Eight Years In

In a world full of uncertainty, you can count on me posting on June 16th. This is the day I moved into my nest. I've always been restless and sometimes I feel that way here. But more and more I feel settled. For the first time in my life. The first pictures are pictures from the first day. Before the movers and after. The next two are after some settling in.  I need to do one for how it looks now. 

The library shelves are filling up but there is still room behind the chairs. My inner dialogue when I'm thinking about what books to put behind a chair is probably amusing. And tortured. 

I'll get a picture of how it looks now. 

I will. 

                                              

                      

Knees

 One of the reasons I don't write is knee pain. Yeah. Weird huh? I'm only comfortable in my recliner with a pillow under my knees. If I sit in my desk chair too long my knees start to ache and then lock up. It's a drag. 

I had big fun with the poem fragment project in April and wanted to write about it but ... the knees said no. In terms of identity markers Atwood and Vuong are very different.  Race, gender, sexual identity, nationality, on and on. Yet, somehow, the fragments seem to respond to each other. 

I'm doing some physical therapy soon so maybe it'll help. 

Sigh. 

National Poetry Month

It's gonna be April in a minute. I'm going to do my fragment posting on Twitter. I had a plan, which involved purchasing books. Heh. And then I noticed that I had two newish poetry books that I hadn't spent much time with and decide to use them. 

I bought Night Sky With Exit Wounds after I read On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous. All his lines are beautiful. I also bought Margret Atwood's newest poetry-Dearly. I bought it because it's ... her. I think they might be interesting people to go back and forth with. 

I'll post on Twitter and copy to Facebook. 

This is just me spending time with poetry. 

Fat Body

I started changing how I thought about being fat in my late teens. So fifty years ago. Lots of analysis. Many epiphanies. Every year I feel like I settle deeper into an authentic sense of who I am, which includes being fat. I am fat. I'm a lot of things. Fat is one of them. 

I'm surrounded by women who talk about weight loss and preference for thinness. Some of them are my age. There are days when I just feel tired. In the pool. In the dressing room. So much chatter about weight. I over heard talk about plastic surgery for arm waddle. I mean. Sigh. 

Maybe because of my age or maybe because I buried the mommie and got on some kind of mailing list, I get a lot of information abut burial planning. I think about how I want to be buried. I'd like to do it with some ethic. Cremation is hard on the environment. You can be buried in a biodegradable fabric, which means you're just compost. There are forests in the east where you can bury your ashes and there will be a bronze plague with your name om a tree. Sounds peaceful. 

The other day I got information from a group who has levels of service. They will handle everything. Or you can handle the service. The prices go down with the amount of stuff you do. The cheapest level is donating your body to medical science and then the ashes are sent to you family afterwards. In fact it is free. I had a really odd reaction to it. 

I have a scar on my right ankle from having been under the wheel of a truck. Long story. It's a pretty big scar. The surgeon cut a sort of flap to cover a hole on the side of ankle. Then took two pieces of skin from thigh to cover the opening created by the flap. It was a six hour surgery. I was on something that cut off feeling where they were working. Maybe a spinal block? And I was put under. I came up from time to time. The anesthesiologist would ask if I was OK and then put me back under. I think that might have been because of the length of the surgery. 

At one point, when I surfaced, there was a discussion happening about what a shame it was that I was so fat. I was young and had a pretty face. The anesthesiologist noticed that I was awake, gave me a look of apology and knocked me out again.  

That memory came back when I imagined medical school students cutting up my body and making fat jokes. It shook me up. 

Why? 

I'll be dead. I probably wont be there. I like the idea of medical science having a way to learn about bodies. But so far I can't get over that image. 

Most shocking of all was that I felt this way. It's like all the years of inner work wasn't enough to sustain me. I already deal with how little impact I've had in in the world in terms of how fat bodies are seen. Especially these days. 

I probably have some time to work through all of this. 

Words

I've been having a hard time reading essays and I don't know why. I love essays. They are my favorite form. Blog posts are (essentially) essays. These days I seem to need the comfort of fiction. I need to sink into a story. Having a hard time reading essays makes me sad and frustrated. It makes me feel stupid. It's like my brain is throwing a temper tantrum and I have no control. 

Into this maelstrom came the new Joan Didion: Let Me Tell You What I Mean, which I had preordered. I love Joan Didion. I love her. I guess to be precise I should say I love her writing but her writing is so ... her. I love her. I opened the book last night fearing that I wouldn't be able to take it in. I wouldn't have thought less of her I would have hated myself if that had been true. I know this all sounds disproportionate and maybe a bit unhinged. Fortunately I don't have to hate either one of us. I love the book. I am already more than half way through. It's like I'm swallowing each essay in a big gulp. 

