So. 2064 words yesterday, 152 so far today, mostly infill. TB is clipping along.
This is a super long post so I’m truncating it.
FINALLY figured out how I’m going to end Richie’s odyssey all over the Guyanese diaspora. It accounts for what he’s been through and why everybody’s been lying to him. And of course it means he is staying in Canada. So big sigh of relief. Two sighs of relief, I was on the john when I dreamed it up.
The beauty of story logic is you can write anything you want and there’s always a solution as long as you don’t shy away from coincidence. I mean if someone had told me that the guy who was at risk of kicked out of his apartment with his pregnant girlfriend (in Toronto) for being late with the rent only to be given all of my friend Elly’s own rent money in cash (it was two hundred dollars back around 1990) so he literally was rescued by a woman in full manic episode – if you’d told me that we’d all end up a quarter century later in Elly’s apartment in Vancouver with me singing the song I wrote (in part) about that SPECIFIC event for the two of them to er ‘close the circuit’ on the coincidence, what would you say? That only observant people get coincidences? I’d say we enjoy them more and leave it at that. Once you say ‘given the universe’ the coincidences ARE FREE. (RELEVANT LYRICS: ‘Oh, I bless the woman who gave me all her money, just because she could.’)
Yesterday I got to chase Ryker around HIYA GIGI and hug Katie a couple of times, and greet Alex who appears to be both massing larger and shorn so also somehow smaller, and helped get orderly tons of shit out of Paul’s old room at the Junction and into the used stuff charity shop which I won’t name because I wouldn’t have taken it there but Paul insisted. I also drove him to an appointment, picked up the first mandolin I had (but gave back to the boys), and a music stand. There’s tons of Susanna Hinde’s art going begging too, nobody has walls for art because their room are so tiny. So I’m taking it before the deadline but it’s not going to be hung up.
I also got John’s Quilt. I took some books, all ones that I bought with my own money, but no more than would fit in a small bag. The books that are here, right now, that I need to get rid of mock me. It will all have to go. I can feel those small decisions coming, overwhelming, incapacitating as they add up. But I won’t be incapacitated. I’ll be smart. I’ll get help. I won’t freeze in the headlights.
The Junction is emptying out. Keith’s old room is empty. I shake inside at the changes and the steady chipping away at ‘home, home’ ‘where is home’ and keep going. I look at the pile of furniture Granny and Grandad busted ass to assemble for their comfort and security and it will all be gone when I leave our current place -whenever that will be and I’m so …. not going there. This is nothing. “I picked up the cat and took the guitar down from the wall” – that’s a line from family history after her family fled Russia across a frozen river. Her father told her husband but not her, because he had to know to look after the cattle after they left on the sleigh. mOm knows which river… Our family has fled for their lives so many times. We’ll have a future with those moments as well. But we’ll survive, because we love and help each other. Because we swallow pride and fear and the loss of all that is dear and familiar, to keep going, and love and contentment await, fitfully taking shape, behind the door we still can’t see.
My appetite is almost non existent. It was 1 pm yesterday – and I’d already been working very hard – when I noticed that I hadn’t actually eaten that day. A boiled egg saved me. Right now I’m working on an enormous cup of coffee and contemplating wrangling all my TB characters into their places for the final act.
Paul’s a new man with the new meds. His functional abilities have not improved – he’s still just as likely to get turned around and paying for anything is a horror show, big shout out to the deskers at the dentist!! for patience – but he’s moving peppier and he’s a hell of a lot more fun to interact with and his vocal fry is almost completely gone and he was actually helping yesterday. Instead of complaining about me he’s complaining about Ruth and it’s like YES because nobody else can tell you a gotdamnt thing!!! I’ve got less than a month left on the insurance for the car so I guess I’ll have to talk to Ruth about that in plenty of time to get it done. Apparently I get to hold his hand before and after his upcoming colonoscopy, plus handing him his bowel prep. Just remember if you never get married you can never really divorce LOL
I love the world and I love my people and I am abso determined to have a good day and Suzanne’s coming so I should probably jump in the car and go to the bank machine. Or find out how Jeff’s fixed for cash. LATER. It’s all good. Over to Katie’s again, she just called me and she obviously needs her mother – for once, so off I go.
Keith has basically vanished. It would be nice if he’d do some of the work he volunteered for, but maybe he’s just quietly trying to adjust to his new home environment and he’s super overwhelmed. I shouldn’t publicly scold. I’ll get the full story later I imagine.
Suzanne’s getting one of the spare cat carriers for the extreeeemely aptly named Lucky. (Trimmed his claws the other day, Suzanne clutching him. MOFO SO STRONG but not violent.) Somehow she’s going to have to start minding Ryker in her curiosity shoppe of an apartment on Monday and I should probably go help her with that, too. I’m gonna sleep like a captain’s log tonight.
I have to buy and change strings on about half my instruments right now and lord but I do not want to do either.
