Peeking into the rock

Not quite before breakfast, but I ate while I wrote. Only 1329 words on the new chapter (34!). Stopped because I need to think about what happens next. What happened here was a report about a coal miners' strike in the lands owned by Yanek's biological brothers. What happens later in the chapter is a general strike by the workers in the city where Yanek is now. What happens in between is a complicated puzzle piece. And somehow all of this has to actually be about Yanek's ultimate relationship to a wild sow earth spirit.  And he still needs to get his soldier's discharge pay and buy a new drum, and yes the drum needs to be gotten before the strike happens, so maybe that's next.

You know those books where there's like three characters and all the action takes place within twenty-four hours and on the premises of one particular building?

Thios book is the opposite of that.

on another front: due to a miscommunication with an office worker at the doctor's office, instead of ordering my knee xrays I appear to have gotten a huge slice of my written medical records. It's pretty interesting, to me: the interesting part is that it would look really boring to an outsider. Considering all the conditions I'm diagnosed with, and the medications and behaviors I've undertaken to address them, I am a healthy, boring person. My latest labs are sterling -- middle of the middle, totally unremarkable. Except the colitis, which is mild. Oh, and my lumbar MRI reveals "moderately severe" stenosis of different kinds at several different vertebrae, but we all know that means nothing (really, people with horrible MRIs can be limber and painfree, while people with nothing showing at all can be crippled and suffering). Even the surgeon who proposed to replace my knee joints couldn't really make that strong a case for it now that I've read her notes.

All the notes, by the way, every single one of them, say "looks well and is not in distress." Which means, I guess, that it is a formula, since that's three doctors and a physical therapist.

Another note: the surgeon said the right knee was worse and proposed to operate on that one firstbut it doesn't hurt at all these days: it's only the left that hurts ever, now.

The next thing I do will be to work in the garden and talk to Bonnie, then I'll run errands, go dancing, and write a little before bed, probably on one of the other little projects.

This will show my age:
one of my favorite songs ever is Bert Jansch's "Bright New Year," which I thought of all the time with respect to my own mother. Here it is covered by a young man who gets it okay.

Bert Jansch - The Bright New Year

Hello mother dear
Hope you are well and happy today
I do love you and think of you
Each single day
I dream of seeing you happy.

In summertime I thought
I would be able to see you again
I do love you and think of you
Each single day
I dream of seeing you happy.

As the bright new year
Draws closer now
I'm on my way
To bring you my love
And wish you good cheer over there.

Actuallym, I saw my mother all the time. But there is this feeling of concern and worry and maybe even downright fear that mom's falling apart, maybe going crazy with the weight of age and separation -- I lived with it all the time after I left home. She was going crazy and she was falling apart, she was fragile and my father dumped her when she hit middle age -- I like to think it was not because she was getting older but because he couldn't deal with her fragility and because he wanted to live the life he sang about, the free-hearted anarchist, and she was anything but free-hearted.

I didn't really intend to talk about any of that, really. I just wanted to make note of how I've started the new year.

New Year's Eve the dog and I walked in the New Year Parade, with the Women in Black, relatively silently, sandwiched between the bagpipes and the gamelan. Seriously. It's Santa Cruz, that's what we do for the New Year. Then I went to Connie and Israel's house meaning to stay for an hour and come home but what I did was stay till two-ish. Also I cooked. I made cauiliflower and cheese thing, not a great example but edible, roasted roots, chocolate bean flour cake with walnuts and agave syrup instead of sugar and some of the butter replaced by peanut butter, and also sesame candy with agave syrup. I'm not sure that agave syrup is actually lower in glycemic load than other syrups, because I haven't seen a source I trust, but it's rumored to have its fructose molecules all chained up into less-available fibrous strings. I need to talk to my favorite nutritional biochemist. AlsoI swept all the floors and did dishes and laundry.

New Year's Day I cleaned and cleaned and cleaned, a lot of floor cleaning and some throwing things away and wiping down surfaces and moving papers around. And then the in-laws came over and we went to Bean Hollow Beach for the traditional Minus Tide Viewing, with the dog of course, and with the intention of going to the famous Duarte's artichoke restaurant of Pescadero, but it was closed, so the inlaws took us to a Greek restaurant in town and I had Horta Vrasta, which is dandelion geens boiled and served up with lemon and feta. And also a dish of "gigantes," which are butter beans in a kind of thick mild starchy sauce, better than that sounds. Everything was pretty good except the avgolemono, which was too lemony and at the same time bland. I put my name on a list to be notified when they have music (and dancing) night again. And I promised to tell Helen, my sister-in-law, when they tell me. She's Greek and is wistful about dancing.

I forgot to put my card in at Bookshop for their New Years' Day drawing. Oh well.

Yesterday I took the dog to the field and she romped around sedately and I had successful conversations with human beings. Then I went and visited my brother which was pleasant though I think the dynamics in his family are not and I fear for their equanimity over time. I forgot to take the telescope and contact the guy in El Cerrito who wants to buy it. I think my original plan of only dealing with locals is the only way to go. I can't deal with all this far away stuff.

Today I pruned half my apple tree and sprayed it and the plum tree and the apricot tree and the pomegranate tree with dorman oil spray. I still need to do the rest of the pruning and get the prunings into the greencycle can. But this is the first time in years I have gotten the first dormant spray done before late February. I just paid attention to the weather for once and I noticed that there was going to be no rain for a few days and I went for it. I also cooked some more --m some eggs and some rice and lentils for the week -- and swept some more -- I sweep and sweep and vaccuum almost every day and I still have barely made a dent in the mountains of dust that have accumulated while I was wrapped up in a little mourning ball -- not that I've ever been a great housekeeper. Also I dyed some white underwear orange, because orange was the color of dye I had for historical reasons, and orange is not as bad as white, at least I think it's not, we'll see.

I meant to get out to Lighthouse Field with my clipboard, but when I thought it might be either the field or the pruning, I thought the pruning was more immediate.

Also, over this same period I have written 7000 words of a probably 10K word story. One of my endless "fellow with little to no self-esteem and his crush" stories, but this one features the song "Spanish Merchant's Daughter:"

Father was a Spanish Merchant and before he went to sea
made me promise to say "No Sir" to all you say to me
--No sir, No Sir, No Sir, No Sir

I know your father was against me. Should he not return from sea
And they say you have no mother, would you then say no to me?
--No sir, No Sir, No Sir, No Sir

Yes I know I have no mother, should father not return from sea
Then you see I have a brother who would take good care of me
--No sir, No Sir, No Sir, No Sir

If we were walking in the garden, plucking roses wet with dew
Would we be in any way offended if I walk and talk with you
--No sir, No Sir, No Sir, No Sir

I know the world is very cruel if you have no one to care
But I always will say no sir until from father I do hear
--No sir, No Sir, No Sir, No Sir

As we tarry in the garden and we linger side by side
would you tell me I must leave you and refuse to be my bride
No sir, no sir, no sir, no sir,
No sir, no sir, no sir, no no!



Tomorrow, back to work.