Cat and bowls. Animula vagula blandula.

So total was the eclipse that each time I could have found myself to be someone else, and I was perplexed and often saddened by the strict law which brought me back from so far away to re-enter this narrow confine of humanity which is myself.

Marguerite Yourcenar, 

Memoirs of Hadrian

 I talked to Tony for his birthday. You know how old I am? 89? That sounds about right. Says I can't remember shit but I get up each morning happy thanking Jesus, and say I'd like a few more, sir. I asked Jesus to look after you and tell you I love you, and he said you were doin good.

Plato called Diogenes "the Dog". 

Funny, that's how I call you in my mind.

 I'm not doin nothin, as you see, I'm nowhere near the snake plant.

Watchu doin? I'm not doin nothin.

We live within the catastrophe. 

 The end may be the place where you get stuck. There might be a playground there. You might climb the same steps, and go down the same chute, laughing and crying at the same time, like in an endlessly repeating dream. 

 hope and change is a done dirty deal. look again, and see, hope and change is the ghastly neoliberal art of the steal.

 The ending is not the end, we begin in a dream. What would it mean if we were to begin at the end? 

 Think about Pluribus, and think about the Obamachron. Uh huh. Ok, now don't think about the Obamachron.

 

 Civic pride.

 In the snow it becomes less solid. Eventually it could disappear.

 What appears to be real is not reality, it's just the hard fact that appears to be real.

 How do we begin in the end.

 

 

Criminy! It's ghastly! It's an Obamination! 

stars of the lid and the refinement of their decline and the ghastly tower.

 Little soul, gentle and drifting, guest and companion of my body, now you will dwell below in pallid places, stark and bare; there you will abandon your play of yore. But one moment still, let us gaze together on these familiar shores, on these objects which doubtless we shall not see again....Let us try, if we can, to enter into death with open eyes.

Hadrian's death poem, translated by Marguerite Yourcenar

-I found Memoirs of Hadrian in the library downstairs. I tried to read it once before, long ago, but I guess I wasn't ready for it. Maybe now I am.

Everything is normal no matter what you think.

 

 Trudy said she'd like to try knitting again, though it was frusterating last time, six years ago. She said it's supposed to be good for your mind. It would be good if you could re-knit your mind if you noticed it unraveling. Probably knot, but it could be good anyway to try, if you don't get too fustrated. Cats are sure good for your mind, in both relaxing and stimulating ways.

 A grey tabby was found on Bynum island in Washington park. Just before the snowstorm. Me and Charlie used to go there. A pair of coyotes live there. It's a beautiful place but a cat would have a hard time surviving the winter there. I'm glad Olive's cousin is inside and warm now.

 It's getting harder to think. The world's getting cognitively diminished. Soon, we may have dementia and we may have to withdraw from the world of cognitive diminishment and artificial intelligence.

 What's the plan? The over all plan? It's cognitive diminishment. That's right, thanks, I couldn't think of the right words. 

 This is monumental progress in the park. This is neoliberalism in concrete and styrofoam. This is a tower of domination and death and a site of mourning for the victims of the murderous empire.

 

i subscribed to hell and earth. 

 Good thing we went to the nature park and got mom's keys yesterday, though it must look beautiful now. I wonder what the Obama Fundation plans to put in this here corral. Little horses perhaps. That's where water birds used to gather. Now it's a corral with storm drain covers and  imaginary horses. Everything, living and dead, will dream.

 The frantic planting was not fast enough, and the plants, unplanted or planted, are being slowly buried in snow, their roots in frozen ground, still hugged in the form of black plastic pots, watched over by a solitary pine, where witness trees once stood before being cut down for the land grab progress of the Obamachron. 

 i hope i'm not getting sick before we have to fly.

 another bob, at trudy's place, said we're all just trying to figure it out. 

 We visited the nature park with brother Bob. It was lovely. I'm so glad he has this sanctuary a couple blocks from the bungalow. We got the keys for mom's place. We're steeped in change, and feeling the tenuous pleasure of time. It's but a moment.

a moment in time.

 

 Olive Palestine and Uncle Jay.

 Remember, it's Blackout Friday. We go to the Nature Park.

 Olive and snake eye, Thanksgiving, Turtle Island, 2025. 

 I introduce Jay, Robin and Paige to the washtub oracle.