Dear
La Belette Rouge,
I'm having exactly that same problem with my blog. Am I a bipolar blog? Is it all about my craziness--my reclusivety, my lack of interest in the outside world, always about the navel gazing? I occasionally write a poem or post a bit of political outrage, and then there is a small palate cleansing of a bit of jazz. But even I know that I grow stale, old, dull on certain days. Mondays seem to be the worst for me. Now that you have me thinking about it, I realize that I will probably post this email to my blog, since I woke up with nothing to say. Nothing. I have nothing to add to what's been said. The conversation has come to an uncomfortable silence for me. Where do I go from here? Do I have too many things in the air juggling like mad and is it all about to come crashing down on my head in a loud clatter and then a deafening silence?
There are so many days I wake up and face the keyboard with nothing at all to say. I will have listened to the news, but neglected the newspapers, or big news blogs to find later in the day that had I done the slightest bit of reading I would have found something of substance to shout about. But today I'm a tabula rasa. So I'll probably take this letter to you and try to make it into something.
And for me, the reader of your blog, your therapy sessions are my favorite days. I worry about you when you go shopping, having been the sort of woman who used shopping as a substitute for whatever my life lacked. What my life did not lack was new designer clothes, fifty pairs of shoes, jewelry I never wore, the latest handbags, new sheets, new towels, the latest kitchen gadget, a vase, scented candles in new fragrances, and on and on. So I see shopping as a substitute for meaning. I see shopping as a way to fill the hole my mother left in my soul. And yes, at my age with my mother safely dead almost three and a half years, she still haunts me now and then and even as I say that I realize how silly it sounds that a dead woman still has the power to scare me, take whatever pleasure I have in a moment and turn it into pain. I know it is me giving her ghost power. I also know my hiding out like a woman living in a self imposed prison is a pathetic attempt to have a little control over what has been a chaotic life.
Why is it that in moments like these, I hear lines from The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock running through my mind? It's a poem that was written by a very young man. Why does it now hold such power for me? Why has it always? From the moment I first read it, sometime in my teens, it has held my attention and made me feel as if at least TS Eliot would have understood me. More than likely had TS Eliot the slightest relationship to me, he'd have thrown me in some moderately priced looney bin and been done with me. I'm amazed my family didn't. I suppose knowing that they might made me pretend with all my might that I was peachy. And there it is again, another echo from the long dead Eliot.
Well, now I have a post I think. I hope you won't mind if I post this letter to you or at least portions of it. Thanks for the inspiration. Were it not for you, I'd have nothing to say today.
Love,
Peggy
This is the largest green ash tree in the Salt Lake Valley according to the experts at Arbor Care. It grows in my backyard. When I was a child I had the world's best rope and wood slat swing that hung from an enormous branch that is now a phantom limb. Green ash trees fell prey to a borer and few survived. We aggressively treated this tree. It survived and still grows at an almost alarming rate. It is a very heavy wood and in a big wind storm it self prunes. Several years ago a smallish branch came down breaking several of the tiles on the roof of the main house. There is no way to really give you an idea how large this tree is, but the tall two storied house is a toy beneath it.
