Now that I've made it through the winter and actually have a small posse of friends, accepting my body's limitations takes up more and more of my emotional CPU. Any exertion tends to have me limping within hours and I tend to lose mobility after sundown. I can always ride my bike, but other than than I'm pretty lame. literally.
I miss my body. I look back at past summers and marvel at how much I took for granted. I'd started to have a lot of pain then, but I wasn't nearly as crippled as I am now. I miss being able to stay up late, I miss being able to drink without having my bones transmuted to hot lead the next day, I miss dancing. especially I miss dancing.
it's hard to dance with mermaid feet.
The other thing that preoccupies me lately is dealing with memory loss. yesterday I started reading the sequel to a book I had read a few years ago, and skimming through the synopsis at the beginning I was appalled by how little I remembered. this makes me doubt my ability to do well in grad school. there will be so much to memorize. I used to take so many supplements to slow my brain's deterioration, and they seemed to help, but living on less than 800 a month kind of rules that out.
So I muddle on, taking charity when it's offered, trying to be a good person and fight this bitterness in my heart. but there's a deep and bone-chilling fear that is starting to seep in to everything I do, or think, or dream. I am not going to get better. and realistically, every year I am going to get a little bit worse.
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
Monday, April 28, 2008
Poem for Monday, April 28th, 2008
Poem in the Night Month
by Beth Ann Fennelly
Now that they've X-rayed
the mummified female crocodile
in the Egypt room in the British Museum,
they've found a baby crocodile, mummified,
inserted far back in her throat.
Just so, little one,
we drift toward the next world.
Our days are numbered.
Strangers will catch your head,
will thumb your eyes back to zero,
will say Welcome to the world, not
the afterworld.
Burke's Book Store
936 South Cooper
Memphis, TN 38104
(901) 278-7484
www.burkesbooks.com
936 South Cooper
Memphis, TN 38104
(901) 278-7484
www.burkesbooks.com
Friday, April 25, 2008
caught up with friends on the way downtown, Adrian from Armitage Bikes, Alex from West Town, a Scalawag on a sweet chopper, and the most awesome green tallbike. the variety is delightful. just as many beatup old schwinns as pistas. seemed like at least half onespeeds now, though. flat city. who needs derailleurs.
rode most of the way with Tracy. it started to pour as we turned off Diversey onto Logan,
and so we rested a while under the right side of the Kennedy/Western/Logan overpass. hundreds of us. cheering and whistling at motorists who slowed to gawk.
we took over western for about a quarter of a mile in the lovely pelting rain, and i rode hard to catch up with tall bike tyler, hooting at cars in my totally seethru tshirt. hilariousness. we screamed our praises to thor.
at the very end, there was a small party with a keg and a mess of falafel and we all stood around and shivered for a while.
on the way west on bloomington there is a charming mural of picasso's "guernica."
happy friday. (cos sometimes it is.)
rode most of the way with Tracy. it started to pour as we turned off Diversey onto Logan,
and so we rested a while under the right side of the Kennedy/Western/Logan overpass. hundreds of us. cheering and whistling at motorists who slowed to gawk.
we took over western for about a quarter of a mile in the lovely pelting rain, and i rode hard to catch up with tall bike tyler, hooting at cars in my totally seethru tshirt. hilariousness. we screamed our praises to thor.
at the very end, there was a small party with a keg and a mess of falafel and we all stood around and shivered for a while.
on the way west on bloomington there is a charming mural of picasso's "guernica."
happy friday. (cos sometimes it is.)
Monday, April 21, 2008
Poem for Monday, April 21, 2008
Indiana Avenue, 1949
by Etheridge Knight
Neons flash red and green.
April rains on still street, Man
Nods, Red lights blink, blink.
Mirror of keen blades
Slender as guitar strings; Wes
Montgomery jazz.
