death and facials

There is no way I can catch up with all I have not written. No way. I can summarize day upon day spent in the pale yellow catacombs of death and depression, I can blame it on the gray of winter, the inevitable longing for blue sky. I can, as a true-born Oregonian, make an honest admission of cabin fever. I have not, it turns out, forgotten how to type, or what my address is here at bluesky. Perish the thought. Every single day something happens that is worthy of blognote, that makes its way past the mundane and into consciousness, the spark that says YES, that would make for a good post. But evening falls, never soon enough and always too late, and I am paralyzed on my perfect leather sofa, sitting in my corner where I always sit, and I digest the intensity of the day without hitting a key except to play mahjong.

There I was, Friday morning, lying in my bed, struggling to know the perfect will of Almighty God in my life and the voice of God speaks: "Why don't you go ahead and get up and get dressed and go to work and we'll see how that goes." Fine.

f i n e.

So I showed up because they pay me to, and left at noon just to bolster my precarious mental health. I am always on call, and I told them to find someone else to call this weekend and let me have a fucking break. Did I say fuck?

And later friday night we went to our second lesson in east and west coast swing dancing which you'd think would be fun, and it is, but my fun-o-meter is broken right now. I've lost my sense of humor. Everything seems so serious, but really, its only life and death.

So I awoke saturday morning, hips and calves sore from rock-lead-one-two-three-one-two-three... Before I could talk myself out of it, I wandered a few blocks down my street and met some friends. We talked, as we sometimes do, about things of a spiritual nature. We don't call it talking about religion, but that is essentially what it is. Turns out as long as you're not talking about Christianity, your'e talking about "things of a spiritual nature." Once Jesus comes into it, you're talking about religion and you're fucked. Anyway, I tell them how stressed I am, all of this time spent trying to divine what is next for me. Should I quit my job and work at a coffee shop or some other place where death is a relative anomaly? Shall I live off the proceeds from my house and write a blockbuster? What to do What to do? Still stressed to near breaking point, I came home from the meeting and Nicole, who is in beauty school, offered to give me a facial at 10:30. Now, I am so exhausted that even a facial seems like just too much to cope with. It would require me to get dressed and leave my sofa. But I'm wise to my own psychosis: it thinks it can kill my body and keep on going. So I say, okay. Okay. I will experience some fucking pleasure then if you are going to make me.

So I went to the beauty school and waited my turn. There were three massage tables, semi-private, curtained off one from another, and I was in the middle one. There was another facial starting at about the same time, and I had really been hoping for quiet. As I mentioned.... I was just the ever so teensy bit stressed. We, Nicole and I, settled into the nice smells and textures of the process until behind curtain number one, comes the conversation:

She was really in a lot of pain when she died. I mean, we knew she was going. My aunt is 91 and she wants to be cremated. Yeah, just yesterday. the pain was terrible and she's out of that so its really a blessing. So now we have to figure out what to do. My husband has his grandmother's ashes on their mantle. Yes we knew she was going, but you're never ready for that....

blah
b l a h
b l a h
b l a h....................................

Finally, we both just started laughing. Death is life is death is life.

I was reminded of that line from the beginning of Dances With Wolves: "Were it not for my companion, I would be having the time of my life."