All day the Little Dog has been sick. He is listless and miserable, his little black nose hot and dry. I checked his gums but they seem ok. I get scared that he might die. The past few months would have been utterly unbearable without him.
At about 7.30 he perked up and has been right as rain ever since. Leaping all over Eric when he arrived for hastily put together dinner.
He is snuggling in my lap as I write.
I think about the darling big dog. My darling big dog, I miss her more than I ever did. I still have daily, violent memories of her broken, bloody body. Searing into my mind. Replaying the last few moments of her life before that evil truck scraped her across the road.
My fingers angrily bang the letters of those words onto the page.
I CAN’T HELP YOU.
I blame the man driving the truck. He did it on purpose. He didn’t stop. Bastard.
At moments like this I soothe myself with memories of home. I think a great deal of England-green and pleasant land. The Kent countryside, the buses to Canterbury, Georgina, The Goods Shed, etc. etc., I nightly drive through Clowes Wood in my semi conscious state..naked..shameless.
I remember a recurring nightmare: I am a young boy naked in the schoolyard. I have no idea where my clothes are or where I lost them. I hide behind the half door in the toilets as the other children are called to class. I stand naked in the schoolyard covering myself, the cold wind whipping grit into my eyes. The other children sitting warm inside at their desks.
Last night as he was with me in my bed I lay thinking of how I might get home safely. How can I get back home? For all that raucous, interminable thinking we slept soundly.
I’ve not written a word these past few days. Full moon blues I call it. I lost interest in my blog as things calmed down with my (ex?) and my new friend holidayed in Italy.
I had to deal with a moving traffic violation issue that meant going to the Superior Court twice this week. The judge was very fair and funny but going through a stop sign still cost me $550. I have opted for community service. The art auction last Sunday seemed to vindicate my ability to pick the winners. Things sold mostly at the upper end of the estimate. I bought a beautiful candle stick by a potter whose name I have forgotten.
Prevaricating. Stifled. Tongue-tied.
The point is: I can’t really write down any of my true feelings. I am in shut down mode. I can’t do anything, move anywhere, release myself..rant or rave. The malaise seems to affect every area of my life.
After the headiness of New York I’ve fallen into a sharp decline, my confidence at an all time low. Dinner with friends last weekend I simply couldn’t hold my head up, my libido, my enthusiasm, my recall deserting me. She was a very cool next generation producer. CAA agents greeting her at our table. Hugs and kisses. Fast track.
I say to myself, “I am on my own with no one to focus on, no one to say that I love.” It feels like a terrible waste. I had some real hope! Hope that I could travel the world with a man I was excited by. How those dreams crumble into dust. I am fractured by time and distance. I am in the wrong city, in the wrong country, on the wrong fucking planet. I am desperate for a change of circumstance.
The road that leads to the Malibu house is weeks from being repaired. It maybe the very metaphor I am looking for. The road to the house is being repaired so I can escape my verdant prison. Yet every day I do my best to make it more like paradise.
I want to write about The Great BP Catastrophe but I can’t. I want to write about anything other than me but each time I begin I am stopped by something inescapable. I just don’t care. I don’t care about anything. I am exhausted..spent.
Beaten by the sheer force of inequity:
BP, miserable pictures of delicate Pelican eggs smeared with crude oil. The watered down banking regulations that caused Wall Street a collective sigh of relief. Congress about to pass an additional $32 billion to pay for war in Afghanistan yet it struggling to justify a $23 billion bill to forestall the layoff of nearly 300,000 teachers next year.
What kind of country are we?