Insomnia

My mother passed away two weeks ago today. I can still hardly believe it. I've been trying so hard to escape my brain, to let the feelings out slowly. Truly, I am a bit scared of my feelings. Amidst my frantic attempts at escape, N says sometimes I will just have to "sit up with it." It meaning, I suppose, the feelings.

Trying to climb out of my sad hole

This morning I woke up with extra sadness. I'm trying like crazy to distract myself with anything, anything. So many crafts, so many poems. The poems are harder, but worth it. I'm going to have new publication news soon.

Halloween is a good distraction. We are throwing a party but I'm really out of the game AFA party-throwing. I think Steph made a facebook event or something but I don't know how to find it or invite people. Pumpkin carving. Mulled cider. Candy. Send me email.

Tasks with too many steps overwhelm me.

Sorry that I'm being really self-absorbed right now. I probably have not visited your Facebook / blog as often as you have visited mine.

Thank you for the sympathy cards, messages, and sweet friend-stuff you've sent. If you didn't send, don't worry about it. The sympathy cards are a double-edged... thing-with-edges.

I keep going out to do stuff and then getting some of the stuff accomplished and then having anxiety attacks which necessitate my return home by slow painful bus ride.

It's worse at night. Meaning, events scheduled in the evening are still too hard for some reason.

Evenings are hard period.


Jenn is helping with many offers of low-key of visitation. Meaning I get to go to her house and do nothing and it's during the day so I don't freak out so much. And she keeps offering so I don't forget to come over. Or sometimes it's lunch. Which also has structural parts. Order. Eat. Talk. Eat more.

I've mostly had anger and anxiety, but the sadness is starting.

I've been working out more to try and maintain my good weight despite an overlove, right now, of sweetness. I'm talking about eating nutella out of the jar. I wish I hadn't bought that. If anyone has ideas for better indulgences, please message or comment. Carrot sticks and apples do not count.

I think I will invent and diagram the dodecahedronal stages of grief.

It's the edges one needs to be wary of, not so much the planes.

sinkholes

I got back from GA on Saturday. The service was okay. Even though I was raised Catholic, I am intimidated by churches. Especially southern churches. I feel that their participants are a moment away from bursting out with themes of punishment and hellfire. 

I did end up delivering the eulogy, which a lot of people gave me praise for. It ended up being a slightly bigger deal than I thought... I thought there would be several speakers, but I was the only one. The minister was like, And now Jill Khoury will speak on behalf of the family. And I thought, actually, I'm just speaking on behalf of me. The family did not approve this message beforehand... this could end up going badly. But it didn't. 

I spoke from the heart and didn't tell any lies. So there.

And now, after it's all over... 

...I'm sort of trudging along. Things seem possible, doable, one moment, and overwhelming the next. I told Mike that I was gonna go to a workshop this evening and he said it was good to get back into the swing of things. And now, after having a 20-30 minute interaction with someone who asked detailed questions about the aftermath of my mom's death / the service, I feel totally drained…. like I can barely make it to therapy and then meet a friend for lunch.

So I don't know if I'll get a second wind this afternoon and end up workshopping… Apparently my mom left me a note to read after she passed and gave it to my aunt, who gave it to Mike, who gave it to me this morning. I'm saving it for my therapy session to open it. Apparently she enclosed it in a book called Heaven Is for Real, which I'm like….. oh crap. What is this?! I'm not sure what I believe re: heaven / hell, but don't leave me a book with a title that seems like it wants to instruct me eschatologically on what is and what is not. 

I feel bad for having missed the past several workshops and I have lots of poems to workshop. 

I just want to crawl into bed now though. 

This morning I looked up how to respond to sympathy cards on the internet. Rather, I looked up, on the internet, how to respond to sympathy cards. Apparently some people say you don't have to send thankyou cards and some people say you do. I was going to make it into a sort of therapeutic crafting by handmaking my thank you cards. Now I'm looking at the cards I made and thinking these are too bright and colorful. They're totally wrong. Fuck this. Do I make new cards? Do I even bother? Do I go back to bed and not get out? Option C is looking appealing.

And wtf is in that note my mom left for me?!?! I thought we really said all we had to say and left it on a good note. Now she ends up having the last word, whatever it is.

