Happy something something akimbo Xmas memory something something

Random Thoughts / OOOooooo / OOOooooo

 Augusto painted the chimney. The trim is a light shade of tan with a dark wall. He was so happy we finally got to paint. We stood there and both of us started crying because we both simultaneously knew Bob wouldn’t see it and that he had been looking forward to having the party we’d planned once the repairs were finished. Cancer fucked that up this year. Last year I got married. I’m not meant to make any sense of that polarity. Confusion reigns as it must. 

The hummingbird feeders are full and buzzing. I bought expensive cheese. I was daydreaming. I bought some boxset and tissue on Amazon. All I need is a box of red wine at this point(pint?) and some peroxide. What a Loon. 

Probably.

Stuck on my shift at the death information committee.  More files and document scanning for the lawyers. $13,000 in 30 days. Heroin is probably cheaper. My feelings are mostly in a jar. I think I worry people or trouble them with my 'stuff’, even though everyone has made it clear they are here for me. I wonder what people with good self esteem feel like? bleet bleet I know I know. 

Sometimes I’m wilding and swinging and other times I feel underwater.  I bounce back and forth between despair and grace. I’m trying to look upwards and swing a broom underneath my feet at the same time. I’m on a carousel going around a rotting old oak tree…trying to reconfigure my purpose without getting hung up on what I have to do.

Thanks / Good / Bad

The below was published on FB

"Bob, 

This is the first holiday without you. And it’s Thanksgiving. A day where people stuff themselves with food-a day hopefully long divorced from the myth of Pilgrims and Indians to one of gratitude. I can barely eat or think about food. Everything tastes like cardboard. Like loneliness. The stress of missing you, the gulf of space between loving you in your absence and what I knew just over a month ago….is almost harder than getting dressed. I miss being able to tell about how excited I am about a piece I just finished, or some new music or some record I ordered from overseas, because you remembered ordering things you had to wait for. I miss trying new things you cooked, driving places we’d never been, seeing new art exhibits, and going out new restaurants you wanted to try: seeing you happy. Just holding you. Even when we were doing nothing, we had somewhere to be, to go….together.  

For 15+ years of that, I am thankful." 

(Redacted for health reasons) P.s.- I’m putting up the tree. Rick and Janice say how much they’ll miss you.*

*Rick and Janice are the owners of the Christmas Store in Santa Fe, a place Bob and I visited each year for well over a decade." 

Bad Days

So much has happened, yet I barely remember it happening. Like a book written about experiences that happened to someone else. My mind is alternately blank or filled with technicolor flashbacks to the worst moments, the ones I felt where I failed at caring for you, where I wasn’t my best. Where I couldn’t put aside how hurtful you were being because you were also scared and hurting. No amount of therapy or schooling teaches you to face your own death but its also doesn’t teach you how to manage your trauma responses while more trauma floods over you. But it’s not a flood. It’s lying to yourself about how high the water is because you’ve already run out of air watching the other person turn blue. It’s chaos. Its chewing your limb off with your bare teeth because you cannot fucking get out of the trap. Its trying to grow wings while being buried in concrete. It’s drowning. Therapist is telling me this is all normal. 

And in the midst of this…I am still here. My health stuff continues to elude me. The next two weeks are going to be fraught. I hope for nothing special but know something is…off. It’s folly to pretend otherwise. I may have put all my chips out in the front of the game over strategy, but at this point, I’m resigned. I met with lawyers today. More out of body experiences. I’ve gone from being homeless to fighting over million dollar property like chess pieces. I had to tell the lawyers to use the house to end this. The equity wasn’t worth being trapped in a haunted house. More still coming in terms of paperwork but it can't be helped. Answers soon, the future maybe. 

Decades / 24 Hours

 

I wanted it it to be perfect like before

 

And the shake of your head....

The romance of outcomes is over. Like my brain, my amp is fried. Cue Surprise! Life laughs in my face!

Two weeks straight of providing paperwork for paralegals, three weeks of isolation, 3 days of double visits from well meaning people. Followed by a week of medical appointments. 

I trick myself. Pretend it's happening to someone else, but it won't be over soon. Be hysterical and cry in private. Keening and screaming suddenly enter the lexicon. Additional terrifying lucid ghost-prompted nightmares to dispense of what is left of my operating daytime memory.  

You've seen clips of a goldfish gasping for breath right. 

I'd trade places with that goldfish in a second. At their brain stem won't remind them of regret. 

On hold, talking about death, talking self portraits stripped of color.

 

Everything Happens

 https://youtu.be/IdcN4BRpmGI?si=J-9pBWIo22kzP3xR

The waterfall / a slightly delirium

 

I came out from underneath this thing / Been sick so long with whatever it was I don't remember clinging to wreckage and yet...here is the now. 

what this was like? The bike you fell off of. The fire burns all the way up to the edge of the forest, and all the trees stand silent like outposts....The inverse of everything real is also true. The rain visits today. Yesterday was a heatwave. Yesterday Bob had been here forever, Now he's gone, the tears come down. Reality sets in. You could see all space and time, There is no one to bump into in the kitchen while regaling that while you make spaghetti, Toast instead. My unconscious mind is a hundred thousand waves of cascading white and pink noise flung against one another until all time as we know it obliterated. Or it could just be interference and clouds. 

OR this is sone new place. The next thing from now. My muse observes from some place off in the distance. We are the right pollinator and flower. We cannot be tasked with springing up for every esoteric need. 

Also...I'm grateful. My brain is so utterly traumatized when I went to 'speak' the way I felt about Bob it came out like a metaphor about having to destroy to begin again. I couldn't;t make anything new until I 'destroyed' what it was, 

I don't know where this new future is headed. I don't know where my head is. 

