Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita 1

 A Straw Dog

In the middle of the journey of our life...

Some would find it hard to believe that "middle" would apply to my situation, and I should write something like "bucket-list time" - to use a favorite description of the present age; "bucket-list"... the expression just drips a tedious lack of lively creativity.
Might as well say something about paying cash for some agricultural acreage, and smile about buying the farm.

I have not posted much over the past two weeks.
I am bored.

I do not read the news anymore. I had stopped watching or listening to it years ago. One can't write about the foibles of the time if one does not acquaint oneself with said foibles.
I can be assured, however, that the process towards a fully weaponized society will continue, and unhappy groups, sad scads, and weepy heaps of kids and adults will continue to be gunned down by psychopaths and/or their own family members as we struggle to accomodate our vision to the new reality.

I think along the lines that my life started in the revolution of Rutherford, Einstein, Bohr, Compton, Hahn, Meitner, Lawrence, Seaborg, and Robert Oppenheimer, eventuating in the atomic bomb, then continued through the great engineering feats of myriads minds leading to the journey to the Moon in 1969, and then reached a ante-climax in 2008, with its foretaste of disaster.

I spend a lot of time with my mother, trying to get her house ready to sell, finding her a new place nearby, maintaining her summer place. My wife assists. The rest of the family is not close by, or they are physically incapable of helping. In some situations, they are spiritually or mentally incapable of helping.
It is the perfect background for a Stephen King story about pent up resentment and poltergeists. However, as Lao Tse held and Sam Peckipah believed, heaven and earth regard mankind as nothing but straw tied to look like dogs and to be jettisoned into the fire of sacrifice.

Over many years my mother and I were not close; hardly even friendly.

My daughter was allergic to dogs and my mother used to have at least two. My daughter could not go to Christmas at Grandma's. She could not attend Thanksgiving over the river and through the woods to Grannie's.
In the summer, she could only stay outisde at my parents' summer place. Obviously, she could not spend the night.
Everyone said how sad it all was.
Sad.
Very sad.

No one ever got rid of the animals. They died off in their own time. Even now, a certain family member brings dogs to the summer cottage. Over Memorial Day weekend they were present, both aged, both gasping for breath in an appalling manner which was an argument in itself for euthanasia.
One has numerous tumors, rheumatism, and incontinence.
They have a right to life, but they have no right to share my space.
We played second-fiddle to animals for our entire married lives.

Perhaps my analogy with Dante goes even further than I had thought.

The point is I am beginning to have a relationship with my mother. My father passed last year, so that is very different.
One month before he died, he was determined that certain changes be made to my parents' trust and that they had established for my brother who is disabled. No details are available from me, but my burdens are increased thereby. That is enough to say.

So they trust me. I am a trustworthy and simple soul. I am merely a difficult person to be with; totally different stuff.

My mother enjoys the time we are together, because we interact as equals, and we don't take any prisoners. Nobody else has such a relationship with her.
I suppose it would be even nicer if she did not chatter on quite so much, but I have discovered that she does not expect an answer to what she is musing out loud about.

I think we will be going to the ear doctor together soon to get our hearing tested. People have indicated a need exists. She seems resigned to it if I also am hard of hearing. However, I absolutely refuse to spend vast sums of money - $3,000 or more! - on hearing devices that buzz, whirr, chirp, and gobble up expensive batteries!

I intend to use a modified ear trumpet. To fill out the appearance, I shall ditch the spectacles and adopt a lorgnette, fastidiously emulating Des Esseintes, the aesthete and recluse anti-hero of Huysman's A Rebours!

à bas l'epoque actuelle...

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