51/31: Serial Napper
Oct. 13th, 2024 10:58 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rejectomorphThe amount of time I spend sleeping appears to be steadily increasing, but the amount of time I spend just lying in bed appears to be outpacing it. It's difficult to gauge just how much this is going on as my amount of memory is definitely decreasing. I have the impression that Saturday was about three days long, probably due to multiple lengthy naps, but also that it didn't even happen at all, probably due to having been asleep through so much of it.
But then it had to have happened at least once, because I clearly recall heating and eating one of my frozen lasagnas. This is something easy to remember, because it is one of the few events that I still find pleasant, but which doesn't happen very often. I still enjoy my dinner beer, and my bit of bedtime chocolate but those happen daily and thus all blend together, but the lasagnas are costly and thus fairly rare. Sales at Safeway a couple of months back made them considerably cheaper for a while, and I stocked up. There are three remaining in the freezer, and as the weather is now much cooler I can use the oven more frequently.
Saturday night got very cool indeed. I didn't have to open the windows or turn on the fan, and the apartment remained quite pleasant. It's going to be warmer today, so the windows will likely be opened this evening, but probably no fan will be needed, and I might close the windows before morning. I'll miss having the windows open when cold weather comes again, though I won't miss the random nocturnal noises of the mini-metropolis, only a few of which can penetrate the insulated walls and double pane windows when the place is closed up. I won't miss the occasional whiff of diesel fumes from the freeway either. Indeed, when I woke up this morning my room smelled less like a truck stop and more like a dirty clothes hamper. Oh, well.
I'm almost out of milk and a couple of other things, but I never got around to calling my niece to see if she could pick stuff up for me. Partly I just haven't been able to organize my thoughts to determine exactly what I want and where to get it, and partly I just feel like a pest if I ask for more than two favors in a month. Being unable to simply go do stuff for myself may be the single most annoying thing about being ancient. It's something I didn't really anticipate, and couldn't have done anything about even if I had. At least anything short of checking in to one of those geezer warehouses of the awful sort to which my limited resources would confine me.
But on the other hand I've never had to have surgery of any kind, so I could say I'm an uncommonly lucky geezer. So far. The ongoing daily (and nightly) annoyances are only that, so far. Foot cramps, indigestion, achy shoulders or hips, itches I must get out of bed to scratch, allergies, forgetfulness, ingrown toenails, swollen feet, transient random inexplicable pains, etc.— all easily enough endurable, and not needing costly interventions. I can probably do without milk or donuts or iced tea or (soon) orange juice until Friday. But if Safeway doesn't have some good stuff on sale this week I will be so pissed! But hey, maybe it will give me a fit and I'll die suddenly. Thanks, Safeway. All will be forgiven if you just Kevorkian me and I get to avoid that long, tedious decline that otherwise probably awaits. (But please wait until I've finished my other three lasagnas.)
Sunday Verse
by Robert Creeley
Most explicit—
the sense of trap
as a narrowing
cone one's got
stuck into and
any movement
forward simply
wedges once more—
but where
or quite when,
even with whom,
since now there is no one
quite with you—Quite? Quiet?
English expression: Quait?
Language of singular
impedance? A dance? An
involuntary gesture to
others not there? What's
wrong here? How
reach out to the
other side all
others live on as
now you see the
two doctors, behind
you, in mind's eye,
probe into your anus,
or ass, or bottom,
behind you, the roto-
rooter-like device
sees all up, concludes
"like a worn-out inner tube,"
"old," prose prolapsed, person's
problems won't do, must
cut into, cut out . . .
The world is a round but
diminishing ball, a spherical
ice cube, a dusty
joke, a fading,
faint echo of its
former self but remembers,
sometimes, its past, sees
friends, places, reflections,
talks to itself in a fond,
judgmental murmur,
alone at last.
I stood so close
to you I could have
reached out and
touched you just
as you turned
over and began to
snore not unattractively,
no, never less than
attractively, my love,
my love—but in this
curiously glowing dark, this
finite emptiness, you, you, you
are crucial, hear the
whimpering back of
the talk, the approaching
fears when I may
cease to be me, all
lost or rather lumped
here in a retrograded,
dislocating, imploding
self, a uselessness
talks, even if finally to no one,
talks and talks.