How does that old song go?

The Embrace

2010

 

Or Not...

 Everyone is hurting, IT cannot be undone. Time is change.a light finger on the betting wheel is wise.

2014. This is the only time I got Bob Drunk enough to dance in public. 

Fall is here. Bob is gone, but he's everywhere, Paul's heirs demanded a death certificate...I don't even have one of my own. I think about them stubbing their toe badly, and laugh while I rise to grab a half-finished margarita that's been lukewarm for hours on a dresser where I fell asleep while finagling my new Marin county vote-by-mail ballot. I meet with a rep for the lawyers office tomorrow. Something helpful, I guess. All the tie in there world, and maybe enough money...

,,,and no one to show it to...anymore. The eternal trade. 

Just point me out of these clouds, if you could, 

There a certain blue velvet quality to what is happening. Almost espionage: I have to go through things to figure out what the heck is going on while other people undermine me to try and find out first. I love games. I hate contests, and this isn't the time to experiment.   

MY brain aches to sleep but can't. Somebody calls on a telephone I don't answer: 

asking me if I did enough...and I don't know if I didn't or not. 

Untitled misery

 I'm tired.

A week that should have held me up brings down to some estate bullshit. Bob would be rolling in his grave. 

I am doing my best to be empathic and meet people's needs and still being tired and wondering if the other side of this is better. Now someone else is going to own 50% of the house I live in.. for doing nothing more than being friends with the abusive prick who was married to my late husband. I just...errr...want to go mad.

Is that ringing in my ear supposed too sound like that?

What the hell is happening? 

People are Trash

 Proof positive that people are fucking scum. Bob has been dead just short of a week. The guy called the morning AFTER bob died-before they'd ever announced it publicly, reminded me at the funeral to 'call him' and now is leaving me multiple voice mails and texts. I don't even have the fucking death certificate and they're trying see how much cash they're getting? Ever loving fuck!

Where are we now / Some other place / Somehow

4 years ago I was gearing up for my first show in 12 years, brimming with creative glue. Now, I'm a widow and scattered and feeling like I just got caned at a British boarding school. The house is empty and my the maw of my mind yawns wide...and then I see this image in my memories...it's weird having your subconscious regurgitated out to you by an algorithm. I'm talking to people. Crying in private and pressing buttons on thins and eating stuff. so many plates to make spin. 

Visual Consensus / 12 x 16 / Mixed Media + Paper

 

Staring at starless Black Skies

I now know why Mollie, Tweed and Nathaniel were constantly searching for Mack, Josquin and Sheldon when their animal friends were gone. Something intrinsic is missing. Things seem dulled, feelings of connection are set adrift. 

I know what you were looking for, and why you couldn't stop looking for it. 

The boat is unmoored. The waters are uncharted. 

"Bob...where are you?" I kept saying out loud to no one today.

"What's happening?" 

"Where am I?" my brain answers. 

Where indeed. 

Spring 2024 / Good Memory

Robert Bruce Gutterman03.29.1952 - 10 .11.2024

thank you for singing with me one last time

 

Cancer / Demons / Music / Updates

Fuck. Bob is back in hospital. Again with a slow onset of vague symptoms. ER today with bloodwork, chest X-rays (showing blood clot in one lung-totally new thing. Oh yay!), Cat Scan(showing changes in mass) and finally an MRI showing clearly a new tumor beneath the old site which supposedly explains the myriad of new symptoms which has sprung up these last few weeks. And 5 hours in the Er. This comes with significant changes in his physical ability. He has facial paralysis and an inability to fully close his left eye, swallow properly. He's at Marin General where doctors are monitoring him closely. 

So much to process. We came home early from a vacation to Bodega Bay on Friday morning. Our first a while. Cancer intercedes with any plans you might think you have. Glad I'm a paranoid nag. The attending MD said thank goodness you got him here when you did. More radiation again. Bob doesn't want surgery again. I don't want that for hi either. I don't want any of this. I have a colonoscopy and an endoscopy scheduled next week. I'm just trying to get through this until then. I'm okay. 

Alternate take / Hot Take / Hot Pepper / Pepper-Tree

 

In The Rays

 

Black Out / Midnight

 

My Brain / In Dreams

 The week, by most reports, has been shit. 

The wildlife and the wild life. No sleep. That's fucked up. Anxiety ridden days mixed with technicolor hallucinogenic nightmares when I do sleep. Bob is a mess and a full time caregiver situation. Everyday is a new problem. I cannot get him to actively take part in his care in private. He is a 'bad' patient by any metric. I make him set blood glucose alarms. He sets the phone to vibrate and leaves it on the bed. Some nights I find him eating ice cream in the middle of the night with a sky high reading. Some days he's barely responsive his blood sugar is so low-its been 28...borderline diabetic coma. So low I'm having to slap him awake while getting him to drink orange juice. Then I Sit there while he tells his doctor his blood glucose is 'under good control'.  Its fucking maddening. I'm working so hard to keep him alive and he's just utterly undermining efforts to take care of him. Half the time I don't know what to expect. I have to remind myself he's got brain damage. There's been radiation. Chemo too. Maybe I just need to let the old Bob go because he isn't here anymore.It feel awful saying it. the constant low grade trauma is like being cut 1000 times. The thought of dying in my sleep has crossed my mind. It's horrible even thinking it. I can't believe I am writing it down. I just wish this wasn't happening. I don't know how to help my brain. I can't hire anyone to do that. 

In the middle of the night, I woke up and wrote this:

You can

you still will

Like candles in the wind takes time

Everything you do takes time

The clock is all too familiar, and yet

blue is the color

Blue is the color of my love's heart

Upon heart

upon heart

the rest devolves into a drawing of me and Bob.