I grew up mostly around adults. My grandparents, an uncle and an aunt took care of me in the day while the mommie was at work. In the summer I was with my paternal grandmother and two aunts. None of these people were big on baby talk. I was told I had trouble with kids my age because I had an adult tone when I spoke. I really don't know what that meant. When I was in college ( I was in my mid-forties) I spent a lot of time with two younger women who regularly commented on my "big words". I did not then and do not now know which words they were talking about but ... we were in college where I hoped my word usage wouldn't be a source of ridicule. Worse was in my MFA program when a fellow's critique of a piece I had written began with - what's with all the SAT words? The teacher and my fellow students spoke up quickly and smacked him down. He was kind of a punk who I didn't take too seriously but I later learned that another woman also felt I shouldn't use words that people might not know. "It took you out of the reading." 

I mean...

For many years I read in bed before sleep. It was the only time I had. If I came upon a word I didn't know I had to get out of bed, go into the living room and take down the rather large dictionary. Occasionally there were writers who used so many words I didn't know I slept with the dang dictionary. I remember learning the word meliorative from Didion. She was writing that she had lost any sense of it. That word stayed with me. 

These days I reach for my phone to look up a word. So easy. 

Recently I learned the word floccillation in something I read about someone's ageing parent. I'm ashamed to say I don't remember who. It describes the action of picking at ones sheets and blankets when you have a fever or extreme dementia. The mommie did it at one point. She would tug and pull at the blanket and sheet until it was bunched up and had to be straightened. I may never use the word but I'm glad to know it. In fact, given my decline in ability to remember anything I'm not sure I will remember it if I do have cause to use it. I kept the page open on my phone for quite awhile hoping that seeing it would burn into my memory. It only sort of worked. I had to look though my phone's history to find it just now. 

I have never used a word to - I dunno -show off per se. I grab onto words and keep them in my mouth. I love words and I don't understand people who don't love them. If a word takes you out of the story it's a moment for revelation. Which should be fun and joyous, right? Clearly not given the amount of scorn I've received over my life for my word usage. 

The memory problem is big. When I get my eye shot they do a mini eye exam. I was telling them I felt like my vision in my left eye might be getting worse and I needed to get to my orthopedist. I said it twice before I was corrected and the minute I was corrected I was horrified. Not by the correction but by my inability to remember optometrist. Last night I was having a conversation with a friend and couldn't remember the word impeach. I've learned two new words from Didion but I can't remember them. I'm not too worried because I think I'll reread this book as soon as I finish it. 

There are words that I hear or read and I know I will never use them in a sentence. I just won't have the need or I won't remember or I don't completely grasp the meaning. I always feel sad about it. 

Maybe the Bee Gee's said it best. - It's only words and words are all I have to take your heart away. 

Heh. 

Ophelia

 There's a painting of Ophelia in which she is lying in a river in an ornate dress, holding a flower and (according to the story) singing while she becomes submerged and drowns. I've been thinking about that painting all week while my body reacted to the antibiotics I'm taking for an infection in a cracked tooth. The tooth itself has hurt worse. Now it just aches and throbs every once in a while. All week I've been under a blanket, mostly with my eyes closed. I've been either mildly queasy or fully nauseated. Too sick to sleep. I just lay there. Not in an ornate dress. I've been in my pajamas all week. Not the same ones. We know I love pajamas and have a bunch. I'd take a shower every day and put them back on. I was not singing. No flower. I felt like I was on the surface, floating, on the verge of submerging. 

When I could keep my eyes open I watched a lot of Marvel movies. Not my usual fare but my brain wasn't processing and I found them oddly comforting. I don't love big fight scenes in which cars are flipping over but I could close my eyes during those. 

Superhero narratives follow different paths. Some come by their powers naturally (Thor, Black Widow) and some get them because something weird happens (Spiderman, the Hulk.) I like when they question their power. Banner tries to keep the Hulk suppressed. Thor is humbled when his dad (sort of) disowns him. He finds humility and his power is restored. The Avengers are always fighting with each other until an outside threat looms. I love when people come through for themselves and other people. That's what I find comforting. 

In the past I've watched Black Panther because of the representation. I've watched Dr. Strange. Benedict Cumberbatch. I've watched Wonder Woman but that's a different group. I'm never going to buy the comics (although I am tempted by the ones Ta Nehisi wrote) but some of these movies are well written, funny and better than submerging. I do love seeing Stan Lee cameos. 

I jacked up on coffee to watch the inauguration. The next day things were much worse. I took the last pill this morning and was miserable until now. Mid afternoon. Things should clear up. The tooth comes out on Wednesday. 

Tomorrow. I'll put clothes on.