Darling, half-collapsed in my chair, up in the aerie, character in my own novel, the one that I'm writing, writing as I live it, or a few moments after. I just finished vacuuming the downstairs, so dusty - why? Dust is the terrible enemy - which has to do not so much with cosmology, I expect, as air pollution. Whatever floats over from Ohio and deposits here. Or whatever D's sanding in his enclosed front-porch workshop, that would probably flunk all sorts of OSHA standards. And so I dusted, with a wet turquoise sock, his Steinway, that 1920s elephant in the room, that is rarely played, but covered with visible gray ash. The piano, on which my well-worn cookbooks sit - I dusted them too.

Oh, just feeling exasperated, and a little between worlds. I'm so glad, the other day, that the Reverend in her sermon admonished/corrected us to understand that we aren't meant to abhor, abjure, reject, discount - the world. I thought about that, as I set about vacuuming and dusting the downstairs -- sunny rooms, but a whole lot of grot, rooms that need repainting -- there's just so much that I have to not look at so as to just bear things -- I like for my eyes to fall upon intact, clean, ordered things -- I do what I can here - it all fell apart, it's just dusting a wreck, now -- I don't know, I'm exaggerating.

I pushed the vacuum cleaner around, sipping - quaffing - from an icefilled glass of pink wine. Which sounds - oh horrors! - so decadent - but it was quarter-to-five-ish, and - it's what makes housecleaning, of the 'heavy chores' variety doable/tolerable.

I don't mind housekeeping, homekeeping, I thought, as I folded towels from the drier. I could easily imagine a scenario, in an office where afternoon hours got whiled away, while I toiled - pointlessly, it seems to me in retrospect - at a cubicle - under the sharp watchful supervision of an Alpha.

No, so it was preferable for me to carry an icefilled glass in one hand, and push vacuum cleaner in the other, and not feel like some retro-stuck woman. No, I sort of like these types of chores, actually, to a point (as long as they're not overly taxing, to the point of joint/muscle pain). This was in lieu of a home-pilates workout. What made it hard for me, was my own head. I actually enjoyed going about the house, doing what needed to be attended to -- cooking so much this morning -- making croutons, sauteeing a kale pasta sauce, setting up chicken and a pan of root vegetables for tonight's dinner, whose aroma I inhale now, set in the oven --

No - I love all those things, those activities
but even as I do them, go through the motions
I feel so horribly lonely, and alone
it's this terribly bifurcated existence - at each & every moment
sunshine - just now, in the golden moments up in the aerie - and
well, not misery, I don't wish to overstate it

I like keeping house - so long as it's not too much, and my eyes have pleasant surfaces to fall on [okay tweak that grammar later]

also I had an orgasm today - that headache issue I had some weeks ago - somehow resolved, gone - oh thank goodness - oh I so didn't need that
so things went well - and I know now, much better than I ever did, what an orgasm is

and - where was I - or so, are novels necessary? I used to think so, back when I was very very young, and trying to find life lessons elsewhere - because I was so clueless - and utterly guideless -
I used to read novels, eagerly, for guidance

now I don't read them at all, hardly, though I'd like to re-read Middlemarch

instead, I'm trying to figure out my own life
and I write about it, as it happens

and as I came this morning
I thought about deceased ancestors who might be observing me
perhaps censoriously
and I ignored those thoughts
because I figured that
if they're up in heaven
they have better things to do
- or - might even be - in a way - happy for me -