Noah's Ark

Last Sunday, I drowned any spiders, dust mites, and microscopic prokaryotes, thus liberating the saprophytes that feed on dead remains and so produce bouquets of spores. English: I flooded the back end of the god-blasted apartment with an inch of water and spent a good part of the next day ripping up carpeting. Plastic crap-ola indoor outdoor carpeting that was the color of cheap canned dog food and stapled into the asbestos linoleum on top of once uponna time foam underlayment. No one was hurt, no cat became ill from padding through pools, and I promised the universe to swear less if I got my job back while sopping up buckets with a miracle sponge that I will bury with a marker when it's ready to go I respect this sponge so much, it saved my giblets. Just the kind of sponge you use to wash a car, an oversize floppy synthetic thing, but it held water like Scarlett clinging to the fantasy of Ashley Wilkes. I am grateful, O sponge; particulars are not being revealed even if you promise me a box of kittens.

Much was thrown away, my mom's old easel, a table missing a leg but it was such a good piece of furniture, a wool rug so plain and warm, a mirror in a gilt picture frame from grandma's time, and some books. It was horrible, I still ache. This scenario was compounded by the mystery of job status which was not found out until that Tuesday, when I went to the online site and saw the words. I had gone to work to set up the classroom, yet waited to get home before checking--if the state hadn't said okey-dokey, I didn't want to know in front of anybody.

Well, it was, I am, and sleep has returned. There is still an anxiety, but it's wearing down, ebbing away from a clawed grip to a tolerable elbow in the ribs. It will be all gone soon, remaining sensation being the breathless shock that things worked out. Lord, I need to get to the ocean, to feel the salt waves rocking against my shins, pulling the tension of human life on land back to the beginning of shelled things. Since I redigidooed the car insurance policy, there will be nine hundred dollars that I don't have to pay them. This will buy a lot of cat food and maybe get a vacation in there somewheres. Oh baby.

Going off to push some more furniture around, found a black circular dial telephone which only needs a split adaptor to hook up. Tried it out in the modem and yippee, using a finger to turn the dial felt familiarly weird, and sounded like fifty years ago. Come on over and call someone; maybe grandma will answer, but that is a story for a cup of tea.

Oh sleep. Tomorrow is college library research for a Monday paper, but tonight, that beginning-of-fall cool night that requires heavier bedding will lull daylight into memory. Oh, most of our joy occurs in day, but there is the respite from being good enough that night comforts and loosens a little, if only to dream or fall into dark, quiet worlds of slow time. Rest and recover, let the subconscious wend through thought and desire, let the body sink gratefully down to innocence. Good night, good night, water, star, carbon, flesh. Love to all.