lycanthropia

And not a moment too soon says I, huddled safely on the sofa beneath the yellow wedding-ring quilt, with mineral water within arm’s reach.

Not that it’s particularly wintry here, or even cold; last night was down to freezing but then today I sat in the sun in the backyard and ate strawberries. So I can’t really complain. It’s just that I have a particular history with February, with its being a terrible month in which terrible things happen to me and/or I do them to myself. Climbing up mountains and falling down them and so forth. So I am grateful to watch another February sliding into the past and leaving me well and sound and mostly totally unscathed.

Pyewacket is blissed out passed out on my lap making typing nearly impossible, or I would say more. And maybe I will say more tomorrow once it is safely March, which is always a good month because my birthday is in it. And the equinox. And the start of spring.

I’ve been watching inane Youtube clips for hours, I won’t even link them because they have made me feel really dumb. But I can’t read for anything, can’t concentrate, I don’t know why. It is maddening. Out of I suppose boredom (which I have always thought was a mild form of anger or irritation) I finally unblocked my ex on Facebook and it was completely uneventful. I don’t feel anything, only a slight but sincere pity, which is condescending of me but that was what I felt tonight. Maybe another time I will feel another kind of something.

And I am waiting, waiting, waiting for the five PhD programs and the one fellowship to contact me. March is also the month of notifications so that is always kind of interesting, after a long winter of waiting, to see where you will be in a few months’ time, what address you will be writing on the boxes and the forms, or if you will be going anywhere at all. I am not even sure I want to go anywhere, but I know I probably should. Otherwise I will stay in this town and always have this physical pull of knowing roughly where he is and what he is doing. When I was in DC for AWP it was wonderful, I felt free and young and like a person again, this was maybe partly because we were walking everywhere and taking the Metro and it feels wonderful to get around on my own physical power, not eternally slumped behind a steering wheel like a drone, and also partly because I had a crush, and yet I think mostly because I was in a city without him in it. I felt so good. I want to feel that free again, in my city. Whichever city it will turn out to be.

My friend Laura sent me a very nice horoscope which promises I will have all kinds of revelations and insights; it says in part,

Your craving to be free is real. The restlessness you’re feeling is not something you want to medicate away, talk yourself out of, or pretend does not exist. It’s not merely spring fever, though that’s a good way to describe your whole life. Rather, what you’re feeling is your soul calling you to wake up to your beauty and the beauty of life….

On the other hand, in slightly dampening news my friend who is exactly one day younger than I am and who is a midwife tells me we will probably start being menopausal at around 45. I thought I had until 50, but clearly I really will be childless now, unless I adopt, which I might do some day if I have any money which I never will. I have hated having periods all my life but now I feel each one is actually, and I know this is so obnoxious you will want to slap me, but I feel each one is singular and precious. I don’t mind them anymore. Sure they hurt but then at least there’s something going on down there (which reminds me of late Texas governor Ann Richards joking about getting frisked by airport security because she was wearing one of those leotards with metal snaps at the crotch).

I drive around with the air conditioner on low, because I am always wearing a sweater and it’s hot in the car, and I listen over and over to Patty Griffin’s album Impossible Dream. I’ve had it for years but it’s like I’ve never heard it before. Songs like “Florida” and “Mother of God” and “Rowing Song” and “Icicles,” songs for which I didn’t much care six years ago, are now so desolate and redolent for me that I get gooseflesh when I hear them, driving along and singing, singing. They are natural songs for me to sing, falling easily in my range, with my sharp rural soprano that matches hers, the voice of those “hill women” with whom CD Wright identifies:

I have no trouble spotting myself: bony but strong as a weed, an abiding refusal to smile or sing; a relentless if not brutal honesty; streaks of the mean, the grotesque in humor. Thomas Hardy’s descriptions of the peasant yeomanry of England…are likewise faithful to my relations: “blond, grey-eyed, slim, with straight mouths, determined chins, independent and hidebound, adaptable to circumstances, free of outside influences, not complacent and don’t fight well unless cornered. Then to the death.”

(That little autobiographical essay of hers was gospel to me at twenty-five.)

Nothing I have to say tonight is as galvanizing as those songs.

I am craving fettuccini alla carbonara pancetta from Giuseppi’s, an unexpectedly amazing ristorante cleverly concealed in yet another mud-colored Arizona strip mall. I would have ordered the pasta with a side dish of deep green grilled rapini and a glass of buttery oaky Chardonnay which is not a wine I usually care for but I liked the taste Beth let me have out of her glass when we went there. I may go tomorrow night, if anyone wants to go with me. To celebrate surviving until another March.

(The cat has moved to my feet and it’s possible to type now.)

(But now I can’t think of anything to say.)

(Which pretty much sums up February.)

isn’t it hard sometimes
isn’t it lonely
how I still hang around here
with nothing to hold me