Waiting around

Aisha Badru - Waiting around.

Lights

Feeling stuck creatively - its nice to show prosaic landscapes, but too much in the comfort zone.  I need to challenge myself more.  Perhaps there is some fatigue from waking up early on random days.

Ellie Goulding - Lights (shook remix).

RIP

I'm going to take an internal job offer, but my ambition to rise up in rank, or even strive for my pay is dwindling to a low.  My boss, who is very nice and arranged everything, suggests that I should not withhold my talents from the world.  I'm not sure what I can offer, or even if I can identify it, if I wanted to.  I just know I can't do the same thing for the next 30 years, so a move is justified at this juncture.

I need to draft a thank you note to him, working through my notes below...

Work and life, if we are lucky, are coupled with meaning and purpose, with direction, and realized through support of comrades-in-arms.  These past two years, then, were a four leaf clover, a rabbit's foot.  I am deeply obliged that you have provided me with all of these things during my tenure of working with you.  Most of all, thank you so much for your understanding - it is a currency that is sought after, yet you have it in spades.  

Emily Haines & the Soft Skeleton - RIP.

Gordon's gardenparty

Back in New York, and while things are in bloom in my life and surroundings, it is heady and teeming with people everywhere.

The Cardigans - Gordon's gardenparty.

Cherry blossom

Copenhagen was an interesting city to witness - I saw how a well functioning bike infrastructure could exist alongside cars, and enjoyed the same things I might in New York, restaurants and art exhibits, without the lines and pretension and certainly without the armies of instagrammers.  There's a lot to take back to New York.

Ala.ni - Cherry blossom (MOORS remix).

Lake of fire

Nirvana - Lake of Fire.

I'm only sleeping

Confined to her bed in the hospice, my Grandma mostly sleeps.  Her weight has dropped strikingly with diminished food intake, and I watch for ever more subtle signs that she is still breathing; Her frail chest cavity struggles to rise, the blankets covering her climbing slowly with effort, and then plunging quickly from the exertion.  On good days, she has a deep slumber, her breathing soft and gentle.  On worse days, it is a fitful sleep, punctuated by gurgles from the bile building in her lungs that a machine rhythmically pumps out.

In my life, I have viewed people near death.  I have witnessed the aftermath of death.  I have even observed the act of dying in execution, soul and energy dissipating in its final moments, and the hollowed body slumped from its newfound emptiness.  I have trouble accurately placing what state this is, the line between live and death so thin and its limbo marked only by sleep.  I suppose I could insert Shakespeare here, and talk about death and sleep, and the calamity of so long life.  However, the topic being well tread, I will move on, and offer only the observation that I am myself quite frequently sleepy in the hospice.  

When I do doze off on the couch, the hospice staff often wake me.  Every two hours, my Grandma needs to be shifted to prevent bedsores, and there are blood pressure measurements, morphine dosages, filling and emptying of equipment in the room I am only vaguely aware of.  The staff is all black, mostly Caribbean, and I find comfort in their patois:

“G’wan sleeping, I’m only here fa her blood pre-shure…”   

The words remind me of Jamaican stew, thick, tender and deeply seasoned, so I allow myself to be enveloped in its comforting notes before drifting back off to sleep.

“Have you eaten?” is a common greeting in Cantonese, a substitute for hello.  Long after my Grandma could no longer walk, when I visited her, she would ask if I have eaten.  Now when I think back, I rarely saw her eat.  I sometimes think that her hunger was satiated through solely feeding us.  And so this greeting became problematic with her aging - in our family’s collective worry, we always responded affirmatively, such that I was always coming from a big meal or heading to one, regardless of whether I’d actually eaten.  Our fear stemmed from her forgetfulness; Not remembering that she was immobile, she would still attempt to whip up a quick snack and risk falling out of her wheelchair.  I think with losing family members, you always have some regrets centered around food – recipes are lost, dishes made with love (vehicles of communicating love, really) that will never make its way to you as a recipient any more.  I spend a fair amount of time in Chinatown, trying to rediscover one dish or another, but the flavors are never the same.  I think it is common and easy to discount the preparer in lieu of the ingredients, the flavors drawn from watching the cook make combinatorial magic.  The flavors of her food reflect the small saucer she used to wet her fingertips to pry off wonton wrappers, the worn tea towel she wiped residue the spoon used to scoop up her pork and scallion filling, the wallpaper in the kitchen, worn and coated with cooking grease.  These are ingredients I can never hope to replace or dream of substituting in my only desolate kitchen.          

And here in the hospice, we come full circle.  I make poor attempts to feed her and ask if she has eaten, but mostly we share a small measure of sleep together.

Rosanne Cash - I'm only sleeping (Beatles cover).