Poem

 I almost forgot to blog.

In my defense Mandy stopped by with tacos. I've been digesting. The stomach did have a minute of reaction but settled down. They weren't spicy. 

Today is the last day of national poetry month. I posted my last fragment and put the Elizabeth Bishop book back on the shelf. There's a lot more to read in that book but I'm going to work on some other reading. 

Facebook popped a memory. Four years ago, when I did the fragment thing, I wrote a poem. Ignore the weird line break. 

 I have compressed these

already tiny moments into

beads

strung on a thread of longing.

I already know

they don’t mean anything.

Still.

I run them though my fingers

trying to conjure

a different outcome.

Stomach ache

 I talk about falling last year because it was an event that changed my life. Not in a good way. The fall happened in front of the hospital. I was there to get two procedures. One of which was an endoscopy. 

In the early part of last year, I was having a lot of stomach aches particularly in the morning. I vomited a lot. It didn't seem to matter what I ate or drank. The endoscopy showed that the lining of my stomach was raw. The surgeon and my GP thought it might be because I took so much Advil for joint pain. Probably true but I think there were other reasons. Reasons from my past and maybe the handfuls of vitamins I took twice a day. I had stopped taking them because they made me feel sick. 

I did a regiment of a stomach coating medicine and some antacids. I could barely eat. I stopped drinking coffee, which was horrible. No tea. Nothing acidic. No chocolate.

I am better. My appetite is erratic. I drink one cup of coffee a week. I can eat a very small amount of chocolate but if I eat a tiny bit too much it hurts right away. Most of what I eat is bland but sometimes I push it. I eat Posole or Caponata. And it hurts. Tums don't really help. I am having more stomach aches again so I'm avoiding all the things. Sigh. 

It's also (no doubt) about age. 

Everything is now. 

Fat

 There was a video on TikTok in which a guy makes a pretty dopey fat joke. And I saw it a few times. I did a post about it. The reaction to so much of what I say about my rection to those things is interpreted as my feelings being hurt. It's hard to hurt my feelings in terms of my size. It's been years since I gave a shit about how anybody feels about my body. But I do give a shit about how being fat is understood. Because it has an impact on so many things. Nonbiased health care. Access to public facilities, particularly transportation. Something like being able to walk into a store and buy off the rack, which has an impact on how people feel about themselves and how much they pay for things. 

I feel like I say the same things over and over. 

When people read or hear the word fat, they have a reflexive, mostly unconscious reaction. Fat is something to be avoided. It's an impolite word. They're confused at first. They layer all kinds of stuff onto what I'm saying.  

I am kind of tired of working through it all. 

A wonderful man on TikTok said he was sending positive energy my way and he loves me for me. That's very nice. Now do you want to help me change the world?    

ADHD

 One of things I've learned a lot about on TikTok is ADHD. I have a friend who has it. We talk. I think I may have it. Older people, especially older women have a hard time getting a diagnosis. I don't really feel like I'm suffering. I can see a lot of ways I navigated through life with it. 

I'm a pretty hyper everything in its place person. Probably a way to stave off scattered thinking. Aging is a factor in my ability to function. I am more forgetful. And trauma factors in. 

ADHD is a brain issue. One of the things people who get meds almost always report is a quieter brain. I'd like a quieter brain sometimes. But my chatty brain is also where I get a lot of insight. I would add creativity, but I don't feel that creative at the moment. 

But I know I lose the ability to concentrate. Always have. Or I go into a zone and can't pull myself out. In ADHD terms I have executive dysfunction. 

I'm finding these ideas clarifying. I feel like I'm sinking deeper into myself. 

Social Media

 I love TikTok. I have a really lovely group of people who come to my page. We have fun. It reminds me of the early days of blogging. 

But. 

There are issues.  

Of course, there are. 

The BIPOC community has content suppressed. LQBTQIA too. If you aren't in those communities but share their content, it may be blocked on your page. Or it may stay on your page and be taken off their page. I've come close to leaving more than once. 

I stay for the support. The community. 

And now Twitter. I'm not on Twitter very much. But. Elon? Ew. And yet, Mark? The white men with too much money are everywhere. 

I'm kind of a shut in these days. Social media is a real place for me. But I'm always wondering about the ethics of my participation in systems where social control isn't even behind a curtain. 

Letter Between Poets (edited)

 My friend Mandy made me an Advent calendar last year. It was a stack of books. 

She knows me. 

My profile picture on Facebook has all of them and a few others from other friends. I was looking at it this morning to see how many I'd already read and saw The Dolphin Letters. It's a book of letters between Elisabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell. And a few others in their circle. 

I've been doing my poetry fragment project on Twitter this year with Elizabeth Bishop poetry because I wanted to read more of her. I have a really nice Library of America book of her poems, prose (which I didn't even know she wrote) and letters. And I read Love Unknown (a biography). But I'm planning on spending the day reading letters between poets. 

Exciting. 

Bishop's poetry feels solid. Her mastery of form is solid and she's not trying to mystify. I feel like I need to keep reading to really know but it's been a good month. 

Edit!!! I goofed. The Dolphin Letters is Elizabth Hardwick. I make that mistake all the time!!! 

Muscle Tone

 I'm starting to think like a writer. There's a narrator always writing sentences about everything I'm doing. 

Someone on TikTok said something about people talking to themselves because they grew up being afraid to say things. Talking to themselves is safer. There is some truth to that but a strong inner dialogue is a good thing. Often the way we process all that trauma. And often the beginning of creative expression. 

TikTok does get a lot of my inner musing. Sometimes I think it makes writing harder. I come up with things to say there and have nothing left. 

I redo TikTok videos sometimes. It's like editing. You have sixty seconds to get it all in. You have to let go of some details. 

Writing is different and I keep trying to listen to the narrator. Remember all those sentences. 

When I was in school, I was writing all the time. Different kinds of writing for different classes. I was faster. I still had to edit. I actually love rewriting. I had to write so I got stronger. 

Blog writing has always been first thought best thought. I've always tried to work fast and not worry about the rules. 

Which does not mean I don't care if it's interesting. I just want to keep things simple for the moment. I want to let myself be weak and let the doing of it build the strength.