Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds

The Lilac Linen smell from the catalogue spray has pretty much worn out of the comforters and blankets and sheets and things. Her nice face soap has eroded and all but floated down the drain. My friends and I packed up everything she (intentionally?) left and mailed it to her dad. I've got one last package of mail and dry cleaning that I guess I'll mail down next week. Everything else that's popped up - except for the happy things I am going to keep - from broccoli soup to makeup, I've thrown it all away. I am watering the plants. They qualify as among the few happy things resulting from this fiasco towards which I am aiming to afford positive energy. Plants bring joy and life to a place, ya know?

The cat is finally, finally (hopefully) back to normal. She has started meowing a lot, which is kind of weird, unless you consider the suggestion that she might have some things to get off her chest. She is just a cat....but she has some pretty legitimate grievances to air, I suppose. We went through some shit. Lucy infiltrated our previously calm world.......with a sky whose hue would shift as her constantly warring emotional poles insisted.....with poor Mr. Baby and the clueless fawning men....with the endless parade of jewelry, Jimmy Choo shoes, Jaeger shots, en vino veritas, la cocaina, and so on and so on and so on to the tune of the ceaseless goddamn hubabaloo.

Lucy's fantastical dreams and maniacal demands sadly (or happily in her mind?) simultaneously interrupt and define her life. She is at once beautiful and terrifying, kind and cruel, inspiring and demoralizing. It was 3 weeks ago yesterday that I forced her, physically and emotionally, to leave my home. It was one of the most, if not the most, difficult things I've ever done. It was the right thing to do. I miss her so fucking much I can't swallow without choking.

Notebooks

I think (I know) it's good for me to write this way. I used to when I was younger, always did....I guess I stopped with the chaos of college and thereafter. I kept it all, of course, have several boxes full of scrawled journals scattered throughout the apartment. Some entries are more legible than others, some more meaningful, some more scary. So, in addition to simply wanting to see how it worked, I think I started playing with this blog as a writing effort, an on the side, perhaps healthy distraction from writing minutes and whatever else it is I do all day. Maybe one day I really can move to San Francisco and take Cary Tennis's and Dave Eggers's workshops, and maybe maybe even go to Oaksterdam University. It certainly can't hurt to have dreams. I don't think....

Donna gave me a stepping stone...

...and Dr. Cooper says I'm not dying. Not dying yet, anyway, or any faster than anyone else, at the moment. So that's all good, I suppose, despite the trauma suffered in order to obtain said good news from Dr. Cooper as well as Dr. Marzo's stepping stone.

She gave it to me from her own collection, which made me cry even harder than I already had been. It's a smooth and nicely worn stone that fits quite calmly, safely, patiently in the palm of my hand. Which is where I want to keep it, but I'm afraid I'll lose it. Plus, Donna said I should put it on my desk to remind me. So that's where I've set it, here in between the Smurf from my brother and the soccer stress ball from Maureen....I've set it here on my desk to remind me. I appreciate this stone more than any gift anyone has given me in a long time. And while they were arguably more important, in an immediate physical sense, Dr. Cooper's X-rays stayed at his office.

After tossing and turning all night last night, I woke up with Natalie Merchant in my head. She and the 10,000 Maniacs say that with love with patience and with faith we'll make our way. I might need a stepping stone too, but I think they're right.

Byron S. Cooper, MD FCCP

In about half an hour, against my firm better judgment, but as persuasively urged by both back quack and shrinker, I am going for a visit with Dr. Cooper at Capital Pulmonary Internists, P.C. Dr. Cooper is a pulmonary specialist. A pulmonary specialist! A pulmonary specialist?!? Even the damn business card is terrifying, what with the drawings of happy healthy lungs breathing all over the place. Cannot imagine what it's going to be like in his office over in the West End. X-rays. We are taking lung X-rays. And I'm sure there will be visibly sick people there who will make me feel sick (I probably am sick) .....I bet on top of the X-rays there are breathing tests and similar unfathomably scary shit. Ugh. But I said I would do it, I committed to it, I am trying to think positively. They insist it's the strong and responsible thing. A big step in the right direction. For Me. I know they're right, but I really don't want to do it. Here goes nothing.

Sunday Morning

I usually wake up on Sunday mornings thinking I should be going to church. And on pleasant Sunday mornings like this one here in our nation's capital, when the windows and doors can be let open to hear the church bells ring across town, I sometimes I feel like I have! My stepmother says that doesn't count, and if I'm being honest I'll admit she's right. On Sundays growing up in the shady heat of central Florida, my mother and father would take us to Sunday school, then to the evangelical Southern Baptist sermon, and to a Christian social luncheon afterwards. We went to Sunday church across the Southeast.....in Alabama where my cousins lived and at our creaky church summer camp near my grandparents' house in Appalachian North Carolina......at least once we went to church in a strip mall in Ft. Lauderdale where my aunt and uncle were spreading the word to recent immigrants from El Salvador. But, essentially, all Southern Baptist Sundays seemed the same....it was a day for the Lord, a day that Lord had made, a day to rejoice and be glad in. TV wasn't allowed, if memory serves.....this was some serious shit! And I usually got in trouble at some point. But even later when, even after Laura died and we'd stopped going to church entirely and Sally'd gently taken us back to a different, yet highly appealing, Episcopal style where the norm was a Chardonnay laced lunch at the club after a solemn service of uplifting philosophy and song.....even then Sunday was taken as a day to step aside from the routine and focus on God and the blessings he had given us. My family still treats it that way now.

I certainly am not what you'd call a regular churchgoer today. But I think that's OK. Everyone has their own Sunday morning routine. Kris Kristofferson likes to complain about how he wishes he was stoned. Lionel Richie seems to think he's easy like Sunday morning, whatever that means. I like to sit and read the paper and the new postsecret and look forward to a day spent not at the office and perhaps with friends. And today, sitting on the porch in the sun, with brunch almost ready inside, I'm finding a lot to rejoice and be glad at indeed.