I lay on the lawn to meditate. My head shaded by the bamboo. Above, in the top leaves of the lilac tree, which are strangely gnawed and caterpillar-munched to the broad middle vein, gossamer threads of a spider's web, gleaming streaks of silvered silk against the clear blue sky.
I am outside again now. It is most assuredly summer. The sounds of the Fun Fair. The dog lapping the water I leave for the birds. The cats in the conservatory somnolent and somewhat sickly after a dose of wormer. Buji had the 1 in 100,000 (extremely rare) side effect of loss of balance and muscular control. He stumbled up the stairs, crashing his thighs against the wood, teetered drunkenly toward me, his eyes bearing an expression of forgiving blame. Yes, really. I do believe it's possible. And no passive aggression either. A fully Christian expression.
That drunkenness and tumbling gave me a shock. I thought I'd killed him. Won't worm again.
Jabi looks less drunken after five sessions on the theraplate. But it may be wishful thinking. I may be seeing what I want to see.
The garden is verdant. The bamboo has become superbamboo. One pole reaches 12 feet into the air. the roses bloom repeatedly, despite their imperfect positions. The orange tree, in its summer holiday outside, has almost doubled the number of leaves. Even so I found a branch infested with scale insect and had to cut it off.
There is a wren, not using the nest made so carefully last year, but gazing at me with huge black beads of eyes from the hedge. Great tits come in pairs. Sparrows, scruffily, alone. Bea the Mrs Blackbird rushes under the tree peony. I have not seen the robins for a while.
I linger outside. Away from my failures to be someone better. A person who doesn't kill her cat with wormers. A person who gives her cats a thrilling life of fields and hedgerows. A person who loved her dog enough before he became old and week. A person who didn't lose her love for the horses and the cats who were there and such a huge part of my life before my world crashed with the death of love.
Of course, love did not die. If it did, that would have been sadder, but less traumatic. It metastasized. It went into hibernation, a near-zombie state of petrifaction, the plug of rocks on the volcano of me. So far, gurgles of lava break through, nothing more. I wait. Until my whole self falls up into the unwitting sky.
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