Burke's Book Store
936 South Cooper
Memphis, TN 38104
(901) 278-7484
www.burkesbooks.com
936 South Cooper
Memphis, TN 38104
(901) 278-7484
www.burkesbooks.com
Friday, April 18, 2008
Thursday, April 17, 2008
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
daddy, you bastard
my bff and I are convinced that we are too strong (intense, intelligent, experienced, intimidating, powerful) and that is why our romantic interests never seem to be requited.
there are no superheroines with happy endings, not really. mortal men can't handle them and superheros have inferiority complexes.
the village healer always ended up burnt or drowned.
I know I have years of sickness left to deal with before I can really even begin to believe there's someone. for as long as I can remember, I've only seemed to aim my heart at the unattainable. not that I have any choice in the matter, not consciously. I've been in therapy long enough to have figured out why I act this way.
getting sent off to second chance when I was a kid fucked me up so much more than I can put into words. there was a complete- and utterness to that rejection that left me permanently ducked and covered, so terrified of not just doing something wrong, but being something wrong. no matter how much someone loves me, I can't just be still and bask in it. I have to pick at it, worry about it til I make myself sick or insane.
there's nothing like being made to tell your mom you lost your virginity because you were a drug addict. unless it's actually losing it when you are 13 cos you are so bitter and angry at love that you don't ever, ever want to believe in it, to let it have power over you. expect maybe being forced to lie about being a drug addict, being made to believe that I was weak, worthless, selfish, mentally ill, being locked up, forcibly drugged, made to pretend I loved Jesus, sing foolish songs and flap my arms, being told to deal with my anger by ripping up phone books because my anger was invalid and not worth responding to, being abandoned, having my parents refuse to believe me, having the people who made me take the word of someone who wanted their 25000 dollars over mine. not allowed to speak for months.
diary read and thrown away, clothes, books, toys, music all thrown away and replaced with generic, safe normalcy.
hours, days spent trying to figure out a way to poison or injure myself sufficiently to be able to go to the hospital and somehow talk my way out of going back. running away, getting taken to juvenile court after spending the night under an overpass. being dragged back humiliated the next day, parents actually believing I wanted to use drugs that badly, instead of that their magic program was so unbearable I'd rather be a ward of the state than go back.
when i read kafka's trial for the first time I shook and rattled like a cicada shell in a stiff breeze. josef k had nothing on me.
fourteen months in all, and fourteen years later not a week goes by without a nightmare of being back there as an adult.
and it still taints everything I do, everything I feel.
and I don't know what else to do besides stay busy between therapy sessions.
there are no superheroines with happy endings, not really. mortal men can't handle them and superheros have inferiority complexes.
the village healer always ended up burnt or drowned.
I know I have years of sickness left to deal with before I can really even begin to believe there's someone. for as long as I can remember, I've only seemed to aim my heart at the unattainable. not that I have any choice in the matter, not consciously. I've been in therapy long enough to have figured out why I act this way.
getting sent off to second chance when I was a kid fucked me up so much more than I can put into words. there was a complete- and utterness to that rejection that left me permanently ducked and covered, so terrified of not just doing something wrong, but being something wrong. no matter how much someone loves me, I can't just be still and bask in it. I have to pick at it, worry about it til I make myself sick or insane.
there's nothing like being made to tell your mom you lost your virginity because you were a drug addict. unless it's actually losing it when you are 13 cos you are so bitter and angry at love that you don't ever, ever want to believe in it, to let it have power over you. expect maybe being forced to lie about being a drug addict, being made to believe that I was weak, worthless, selfish, mentally ill, being locked up, forcibly drugged, made to pretend I loved Jesus, sing foolish songs and flap my arms, being told to deal with my anger by ripping up phone books because my anger was invalid and not worth responding to, being abandoned, having my parents refuse to believe me, having the people who made me take the word of someone who wanted their 25000 dollars over mine. not allowed to speak for months.
diary read and thrown away, clothes, books, toys, music all thrown away and replaced with generic, safe normalcy.
