Yet another

big change. New job for Robin. After 32 years of his own
business, he is now working for someone else. Punching
a time clock, working seconds, packing a dinner, trying
to acclimate.

We somehow had it in our heads that at 55 (his age), he'd
be thinking about how he would keep the business going
for another 6 years and then retire. But it has not worked
out that way.

I realize now that I can't come here and write anything about us.
It feels like betrayal. I suppose there are just some things
that must live inside you until you no longer live. Things others
will never know.

I want someone to know about what it is I am and feel. But I can't
do that--let anyone in. I shall go to my grave with what needs to be
said. Maybe.

I must think there is something special about what it is that is happening
to me and has happened or I would not feel so pulled.

But I am just too fucking tired to do anything about it tonight.

Damn.

Give up or give in or go nuts.

Back home

Left last Sunday for savannah GA.
Loved it there. Wish we would have had more time.

Then on to Patriot's Point, SC (in charleston harbor)
to step foot on the Yorktown. Emotionally draining.

Then downtown charleston the next day and on to Asheville
NC. Biltmore on Thursday. Thomas Wolfe home on Friday
Oct. 22.

Then on to nashville to stay with Lauren.

Then home.

Really need to get back on the habit of writing.

I want to say things that will hurt, so I just don't say anything,

Strange dreams. My dad working in a hardware shop.
Me on the doctor's exam table. I think I am most likely
doomed, but I seem too optimistic and the doctor seems
so cheerful.

*

had this episode at Biltmore. Can't explain it, really. Thought
I was having a stroke or something. Heart beating very fast.
Head with this strange vise-like feeling all around it. No pain.

The only time I feel good and unafraid and capable of doing anything
is when I am half tanked.

I don't want to give up. I don't believe in the we all have a destiny
or time or whatever. We fucking have to keep believing. I don't
want to be so beaten down that I can't keep believing.

there is so much to what little I say. It rolls through my head
all day. I am just not up to the getting it on the page.

what is the point? if the point is to get better, then i need to do it.

Fuck. Don't matter. Still so damned stuck.

First time I have cried in a very long time.

Dad would have been 87 tomorrow.

So much has changed since his death. It seems
so little has felt right. I think many things have
been right. I just don't know how to let them be
what they are.

I feel lost. Alone. I wrote those same words many
times when he was alive. They are the same words.
But what they mean is not the same.

I hope I get some sleep.

I am so glad it is fall. My favorite time of the year. And I feel sad. For all the years gone by. For all I did not do, have not done, have missed in the lives of my children and in my own life, when all the while I thought I was out searching for me. I was really missing out on me. Now what? Can't even remember 21 or 22. And 51 feels far too old to be not that old.

Kunstfest

Went to New Harmony, IN Friday night. European
beer tasting. Not a beer drinker. Did it more to get Rob
out of the house. Don't know that it helped much. He's
never been to New Harmony. I've been there many times--
for wine tastings, poetry workshops, pleasure. Thought
including him in a part of my life by asking if he wanted
to go to something I thought he would like (beer) would
help lift his mood. Not that he seemed miserable, but
he was detached. One of the beers I tasted was surprisingly
good. It tasted like drinking October. Like drinking Halloween.
A German beer, a dopplebock--starts with an A...hmmm....Aventinus.

****

I felt alone in our togetherness.

The downward spiral continues for his business. Every night
I come home to gloom and doom. It is wearing on me. I have
done all I know to do to help.

Kunstfest started yesterday and ends today. Stayed in New Harmony
most of the day for the festival. Lots of music, vendors, artisans.
Dulcimers, electronic accordion, brass, bluegrass, bad German food.

Walked for about 4 hours. My feet hurt today.

**************

More I thought about saying but too tired to say. Or too unsure.

Back to my bed and my books.

Before the Break

We picked my brother
up in the night:
a train depot smaller
than my carport,
concealing arrivals
and departures,
all fears concealed
in darkness, fog,
denial.

Famished, we stopped
at the Pelican for eggs
and hash, my husband lively
in his fatigue, brother
half-asleep through
the meal, me praying
I would not die there,
at the Pelican, baby
kicking around.

Even then, death
sat on my shoulder,
made itself at home
in the chambers of my heart,
an uninvited
and intrusive visitor.
I only think of this tonight,
20 years later,
because I can,
and because my brother
sends me messages
which remind me
of those days,
before the fall,
before
the fear left me
and truth came at me
with a mean right
punch to the gut,
a constant twitch
in my left eye, feet
swollen and sore,
unbendable arthritic
fingers.

Oh, yes, he sits
there still,
not as loud
as he was in the days,
but no less lively.
I want to say to him
that he no longer holds
the key, no longer
makes the decisions,
but I am older
and he never
changes.

I tell him
my brother
will kick his ass
if he makes a move,
my husband will jump
in, too, and my children
will never forgive him,
but it makes
no difference.

He's still going
to sit and brood,
make himself
my most stalwart
companion, present
himself as the lover
he has always been--
faithful and unforgiving.