiogram went well.  Bad news from ABQ last evening.  TLC, Juan, says our HVAC is shot; ordering a whole new system, will have it put next to the house not on the roof.  Next few weeks.  Juan says just after covid, (we bought in 2021, May, or '22) many installations were "frankenmonsters," pieces they could find and cobble together but which did not fit the job's needs or each other.