Thaw

[vaneramos]

I made considerable progress tidying my office this week. Perhaps for the first time since launching the chapbook 14 months ago, I can move easily through these apartment rooms. The months-old glacier of junk on my desk has thawed and drained into nether regions. I wrote there this morning. Sitting at that bright window awakens a peculiar consciousness of humanity. Cars swish through the wet street below, anonymous pockets of motion and purpose.

The mountains of caked snow are melting, too. The weather lately has been incredible. Marg had last Thursday, Friday, Monday and Tuesday off school due to snow and cold—nothing like it in her entire teaching career, she says. Ensconced here alone at home, I barely noticed.

Yesterday I retrieved Marian and Brenna from Lindsay for their March Break. The necessity of being present and supportive for someone else has snapped me out of a stultifying depression that lasted two weeks, since the onset of the cold. A recoiling from social contact combined with unbearable loneliness, self-defeating but unassailable. Life began to seem impossible again.

Unbelievable how lightly and effortlessly it lifts when my daughters come. Apparently I'm at my best with someone to look after, while also needing autonomy and quiet space. I don't know what to do about this. Even employment has suddenly made me tired of coming home to be alone every night.

Les's work in Halifax has spun itself out, which is part of the problem. He had planned to return on Tuesday, but kept needing another day, and another. He is scheduled to fly home today, so I'll return to work on Monday, at last, after two weeks off. I desired the free time, but it has become toxic.

Comments

[wonderboynj.livejournal.com]

I wish I was closer to help you not be so lonely :/

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

Thanks Brian. The problem at those times is that I have trouble acknowledging my state of mind to anyone, whether near or far away.

[butterflyminds.livejournal.com]

I like to read your journal and noticed you'd been quiet recently. Hope you feel better soon. My desk and the space around it is a nightmare of piled up books, papers, etc. I really ought to tidy it up but it's only ever a temporary solution. Chaos starts to reign again soon enough.

What Chapbook are you referring to? Are you an editor of a small press publication?

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

Last winter I desktop published a small chapbook of my own poetry, sold it mostly to LJ friends, and used the proceeds to buy a new camera! :-)

Some of my quietness has happened as an adjustment to being employed for the first time in a few years, but some comes from this antisocial tendency. With new demands on my time, I'm uncertain how to establish the new balance of contact I want with my friends online.

[ubermunkey.livejournal.com]

hey sexy glad to read you are doing better

parenting does indeed snap you out of your own stuff at times

you are in my thoughts often and especially today, right now

love and light

mmmmmm munkey

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

Munkey, I feel it.
Love,
Van