Helpless

Neil Young will NOT get out of my head. And I just dropped a piece of lettuce from a charity salad down the front of my shirt. I've just been accused of sitting on a FedEx package for two months before sending it, which I did not do because that would be ridiculous. There is a Picasso show coming up and of course that means the WORLD IS ENDING. Ick. I'm in a kind of doldrum-feeling afternoon, where I'm sitting here motionless and inspirationless and with a very distinct treading water kind of inertia setting in. Gotta keep moving, keep working, keep writing. Make some phone calls, maybe. I hate phone calls.

All I really want to do right now is spend some quality alone time with myself, figure some things out about my place in everything that's happening and how I FEEL about it, but there's no time except for these long afternoons at work where I'm not really at any kind of liberty.

So, I've decided to just say fuck it, and start singing the song in my head out loud and screw the clients and art appreciators. I have a good voice; they can deal with it. I will also share it with you, hypothetical reader:

"Blue, blue windows behind the stars,
Yellow moon on the rise,
Big birds flying across the sky,
Throwing shadows in our eyes.
Leave us...
Helpless, helpless, helpless..."

I was trying to raise these plants, see. I've never been much good with plants. I like to think of myself as in tune with nature, and I love trees. They are like godparents, sheltering and shading. And houseplants are like cousins, nephews, nieces. I had a few of them. Started out slow, with a cactus that looked like dragon claws reaching up from the dirt. A succulent--very easy to care for. A few others joined their ranks, more complicated plants with more insistent needs. It felt good, keeping these things alive, these little friends. Watering them, repotting. Caring for them, letting them put themselves under my wing, where there is room enough for anyone.
One day I returned to find my belladonna drooped over and gone. A chill went through me. Pure terror. Premonition. It would all end soon, I thought. All of this illusory power to hold and keep and help the lives of these living, breathing beings. They are not mine, really. They belong to a higher order, that thing that is out there that dictates to us all the spans of lives, the depth of love.
I mourned the belladonna. I mourned the visions I'd have of my abilities. I was distraught.
Today I looked up to see an arm--a whole arm--of the succulent had fallen off sometime during the day. I wasn't there to see it. I couldn't have known how to help it. It looked fine yesterday.
I'm sitting here looking at it. It's falling apart on me and no amount of watering or repotting or turning it to the sun is going to change that. I am helpless. I can fuss over it all I want, click my tongue, touch it lovingly, breathe carbon dioxide onto its leaves, but in a few days time I know it will be gone. Like the other.
It aches. It's a deep down, slow, quiet ache that can be overlooked sometimes, when things get hectic. It doesn't demand much, and it's too steady to cause those jags of heaving pain that can come out as sobs very often. But it does creep up at times like this. An empty kind of longing, as if each breath I take is just echoing around inside, perfectly useless, like I am in such situations. The kind of pain that leaks out from the eyes but despairs too much to be violent.
Well, the cactus is still here, at least, tenacious and joyless on the other dresser.