no winter.
It’s been a while since I had an honorary journal entry. Six months?
It’s funny, I look at my children and how much they can change in a year, two, three, and think how quickly I must have changed back then, and little I change now, or at least perceivably. Years blend together. Something I wrote two or three years ago could have easily been last month.
As I try to get the garden to a place where it is not taking up much of my time mentally, I find myself losing passion for music, or at least finding it degrading, diminishing. I find it hard to listen to most music anymore. Much of it doesn’t interest me anymore. I could make an attempt to pursue music as a sellable art, but why? How much of my ego and carnal desire to legitimize my own existence has been wrapped up in the music I write? The only music I care to listen to are arcane and sing of existential quandaries.
My favorite song to listen to these days is Annalise Lovelace’s “Oceans Burning”. Such great lyrics of idealism in the face of global exploitation, and amid such a sideroad into self-examination, seeking hope where there is none, in future generations, or self-annihilation. “Someday maybe we’ll find what we’re looking for.”
And so if my music is wrapped up in my ego, what am I hoping it will accomplish. If I abhor all desires for power and celebrity, what am I hoping to convey? Why should I think anyone would listen? I can’t even play or sing as well as I used to because I don’t do it as much anymore. Where does that leave me? What am I to do once our children are older and independent? Perhaps they’ll have their own kids and look to us for assistance. The world gets progressively scary, with more bodies in a fine space, home values sky-rocketing. No chance to sit still and reflect because it keeps growing, no winter. “Parents keep raising children; I hope they make it if we don’t find a better life.”
Roxy passed away (graduated) a couple weeks ago. I placed her body in the ground a few feet from where I placed Chaz’s body. Her body slowly fell apart in the few months. One eye started failing on her in July and got all gooped up; for a while she was vomiting frequently, then she showed a taste for peanut butter and with Boone’s suggestion I started offering it to her; the vomiting reduced, but she was also eating less and getting frail. She spent the last few months downstairs because getting up the stairs was too much work; in the last month her other eye starting giving out and she had trouble seeing, was pretty much blind the last couple weeks, and was peeing and pooping wherever she deemed fit. And the flees that swarmed her body in the last month as she had ceased grooming herself. Through it all she never complained, took it in stride. She died on a Saturday morning while I was out running with my running group; she had crawled under the dining room table and was unable to get back to her feet. Beth was with her at the end.
I suppose it’s fitting that Beth would find her first after passing as she was “her” cat, as Chaz was “mine” and I was the first to find him after passing. There has been some relief: No more wondering if I’m going to accidentally step in a small puddle of pee or a little morsel of poo as I trek through the downstairs in the pre-bedtime post-dusk; no more making sure she has fresh food, water, clean(ish) litter box; no more buying murdered animals; no more playing God to an institutionalized animal. Freedom in death, for her and myself. Rest in peace, Roxy-poxy.
It’s funny, I look at my children and how much they can change in a year, two, three, and think how quickly I must have changed back then, and little I change now, or at least perceivably. Years blend together. Something I wrote two or three years ago could have easily been last month.
As I try to get the garden to a place where it is not taking up much of my time mentally, I find myself losing passion for music, or at least finding it degrading, diminishing. I find it hard to listen to most music anymore. Much of it doesn’t interest me anymore. I could make an attempt to pursue music as a sellable art, but why? How much of my ego and carnal desire to legitimize my own existence has been wrapped up in the music I write? The only music I care to listen to are arcane and sing of existential quandaries.
My favorite song to listen to these days is Annalise Lovelace’s “Oceans Burning”. Such great lyrics of idealism in the face of global exploitation, and amid such a sideroad into self-examination, seeking hope where there is none, in future generations, or self-annihilation. “Someday maybe we’ll find what we’re looking for.”
And so if my music is wrapped up in my ego, what am I hoping it will accomplish. If I abhor all desires for power and celebrity, what am I hoping to convey? Why should I think anyone would listen? I can’t even play or sing as well as I used to because I don’t do it as much anymore. Where does that leave me? What am I to do once our children are older and independent? Perhaps they’ll have their own kids and look to us for assistance. The world gets progressively scary, with more bodies in a fine space, home values sky-rocketing. No chance to sit still and reflect because it keeps growing, no winter. “Parents keep raising children; I hope they make it if we don’t find a better life.”
Roxy passed away (graduated) a couple weeks ago. I placed her body in the ground a few feet from where I placed Chaz’s body. Her body slowly fell apart in the few months. One eye started failing on her in July and got all gooped up; for a while she was vomiting frequently, then she showed a taste for peanut butter and with Boone’s suggestion I started offering it to her; the vomiting reduced, but she was also eating less and getting frail. She spent the last few months downstairs because getting up the stairs was too much work; in the last month her other eye starting giving out and she had trouble seeing, was pretty much blind the last couple weeks, and was peeing and pooping wherever she deemed fit. And the flees that swarmed her body in the last month as she had ceased grooming herself. Through it all she never complained, took it in stride. She died on a Saturday morning while I was out running with my running group; she had crawled under the dining room table and was unable to get back to her feet. Beth was with her at the end.
I suppose it’s fitting that Beth would find her first after passing as she was “her” cat, as Chaz was “mine” and I was the first to find him after passing. There has been some relief: No more wondering if I’m going to accidentally step in a small puddle of pee or a little morsel of poo as I trek through the downstairs in the pre-bedtime post-dusk; no more making sure she has fresh food, water, clean(ish) litter box; no more buying murdered animals; no more playing God to an institutionalized animal. Freedom in death, for her and myself. Rest in peace, Roxy-poxy.