Today would have been Mary Gordon’s birthday. I’ve been particularly missing her of late, especially when I spoon coffee into my little stovetop espresso maker, a ritual we both enjoyed.
A couple of weeks ago, I discovered that her blog, Fat Black Cat Journal, is still online, and I feel as though I’ve found a way to reconnect with her — with traces of her.
It hasn’t always been easy to read. This entry, written a few days after her final birthday, feels particularly painful and, as has been the case numerous times in recent days when I’ve been encountering these traces of her online, I’ve wanted to reach back in time and give her a hug.
Sometimes things happen and you realise that you have been putting one foot in front of another and trying to keep going. This has been happening for YEARS. Everything from prepandemic to now has been grim, foot infront of another with no relief. Just another fucking thing to deal with. My joi de vivre fucked off many years ago. I’m now in emergency mode all I want to do is slowly crochet the same piece of yarn over and over again and listen to some semi decent drama on the radio and work out a way of keeping warm. And I don’t want to talk to anyone either I cannot bear the thought of how my life has just been a series of disappointments, and failures, many of which were not my fault but I have to live with them all the same. Last night I could hardly bear it I watched an Italian film whose central character was a smug leftist filmmaker. A smug leftist film maker scuppered my film career many years ago. And I remembered the three months of my life when I woke up and cried every day.
