Furtive …
Such a wonderful word.
It’s the one that came to mind as I laid in bed this morning. The day had started without me — it wasn’t yet bright, but there was light outside, which filtered in through the bathroom windows.
The running joke when I bought this house was that the person who owned it was a vampire.
During the walk-through, we couldn’t see the bedroom very well because he had it super-dark in there; the story we actually got was that he worked nights, slept days, that sort of thing.
I do like the vampire story much better.
Truth is, the bedroom faces east, so the sun kisses it every morning, brightly. I took a lesson from the vampire and put blackout curtains in the actual bedroom part, but the bathroom part has frosted glass and blinds that do little to thwart the light’s entre.
It allows me furtive glimpses of the day as I sprawl before getting up, if I end up sleeping in a bit.
I did so today: I didn’t stand up and out of bed until about 6:20am.
It’s just gone 7:17am and the air conditioner kicked on.
A report from the other day indicated that the weather people recorded the hottest temperature in the Mojave since the early 1940s: 130 F.
Furtive glimpses…
I now glimpse my own life, furtively:
I dream of my mother, who lives on the other side of the country. A wireless phone carries her voice to my ear every couple days. A wireless phone …
I try to remember certain times of my life and they slip by, like a roll of microfilm on fast forward: I see grey shadows of memory and try to fill in the blanks as the worst of it plays in slow motion.
Looking at a clinic ceiling after a certain procedure that good girls never talk about.
Looking at the cracks on the floor of the blood bank, where I sat and talked with the guy who listened to Billy Cobham on his Sony cassette Walkman all the time.
Walking to work with crooked glasses after a fight at home.
The empty sound of the room they put you in at the hospital when someone is dead.
The tacky too-bright colors of a motel room during a clandestine thing.
Sleeping on a couch in a house full of boxes.
Driving a U-Haul and a super-human move from one state to another, without help.
Watching a loved one slowly suffer with a congenital illness and feeling like nothing will ever be enough.
Being afraid to pick up a box of cremains, wondering if it weighs as much as the person did, before.
The sound of an empty house and the furtive desire for it not to be so.
The furtive desire for an empty house.
The shock of a house no longer empty, wondering what happened to what was.
And so I played the song that came to mind in those furtive moments.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pmRJdXg2leI&w=560&h=315]
The violas and other strings in ‘Under Ice’, plus Ms. Bush’s voice
It’s me …
Yeah. All that.