A Meaningful Life

 

Started reading Sally Mann's "Art Work" last night.  I sent the forward to some friends I thought might be interested.  One said I must be envious.  I wrote back that envy was one of my favorite sins, but I kid.  Sloth and gluttony seem to top the list.  But of course I envy it all.  

There is the prologue for you.  If you are interested. . . . 

I could have been more dedicated, I guess.  Still, I had a fine life working at the factory.  

I went to the rehab facility yesterday for my mother's evaluation.  She will be coming home a week from Friday.  I am glad for her.  She will be much happier there.  I have much to do, though, to prepare.  Arrangements must be made.  I can't keep being sole caretaker 24/7.  Everyone in the evaluation room says so.  My mother thinks she is fine to live at home, but she is totally dependent now on someone to do almost everything.  She can eat and drink and watch t.v. fine, so she thinks she is set.  When the fellow conducting the evaluation asked if she needed any assistance at home, she just pointed to me and said, "He takes care of me."  All eyes turned.  They know.  They go through similar situations every day.  

Should I abandon my mother for a week and go to NYC?  I mean while she is still in the facility?  That is the question I am running around my brain just now.  I don't know the answer, but I don't have a lot of time to decide.  

I must say, the two short pieces I put together, the giant woman and the two Eves, got little attention.  I am a bit disappointed.  I thought them clever and fine, but everything goes to market.  It's O.K.  I'm going to give up on making them.  They are difficult to make and often very frustrating given the workarounds I must figure out.  I DO have another one, though, about a headless woman, but I am not going to post it.  It's a little crude, so if people didn't take to the other two, I'd be run out of town for this last one.  

I am not sure what I will do instead.  I'm working on a story idea right now, but you know, I'm a writer of anecdotes and vignettes, and finding my voice in short fiction is awfully difficult.  Still, I am working on it.  I'd like to get out at least one short story before I die, just to prove I could do it. 

I find my mother's will to live is incredible.  I don't think I have that same drive.  I keep asking myself what makes life worth living.  And like everywhere else, even there, the line goes dead.  Making those little videos is hard.  Making a meaningful life. . . . 

Long ago, summers were so much easier. 

Or. . . maybe that is just another fiction, too.