May 11, 2017 (Thursday)

by Yule Heibel on May 10, 2018

This morning, getting up with a headache (tension) after sleeping fitfully through the second half of the night, I feel beaten. I feel my life not as something grand, but small. I guess it’s the exhaustion. Yesterday was a bitch of a day. Somehow I felt jet-lagged the entire day. And I didn’t get any work done, really, partly because I felt so ill.

Skyped with A. and E.; we had some political arguments. I wasn’t in the mood to engage in or follow them in the first place, but there you have it, we had it, too. Before that call, I spoke with B.’s wife C. about getting the deck fixed; she told me B. plans to stop by over the weekend. We also dished about the Qs and J. I told her how I had “nuked” my friendships with them, which kind of opened the floodgates for her to let loose. Anyway, enough of that. Also spent some time talking with Z. in the morning, so when the afternoon rolled around, I was peopled out, completely.

I worked in the garden, au seul, for the rest of the day. Got all the old leaves out of that corner (two bags full) and put them curbside for today’s collection. Then I thought, “Those fucking trash trees!” and got my ladder from the basement, leant it against the fence, and began lopping off a number (albeit not all) of the most egregiously offending branches. Then I moved the ladder a foot or two along the fence and attacked the next tree. And again. And again. Again. And twice more. I expected an angry shout any minute from my neighbor, emerging enraged from his back deck. But he-she-it-they wasn’t / weren’t home. I’m pretty sure I cut only enough to make a slight dent, and not a hugely noticeable difference from their side, looking up. Maybe they never look up anyway. I’m also confident I could make the case that the limbs I cut were infringing on my fence, and, growing further, would overhang my yard and deck. I’m also sure that was the world’s worst “pruning” job, and that it’s just a prick against what needs more vigorous attack.

Afterwards, I trimmed all the branches into three-foot lengths, and put them in open bins for today’s yard waste pickup. By the time I was done, after also mowing the back, it was 5p.m. I then finally took a shower. Without skipping a beat, I started dinner prep, and cooking. I felt still so tired and exhausted, although my tree attack in the outdoors had invigorated me a bit. Picked W. up, dinner, a bit of TV, bed, bad (or not so great) sleep. This morning, rinse and repeat.

I sat down, thinking. I’m still thinking. I may have changed what I’m thinking about. I can’t change that I do think. The despair I felt about my small, insignificant life is a thought. It’s real, it’s unreal. It can change. What can’t change is how very very hard it is to produce anything of value. It can’t possibly come all from “inside,” from just that thinking head, getting in the way.

The black cat in the house on E.-St. is back in the window.

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