the pelican

once more with feeling

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in between

ah mortality. impermanence. ephemera. movement.

yeah today is supposed to be something special. supposed to be. but really it’s just another day.

and a beautiful cloudy cool autumn day at that. crisp and dark. woodsmoke and leaves and apples. today is my birthday. and i am getting old.

feeling the cold.

had to light the furnace today. had been trying to get by with blankets and sweat pants and sweaters and oven baking. but it was time. it was cold enough. and we’ve had the dreaded crud cold fluishness going too and still coughing and hacking up wadges of gunk and so after watching my breath puff out in front of the tv screen it seemed the thing to do was light the furnace.

seems as though the internal organs of home have just come back to life. in the midst of the cold, the heart and soul of the house, the warmth of the shelter has returned to embrace us and comfort us against the changing weather.

it’s an old little gas stove that shows the blue and orange fire glowing in a window on the front. sits in a corner of the tiny living room and pops and booms and flicks and whoomps when it starts up again. have it dialed in to about a five this morning though the actual gauge is fudgey and has little true meaning. at night in the dark with the lights off, the living room is bathed in soft gentle flickering orange.

stayed home from work today. had planned it originally as a day off if possible, but figured i wouldn’t be able to do it because of the big horrible case at work that was supposed to start a three week trial next tuesday. my exhibit list alone was twenty eight count ‘em twenty eight pages. list. just a listing of the documents. death by litigation we called it, this case. been cranking for almost eight long years and morphed into various ugly forms from business litigation to estate litigation to eventually a suing of the attorneys litigation and that’s where we came in. legal malpractice.

the thing has completely consumed us for most of the summer and of course before that as well, but it had heated up, as things do, as the actual trial drew nearer.  keep asking myself why i ever wanted to be a paralegal in the first place. all things were put off, weekends worked, vacations not taken. a brief anniversary getaway became briefer and involved taking calls and answering email and returning two days early to stay late at night filing responses to motions against a midnight deadline. and besides the strain on personal life, it made actual work difficult because it required so much time and concentration and too many other cases still had deadlines to be met, things to be done and taken care of, depositions to schedule, exhibits to make, pleadings to file. all psychic emotional intellectual energy was being chewed up and spit out at beyond acceptable tolerance levels. it’s been a long time of upset stomach and an itchy break out of hives and a few paralyzing headaches and constant nagging details and flaring tempers and list making and juggling of emergencies and waking up at three in the morning wondering if the deadline for filing motions in limine was calculated correctly.

yeah so well anyway the big hairy thing settled against all odds and to much relief and renewed daily thanks and gratitude.  ah the mania of litigation.

on one minute and off the next. scrambling and scrambling and building and compiling and organizing and scheduling and then a great popping of the bubble. poof. over. all for naught.

such is the nature of the biz.
 
kind of like life i guess. the worrying the scrimping the saving the hoarding the cleaning the polishing the managing the balancing the running and driving and talking and planning and cooking and washing and visiting and caring and painting and talking and writing and mowing and trimming and dusting and moving and giving and shopping and studying and working and eating and dancing.

chopping wood and hauling water. it is what we do. activity. it is what we do in between.

thing is i actually am fairly sure i remember being born if you can believe it. it was blurry and psychedelic and traumatic but i think i can. in fact when i was small i described the hospital room to my mother and how she barfed in a metal bowl held by a nurse while i was up high on a cold hard counter top and completely freaked her out with my accuracy. in fact i told her many details of my early life as an infant including how the hospital room i was in a few days later after i was born due to a staph infection was on a corner with windows looking out at the flatirons. and yes i know babies aren’t supposed to see that well or be able to distinguish things but it is as clear and accurate a memory as any. i remember being in a basket on a table and my grandmother telling me over and over that i was fourteen days old and various people coming up to look inside at me and i remember looking into their faces and expressions and thinking how they morphed through time and experience into the people that they were and how far i had to go and whether or not i would remember how life would shape me. yeah how can it be i could have known these things or why i remember it all so clearly or how i can remember it as though i was speaking to myself in my head well i can’t really tell you. but it seems i do, or so i tend to believe.

well anyway. you can make of that whatever you will.

to me it's about this duration this time this brief precious glimpse of experience of perception of awareness of ordinary life of breathing in and out.

one minute here and the next is gone.

luckily the horrible cold fluishess stuff hit almost within hours after the big bad case settled. luckily? well it would have been great to have missed the discomfort but the whole time i was coughing and wheezing and struggling for air and gargling with salt water and holding my head over the vaporizer i just kept saying over and over and over again thank you thank you thank you.

stayed home a few days with the crud last week but still more was to come. my sweet frail old orange angel cat passed away in a rather traumatic turn of events. well you see basically my cats all live inside the house but when we’re home in the evening they get to go outside for an hour or two and on the weekends they play out for most of the day. they all pretty much come when i call them in, much to the amazement of my neighbors each evening when they see me walking around herding the cats back into the house.

and we live by a park and sometimes a dog gets loose and runs over into our yard and the cats all scatter inside the house and run upstairs at top speed or up the trees or into my arms. and old dante, the 17 year old skinny little geriatric nerves of steel stands up to the dog in an arched back hissing yard protection stance. but this time it was a suicide mission. a neighbor walking a young german shepherd puppy on a leash jerked free  from her to chase a squirrel and headed into the backyard and faced dante, the kitty from hell.

luckily i didn’t see the actual event but did find him in the backyard after the neighbor had run to my front door in a panic telling me her dog had got one of my cats. he was laying on his side in the dirt and jack and harley were standing over him. jack was licking his head. he couldn’t get up. i scooped him up in a towel and dashed off to the vet at top speed. they gave him fluids and steroids and treated him for shock and took x-rays. he had two dislocated ribs and two bad puncture wound tears on his sides and she couldn’t tell if his spine was involved from the xray but it did appear as though it was since he had no feeling in his back legs. we monitored him for about two hours and petted him and kissed him on the head and decided the thing to do was let him go. he was such a great guy he just did not deserve to suffer.  he used to be the kitten of the bunch but he had become the little old man. the last of the old guard. our faithful sweet old angel orange.

you would think going from six cats to five would not seem so drastic but the gaping hole left in his absence is substantial. pepe wants to sleep in his spot on the bed but izzy won’t have it. jack walks around his mat and sniffs it. bono brings me tufts of dante’s orange fur from the back steps. all the guys have been extremely affectionate and sticking close, taking turns to sit on me one or two at a time and purr to me. we all miss him.

oh yes we are in the midst.

on again off again in breath and out breath and round and round we go.

and so i’m starting up the kettle for another cup of tea and my father-in-law is singing happy birthday to me on the message machine and i’m handing out some cat treats and turning up the dial on the little furnace while the leaves are falling and the bugs are moving in and flowers droop and crumble and the days grow shorter and the light fades and wanes and trees creak and the cats curl up for extra nap time and the stove whoomps on again.

yeah it’s just another day.

and a beautiful cloudy cool autumn day at that. crisp and dark. woodsmoke and leaves and apples. today is my birthday. and i am getting old.

posted by: limine at 09:38 | link | comments (11) |

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