Meadow... 

Sunset on the way to TO 

Sunrise on the drive home from Toronto...through my very dirty windshield.  

Pathetic...

I want my kitty back, but she's gone for good. The striking difference in my grief over Ellie, as opposed to Eddie, is that with Eddie I felt stricken with guilt, for the euthanasia. Over time, of course, I came to know that it was the kindest thing I could have done at the time, and the absolute right decision. And all the times I've had dreams (which continue now---oh this freaks me out a little---I just remembered that about a week before Ellie died, I felt that she was seeing something in the apartment. The way she acted when Eddie first died. Sort of how we humans think we see our dead...) and felt his presence, I know that he didn't hold it against me.
So with Ellie, I think, I knew that it was the right thing to do. Not only because of my prior experience with it, but also because she was so very very sick, that the thought of not doing it hurt worse than any sort of hesitation might have.

Anyway. The difference between them, my grief for them, is that with Ellie I am so angry. I am mad at everything. Not at anything to do with her or losing her, but with everyone else, including myself. I am being self-destructive in a way that I would not have been had she not died. I have done something so very stupid, something I wouldn't have done since my early 20's. I am so angry at myself. For trusting. For believing. For being vulnerable.

But the truth is I miss Ellie so much. And it's been much harder for me to face my life in this place without her. Because she was everywhere with me. I mean, I'd stand up, and she'd stand and follow me. I'd go to bed, and she'd come in and lay down next to my head. I couldn't even pee without her pushing open the bathroom door. She didn't just follow me, she loved me, didn't want to be without me. I can't even write that without crying. The other day I was listening to a song, something about the angels...and I just collapsed and cried on the floor. In her spot where she'd lay in my bedroom doorway. I didn't realize that's where I was until I calmed down. It was pathetic....

And then I read these other blogs about the war in Iraq and I feel guilty. What am I complaining about anyway? Yes, my cat has died...but she wasn't my child (though, since I won't be having any, I guess, she was my last little baby in some ways...) and I am not having to suffer like so many people do in this world.

How does one reconcile their own grief for something that doesn't seem as worthy as the grief that others suffer? I wrote a story once, about this sort of thing, it is something I struggled with as a social worker too...The story was called "Ghetto"...

I guess my grief needs to turn to art...not to a man...just having a hard time getting there...

***Sigh***

WHY?

WHY?

Please someone tell me why men treat me so bad? WHY? I can't take it anymore...

Destiny:

to be alone...
heavy sigh...

crazy night photos... 

Fragment from my Novel

Bathing Beauties
1992
Black and White Gelatin

There is a photo of the artist’s parents at a carnival or some sort of amusement park. The edges of the original photo have been creased, perhaps by folding it to fit in a wallet. Christian’s strong chin is perched on the curved edge of a flat board, in the space carved there for a face. Beneath him is the painting of a muscled man with a small straight waist and bulging biceps. Next to him is Ivy, the artist’s mother. She is smiling while resting her face in the cutout next to him. A bikini-clad hourglass woman is the painting below her face.

The image superimposed on this one is that former boyfriend Jack. His back, buttocks and thighs are the only images we can see. Ivy’s face is in one buttock and Christian’s in the other. This makes for a comical juxtaposition. The two faces of bathing beauty hopefuls, smiling on the buttocks of the real body builder. There is joy here and yet the photo evokes a wistful sadness with these two seemingly opposite views of the body. Is it the caricatures or the highly defined discipline of the younger man’s body that make us sad?

The artist writes about this photo in her journal:

Momma and Daddy look silly in this photo. I wanted to contrast their laughing and clutching of one another’s hands behind the placard, their absolute innocence of childless, first love, with the serious image of the adult body. The superimposed shot was a body that I had loved too, but in a way that didn’t seem carefree like my parents. There was joy and lightness in their faces, not the intensity I had felt in love. They were unmarred, undamaged by any sort of death or destruction. This was before my grandparents were killed, before me. The other photo is of Jack, his body sculpted in a way that almost seems unnatural. While he isn’t posing, his form alone implies discipline, work, time. I was interested in these two images and the differences between not only them, but the figures they leave in our memory.

I wonder if Momma knew she would always be that perfect? That her body was ready for new life, but hadn’t yet conceived it. She was not wrinkled, worn, or wise. She did not even know as much life when she died as I know now, writing this. I am older than she’d ever be yet this seems impossible. I am older now than my mother ever was.