Grass, Blood, Books

Today is day three of recovery. Much of the bleeding has stopped and Carol's mom is on her way home. The patient is at present sleeping soundly on the couch with the (big) dog. Both snore quietly, but don't let on that I said so.

Outside the sound of lawnmowers is comforting, even considering I know what damage they do (putting more crap into the atmosphere per gallon than any other engine). It seems as soon as one mower stops, another starts up. The boy next door just mowed their small patch and now the house on the other side of us has started up. Soon, if the skies stay dry for now, I'll probably go out and make the big squeaking sound that I make when I mow. The sound that does not sound like the rest. The push mower. It takes some sweat, and I'm my own self-propeller. A week and a half ago (the first mowing of the year), I learned that the extension cord for the trimmer only reaches half the front yard. If the neighbors didn't think we were batty before, me on my hands and knees trimming the grass around the picket fence with a pair of scissors probably pushed the general consensus over.

I haven't felt much like writing lately, not writing anything, emails, poems (napowrimo be damned), revising the novel, none of it. Somehow getting dirty on long dog walks and from gardening (you should see my backyard!) seems more vital to me than it does. It ebbs and flows. I try not to get too anxious when I don't want to write. It's like getting infant me to eat peas or carrots. It was a mess and most of it ended up on the floor or in my hair. I'm not sure the metaphor is right, but there it is. I just don't want to. In the past three years I've accomplished more than in the rest of my life combined. I'm pretty happy with where things are. Reading also takes precedence.

This year, thus far:

1. The Puppet and the Dwarf: The Perverse Core of Christianity – Slavoj Zizek
2. The Capital of Solitude – Gregory Orfalea
3. The Automatic Message, the Magnetic Fields, the Immaculate Conception (Atlas Anti-Classics) – Andre Breton, Philippe Soupault, Paul Eluard
4. Bad Alchemy – Dionisio Martinez
5. Singing from the Well – Reinaldo Arenas
6. Dreamtigers (El Hacedor) – Jorge Luis Borges
7. Live Nude Girl: My Life as an Object – Kathleen Rooney
8. Only This Blue – Betsy Warland
9. In the Devil’s Territory – Kyle Minor
10. The End of Rude Handles – Jen Tynes
11. Earth in the Attic – Fady Joudah
12. Too Close to the Falls – Christine Gildenour
13. The Art of the Poetic Line – James Longenbach
14. Names on the Land – George Stewart
15. A Humument – Tom Phillips
16. In the Land of the Free – Geoffrey Forsyth
17. Bloodroot – Betsy Warland
18. Kafka on the Shore – Haruki Murakami
19. The Bride Minaret – Heather Derr-Smith
20. Blessing of the Animals – Brenda Miller
21. Meteoric Flowers – Elizabeth Willis
22. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao – Junot Diaz
23. The Massacre at El Mozote – Mark Danner
24. Becoming Abigail – Chris Abani
25. Airport – Emily Kendal Frey
26. The Doorbells of Florence – Andrew Losowsky
27. This In Which – George Oppen
28. Pain Fantasy – Jason Bredle
29. Eva Hesse Drawing – Catherin de Zegher, ed.
30. Falsework – Gary Geddes
31. Seeing is the Name of the Thing One Sees: a life of Contemporary Artist Robert Irwin
32. Areas of Fog – Joseph Massey
33. Travel – Yuichi Yokoyama
34. Nada – Carman Laforet
35. In the Mode of Disappearance – Jonathan Weinert
36. Dark Thirty – Santee Frazier
37. Blood Dazzler – Patricia Smith
38. Quadrifariam – Frank Samperi
39. The Man Without Qualities (Part One) – Robert Musil
40. Undersleep – Julie Doxsee
41. The Glass Castle – Jeannette Walls
42. Wetlands - Charlotte Roche