The Lion Sun
“Are you waiting for me or am I dreaming?” said aloud in a land far away – and now I think “Are you walking towards me, or am I dreaming?” My hair worn the way you like it least. Shaking. Still shaking. Shaken not stirred. The withdrawal is going swimmingly. No ping, all pain. Then watching the walk away and around and away again – upright, the lion seems to be regaining his gait.
L said it is in the way he moves. How he thought it odd my being with S when he first met him years ago because of the way S moves. L knew the monster moved in ways that were in harmony with me.
Ambien last night to try to break the fractured sleep pattern and woke at 3, 4, 5. So much for chemical help. This morning the blinding light on the bayou, the “lion sun” is inescapable. Showed N the addition footings in back of LaLa – she said “a year maybe” and I moaned.
L asked how are you doing – see everyone can’t help but ask even those that have more access to you – sad I am, L. He’s on his way to pick up J from El Dorado to bring her home through New Year’s. His thoughts are fraught with K and the holidays and when he might see her next because right now she is air, an actress he has fallen in love with, someone who isn’t flesh and blood. She winds tight then she goes MIA, a pattern she has not constructed consciously but one that nevertheless wrecks havoc with his thoughts.
S has fled to the bosom of his California soul – friends and family to embrace and soothe him. He won’t stay here in New Orleans, he will leave and maybe never return is what I think. Always his memories of New Orleans will be tainted by his wanton red headed wife. New Year’s would have been 14 years of marriage. I wrote our vows – “as long as we both shall love” – remember someone commented that it sounded ominous – perhaps.
The winter of our discontent.
Women exchanging gifts at the table in front of me, laughing and joking, and embracing the pink soft sweater one of them received. Now flannel PJ bottoms with funny icons on them. No chance for frivolity this year – all is laden with this and that.
Or maybe not, a blinking nose, a reindeer rack to hang a jean jacket on – rodent kisses – as I said, if what happened were all, if there were no more, it would form into the sweetest and most tender memories. And the tinkling of wind chimes I hope always remind me of that and not this.
The girls arrive tonight – D with her family will now stay at B’s and S and her family can’t wait to stay in the FEMA trailer with her family. I’ll spend the night at L’s anyway because of the dogs. But happy that I can move back to my own bed on Friday. The girls are excited W is coming to light the menorah – all who have come in contact with him recognize his light and are drawn to it. The little fingers curl around mine absent-mindedly. D, who said what can I say at lunch, writes back, I feel for you, I’m exhausted by what you are going through, and she fears my loss of W could be my undoing. She is praying for me she says.
“Focus on what i am trying to say 2 u” – “I am trying” – the ambivalence is what wrecks me.
Post culmination – mind and body have had no connection, then yesterday a twitch, a knock knock, who is there? whispered and hinted at life below my neck.
The couple at the next table are laughing hard, she’s reading him something from the paper and he’s looking at his computer. Both laughing uproariously. He turns his screen to her and they laugh harder. Git R Dun or some such nonsense.