But then it had to have happened at least once, because I clearly recall heating and eating one of my frozen lasagnas. This is something easy to remember, because it is one of the few events that I still find pleasant, but which doesn't happen very often. I still enjoy my dinner beer, and my bit of bedtime chocolate but those happen daily and thus all blend together, but the lasagnas are costly and thus fairly rare. Sales at Safeway a couple of months back made them considerably cheaper for a while, and I stocked up. There are three remaining in the freezer, and as the weather is now much cooler I can use the oven more frequently.
Saturday night got very cool indeed. I didn't have to open the windows or turn on the fan, and the apartment remained quite pleasant. It's going to be warmer today, so the windows will likely be opened this evening, but probably no fan will be needed, and I might close the windows before morning. I'll miss having the windows open when cold weather comes again, though I won't miss the random nocturnal noises of the mini-metropolis, only a few of which can penetrate the insulated walls and double pane windows when the place is closed up. I won't miss the occasional whiff of diesel fumes from the freeway either. Indeed, when I woke up this morning my room smelled less like a truck stop and more like a dirty clothes hamper. Oh, well.
I'm almost out of milk and a couple of other things, but I never got around to calling my niece to see if she could pick stuff up for me. Partly I just haven't been able to organize my thoughts to determine exactly what I want and where to get it, and partly I just feel like a pest if I ask for more than two favors in a month. Being unable to simply go do stuff for myself may be the single most annoying thing about being ancient. It's something I didn't really anticipate, and couldn't have done anything about even if I had. At least anything short of checking in to one of those geezer warehouses of the awful sort to which my limited resources would confine me.
But on the other hand I've never had to have surgery of any kind, so I could say I'm an uncommonly lucky geezer. So far. The ongoing daily (and nightly) annoyances are only that, so far. Foot cramps, indigestion, achy shoulders or hips, itches I must get out of bed to scratch, allergies, forgetfulness, ingrown toenails, swollen feet, transient random inexplicable pains, etc.— all easily enough endurable, and not needing costly interventions. I can probably do without milk or donuts or iced tea or (soon) orange juice until Friday. But if Safeway doesn't have some good stuff on sale this week I will be so pissed! But hey, maybe it will give me a fit and I'll die suddenly. Thanks, Safeway. All will be forgiven if you just Kevorkian me and I get to avoid that long, tedious decline that otherwise probably awaits. (But please wait until I've finished my other three lasagnas.)
Sunday Verse
Age
by Robert Creeley
Most explicit—
the sense of trap
as a narrowing
cone one's got
stuck into and
any movement
forward simply
wedges once more—
but where
or quite when,
even with whom,
since now there is no one
quite with you—Quite? Quiet?
English expression: Quait?
Language of singular
impedance? A dance? An
involuntary gesture to
others not there? What's
wrong here? How
reach out to the
other side all
others live on as
now you see the
two doctors, behind
you, in mind's eye,
probe into your anus,
or ass, or bottom,
behind you, the roto-
rooter-like device
sees all up, concludes
"like a worn-out inner tube,"
"old," prose prolapsed, person's
problems won't do, must
cut into, cut out . . .
The world is a round but
diminishing ball, a spherical
ice cube, a dusty
joke, a fading,
faint echo of its
former self but remembers,
sometimes, its past, sees
friends, places, reflections,
talks to itself in a fond,
judgmental murmur,
alone at last.
I stood so close
to you I could have
reached out and
touched you just
as you turned
over and began to
snore not unattractively,
no, never less than
attractively, my love,
my love—but in this
curiously glowing dark, this
finite emptiness, you, you, you
are crucial, hear the
whimpering back of
the talk, the approaching
fears when I may
cease to be me, all
lost or rather lumped
here in a retrograded,
dislocating, imploding
self, a uselessness
talks, even if finally to no one,
talks and talks.
