First Part
Butt to chair is an aphorism from some book on how to write. I guess the idea is that if you want to write you need to sit your butt in the chair and face the page. I don't really read books on writing. And I've sat on a number of chairs staring at blank pages, coming up with nothing.
Something happened with my right knee. It is similar to something that happened to my left knee last year. The right knee is the knee with the most pain. There is more than one kind of pain. This problem seems to start in my back, wind around my thigh, into my knee, down my calf into my foot. Last year I decided it was a nerve thing. I read a bunch from doctor Google. My own doctor was kind of stumped. The local orthopedist barely concealed her contempt. (Fat people deserve the all the pain.) Cortisone wasn't helping. I took all the OTC pain relief I could. Finally I started sitting with a hot pad on my back. It seemed to relax my back and (maybe) the nerve stopped hurting. I don't really know but the pain settled way down.
So this time it started one night, shortly after the whole social isolation thing began. The pain is wicked. My knee locks and then collapses. And sitting is painful. I'm only sort of comfortable sitting in a recliner with my knees on a pillow. I got out the heating pad again and things have begun to settle down. There's still pain. Just not as much.
Ironically, today, when I was going to write this post, I had a relapse. Some time on the hot pad settled things down again.
So here I am.
Butt to chair.
Ouch.
Second part
I've been reading Maxine Hong Kingston. I read an article about her in The New Yorker. I vaguely remember not enjoying reading her back in the day. But I wasn't sure. I wasn't even sure what I had read. I did know I had tried to read Tripmaster Monkey. I owned The Fifth Book of Peace but was pretty sure I hadn't even opened it.
I bought an Everyman's Library book with Woman Warrior and China Man. Loved it. Still can't remember if I ever read either book earlier. I've just started The Fifth Book of Peace, which opens with her house being destroyed in the Oakland/Berkeley fires. A book she'd been working on was also destroyed.
As I'm reading my Facebook feed is filled with pictures of smokey air, suns and moon surrounded with read and covered with smoke. Yesterday the air here was filled with smoke from distant fires.
Spooky. Or maybe auspicious.
I knew I had a copy of Tripmaster Monkey but could not find it until today. I wasn't even looking for it at the time. I just glanced over to the shelf and there is was.
OK. Time for the butt to get off his chair.