hours, days spent trying to figure out a way to poison or injure myself sufficiently to be able to go to the hospital and somehow talk my way out of going back. running away, getting taken to juvenile court after spending the night under an overpass. being dragged back humiliated the next day, parents actually believing I wanted to use drugs that badly, instead of that their magic program was so unbearable I'd rather be a ward of the state than go back.
when i read kafka's trial for the first time I shook and rattled like a cicada shell in a stiff breeze. josef k had nothing on me.
fourteen months in all, and fourteen years later not a week goes by without a nightmare of being back there as an adult.
and it still taints everything I do, everything I feel.
and I don't know what else to do besides stay busy between therapy sessions.
Monday, April 14, 2008
Poem for Monday, April 14, 2008
Birds
by Tom Clark
Sky full of blue nothing toward which the Magi
Move, like dream people who are Walt Fraziers of the air…
Sometimes the moves they make amaze them
For they will never happen again, until the end of time; but there they are.
So shall I be like them? I don’t think so…and yet to float
Above the rolling H²O
On wings that express the mechanics of heaven
Like a beautiful golden monkey wrench
Expresses mechanics of earth…t’would be bueno.
Burke's Book Store
936 South Cooper
Memphis, TN 38104
(901) 278-7484
www.burkesbooks.com
by Tom Clark
Sky full of blue nothing toward which the Magi
Move, like dream people who are Walt Fraziers of the air…
Sometimes the moves they make amaze them
For they will never happen again, until the end of time; but there they are.
So shall I be like them? I don’t think so…and yet to float
Above the rolling H²O
On wings that express the mechanics of heaven
Like a beautiful golden monkey wrench
Expresses mechanics of earth…t’would be bueno.
Burke's Book Store
936 South Cooper
Memphis, TN 38104
(901) 278-7484
www.burkesbooks.com
Tuesday, April 08, 2008
Poem for Monday, April 7, 2008
Planting a Mailbox
by John Updike
Prepare the ground when maple buds have burst
And when the daytime moon is sliced so thin
His fibers drink blue sky with litmus thirst.
This moment come, begin.
The site should be within an easy walk,
Beside a road, in stony earth. Your strength
Dictates how deep you delve. The seedling’s stalk
Should show three feet of length.
Don’t harrow, weed or water; just apply
A little gravel. Sun and motor fumes
Perform the miracle: in late July,
A branch post office blooms.
Burke's Book Store
936 South Cooper
Memphis, TN 38104
(901) 278-7484
www.burkesbooks.com
by John Updike
Prepare the ground when maple buds have burst
And when the daytime moon is sliced so thin
His fibers drink blue sky with litmus thirst.
This moment come, begin.
The site should be within an easy walk,
Beside a road, in stony earth. Your strength
Dictates how deep you delve. The seedling’s stalk
Should show three feet of length.
Don’t harrow, weed or water; just apply
A little gravel. Sun and motor fumes
Perform the miracle: in late July,
A branch post office blooms.
Burke's Book Store
936 South Cooper
Memphis, TN 38104
(901) 278-7484
www.burkesbooks.com
Thursday, April 03, 2008
Wednesday, April 02, 2008
Tuesday, April 01, 2008
svaha
boing boing posted a link to this tremendously brave photography project by German artist Walter Schels today. he and his partner took before and after shots of terminal cancer patients at a hospice.
watching the breath leave my grandmother's body was unlike anything I have ever experienced. there is nothing that could have prepared me for it. our isolated nuclear family structure really cheats us of this experience. I think life really lacks any meaning unless we have a really clear concept of what death is like.
maybe I should look into becoming a hospice volunteer.
watching the breath leave my grandmother's body was unlike anything I have ever experienced. there is nothing that could have prepared me for it. our isolated nuclear family structure really cheats us of this experience. I think life really lacks any meaning unless we have a really clear concept of what death is like.
maybe I should look into becoming a hospice volunteer.
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