Three Weeks

I will be forced to leave this house in about three weeks.  Something outside the usual is bothering me. 

Karla is in no hurry to take mom's urn to the cemetery, so she has it on a shelf next to a hummingbird feeder.  She says the number of birds coming to it has increased.  Also, her cat leaps up and sits next to it and watches the birds.

On my first night in mom's room (I moved into it so that what was my room can be repainted) I sat in mom's chair.  It's a little uncomfortable at the small of the back.  Mom always had a cushion she used there.  I didn't have it, and really felt its absence.  At the end of the evening I plopped some clothes on the chair, turned off the TV, and went to bed.  The next day I discovered that mom's cushion was precisely placed where it ought to be.  That's a neat trick if I did it to myself via the pile of clothes I casually plunked down. 

After the second night in mom's room I got up to set the locks on the front door so anyone who showed up could get in (undoing the deadbolt and screen door).  I found the chain had been drawn across.  I have been out of the habit of using that chain for several years now. 

Am I gaslighting myself?

Jesseca and I share a lot of vids about the (so-called) supernatural.  Given the lore on ghosts, I hate the idea of mom being here and tied to the house.  Owning this house was her proudest achievement.  If she's here then I dare not let myself think I'm going to be leaving her alone in it.  Maybe she's not tied to it, and maybe I'm subconsciously playing tricks on myself.  Maybe she's watching birds.

(sudden mental image of a bird sitting on a perch and someone in gym clothes anxiously waiting beneath to catch it:  birdspotting)

This is the third morning.  No new odd occurrences noticed.

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January 30th, nearly 11 PM.  Watching a movie about authors and wondering how much of Dana I have invented.  If I was so far from the mark she could and should have said so.  If not then I am the only one who really knows her, the only one who loves her complete for everything she is. 

If I were a writer of fiction the Dana I imagine is someone I would invent. 

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February 2nd,  1 AM.

Will you marry me, Dana?

I've been wanting to ask you that for 34 years. 

Dana, promise me that you will sort out the problem, find your cure, whatever it is that keeps you from talking to me, and then write to me.   You promise me that.  Anything less is beneath you.  I deserve that promise.  Step up, Cooper.  I'm not giving up on you, don't you fucking give up either.  You're not the horrible person you want so desperately to think you are.  You're nowhere close to it.

I'm still trying to work that painting in  my head.  It needs flow and movement.  I was thinking forward stride, maybe reaching a hand out but that's not what's missing...the elements need interaction, it's too static and there's a space that is left dead.  I was thinking a little while ago that I've never seen you dance and I very much want to.  How do you look when you dance?  Mind, I never would have gone dancing with you anyway, I have no rhythm...but it's something I wish you'd let me share.

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I've spent almost fifty years in this house, I should have been allowed to spend my last few weeks in it in peace.  That's not happening.  Dammit, I still have a major drawing I need to finish, these people have to let me work on it.

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I may never be able to look at Dana's FB page.  It's like...I should be able to be happy knowing she's doing well, but I already know she will be.  She's a survivor.  It hurts to see her happy and know I'm not welcome to share in it.  I'm not invited to the party.  She's happy because I'm not there.  I can't look at that, I can't see that smile.  It's like being spat on.  Of course I know that's not her intention, she deserves to be happy.  But that's how it feels from here. 

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February 4th.  Had to have an estate sale Friday and Saturday.  Sold a few things but not enough.  Suppose we'll have to try it again in a week or two.  A couple of my model buildups sold.  Trying today to change gears again back from that.

There's a matched pair of portraits I may  do someday.  Not in the spirit for it now.  From a dream, late Nineties or early Oughts.  In the dream someone had graffitoed a brick wall with large portraits of Dana and me.  Mine had the top of my head removed just above the browline and capped with a brass lid to an incense decanter.  The lid was tipped up to reveal the inside of my head:  it was filled with brain-sized pupil, iris, and cornea gazing upward out of the skull.  Dana's portrait had two sets of eyes, one above the other, as if she were two beings or personalities in one body.  What I would like most to do is to obtain two large sheets of plastic and cover them with sculpted bricks (putty or plastic sheet cutouts I would texture) and paint the portraits over those in enamels and/or acrylics.  An alternative would be to do the same with paper and heavy cardstock and use crayons.  That latter would be easier and cheaper but the effect would be a mimicry of what I want.  I've always avoided self-portraits but I like the details of the inner eye and incense lid.  Also, that brick wall is tragically apt.

With sheet styrene I keep running into the same problem, warping.  The styrene reacts badly to the chemicals in the very glues and putties  designed specifically for them.  I've done any number of really nice pieces that were useless within three days.    My brother John showed me a bottle of what he calls 'sprue glue', a DIY putty made by melting bits of styrene in a bottle of MEK-type liquid glue (methyl ethyl ketone, works by capillary action) .  The resulting paste was much more fluid than I expected, I'd heard about this long ago but had imagined it as a sticky mess.  He says there's been no warpage, the assumption being that styrene can't react badly to styrene.  So now I'd like to try this stuff out.  I hope there's a hobby store I can get to in Oswego.