A Reprise

I can't believe it is blooming again after two years of dormancy. I did nothing.

Rain, rain, please stay.

  Our home is filled with animals which provide the best company I have ever known. They look at me, nod, with an unmistakable "What's up?" message on their faces when I walk into the room. They fight with each other, especially Olive (above), but what they seem to love most is to hang out with us.

I am writing in spare moments, little five minutes and thirty minutes strung together on a string. I cannot get any idea of how these moments will add into something significant. I don't know if I will get anywhere, but the brightness of summer is starting to blot out my feverish mind, and I don't care. I am almost finished with The Siren, and I am revising the beginning of Winter Light. Well, I am also revising the beginning of The Siren. I am even thinking of looking for publishers again. I have realized that these five minutes and thirty minutes put together make a better story than the longer writing sessions of one or two hours, when I become dull after a while.

Today, I am not going to cuss, or eat any whipped cream.   Tomorrow, we’ll go from there.

Six minutes, what can I say in six minutes? My mind goes blank. I think frantically about the endless stretch of white room and paper and borrowed computer I will be touching for the rest of the day, and I feel a little sick. I want to give thanks for these moments of respite I have experienced, for the kind barista who brought my food, for the kind lady I am sitting next to today and have never met till now. I want to give thanks for the beauty of last night which was balmy warm, like a soft but breathable blanket wrapped around me as I walked to the pond. I want to give thanks to the comforting dream I had which gave me peace where I have felt none. I am thankful I have been writing lately. Just paragraphs or pages in the morning or evening. Not feeling impassioned or jagged, not saying anything surprising. Just calmly trying to impart beauty. The six minutes is over.

I have truly never identified with the lyrics of a song to such great extent that they corresponded directly to myself in this piercing, precise way. But this gives words to my darkest self and also identifies the word "Opheliac" as nothing else can sufficiently. I'm your Opheliac I've been so disillusioned I know you'd take me back But still I feigned confusion I couldn't be your friend My world was too unstable You might have seen the end But you were never able To keep me breathing As the water rises up again Before I slip away You know the games I play And the words I say When I want my own way You know the lies I tell When you've gone through hell And I say I can't stay You know how hard it can be To keep believing in me When everything and everyone Becomes my enemy and when There's nothing more you can do I'm gonna blame it on you It's not the way I want to be I only hope that in the end you will see It's the Opheliac in me I

Ugh, I want to write so bad but I have to go to the store. Yuck! Yesterday I felt dreadful. Today I feel a little better. The brightness of the sun, some new people in my work environment. The planets tilted a little bit, and suddenly my plane is not enshrouded in shadow. Last night I felt such darkness. It seemed from every position I was hammered upon by some unsolvable problem. Still some of those phantasms loom, and they are hideous. But with every pain, every problem, every uncertainty, I become better able to bear pain, problems and uncertainties, which is fortunate, because as life advances, they become larger and worse, don't they? My perspective has shifted so greatly in the last week. My spirituality right now does not lie in history books. It does not lie in the alignment of the planets, and I don't think the Moon Phase has anything to do with me, except on the Full Moon my hair grows astronomically, and I have to spend an hour in the bathroom with the tweezers