No good words

Sometimes a stack of disappointments just makes me fall in on myself in concentric circles of sad, like a rock tossed and then falling to the bottom of a lake.

I just don't know what else to say.

I can't take one more disappointment right now.

I was working so hard to collect myself to get to the shore, to make sure I was stable and could have a conversation with someone without crying or having a panic attack. To make sure I wasn't going to get claustrophobic while riding the bus. Yesterday I had lunch with Barb who is so great. And we went back to look at her sweet little apartment. It was the first time in days that I hadn't felt the sadness just constantly eating at me. I could just ignore it for a time. And so, after navigating the obstacles of my emotional crap and Mike's work crap, we finally made the decision that we could pry ourselves away and go to the shore....

....and now it looks like my "transportation opportunity" has fallen through. Last week it was teetering on the edge and I had some hope that we could work it out, but I found out this morning that even with Mike & my efforts to meet halfway, the answer is no. We made the decision 12 hours too late.

Right now, at this moment, I am incredibly bitter that I can't drive. I'm very bitter at my family who didn't even double check with me before they changed the plan.

I just can't even.... I want to go back to bed forever.  I have to see A at 11:45, but I don't want to go outside because I can't take another thing going wrong right now.

Fuck this. Fuck everything.

Foggy, druggy, dopey, mopey, and panicked

This is venting. You can skip if you're bored or not into that whole whine-whine-whine thing.

Mmmm, wine.

I like to be efficient, even in my venting, so I'm separating it into two topics:

1) MEDS
I'm already taking a cartload of meds. My therapist N upgraded my meds to deal with all the crap that's happening right about now. Which is great. It means I don't go supernova on the streets of Pittsburgh, or throw glasses of water at people at lunch. It also means, however, that I too, feel like I have age-related dementia. I'm used to fibro fog. But this is fog of yet-another-level. I'm grateful that I can work out and also write coherent sentences and stuff. I couldn't do those things the last time I took such heavy-duty psych drugs. But I lose words. Nouns, mostly. I tangentialize and then forget what I was talking about. And there's still breakthrough-anxiety (of course, right?) while I subconsciously process what is going on with my mom, and everything else.

The breakthrough anxiety is exacerbated by the fact that we have been at our usual routine. For example, I'm at a hotel right now. Before that I was at my house for an evening. Before that, GA. Before that, Eastern PA. Before that, my house for a few nights. Before that, hotel.......... So like for example, I'll misplace my cell charger and all of a sudden ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING will feel overwhelming. When I am at home, and have my normal (not bad) level of ocd, the ocd actually works in my favor and somewhat ameliorates my visual impairment. Everything goes in its place. That way I don't have to look to find it. I have my house, my items, practically memorized. I say practically because there's probably some I don't have memorized but I can't think of what they are right now. I can navigate, and accomplish things within my house when in total darkness, in which I am completely blind. But right now it's like.... OMG.... cell charger..... where .... intense feeling of PANIC WORLD ENDING GOING TO CRY AND NOT BE ABLE TO STOP HELP OH GOD.

To continue with meds, I was just able to go see my PCP, goddess bless her she is wonderful and got me in this morning to deal with the scabs on my legs. She calls them lesions and I'm like, ew. She said what she thinks is happening is a bacterial infection and / or I'm getting new spots because my immune system is cranking out extra histamine like a champ. She has me on an antibiotic (which is like so f-ing huge.... luckily I literally have a pill cutter with me, at the hotel. Which I just bought yesterday) and a topical steroid, which I have to dab on each spot 2-3 times a day. And she wants me to take Benedryl pills at night and put Benedryl topical cream on the spots when they itch in between applications of the steroid.

So I counted the spots. Because i had to put the steroid on EACH ONE, which I will do at least the first few times and then will probably just rub a daub into the clusters where there are clusters. I have 38 spots. Thirty on my left leg and eight on the right. Plus that scary thing on my right ankle. She poked, prodded, visualized and was like, "For that thing alone, you need an antibiotic."

So I should stop getting new spots and these ones should decrease their gross-lookingness. Yay. Seriously yay b/c they are so itchy that I scratch them in my sleep and wake myself up.

2) MY MAYBE-NOT TRIP TO THE SHORE
I was supposed to go to the shore with my family, which I haven't been in 10 years. I was really looking forward to this vacation. With everything, I need it more badly than ever. I also told my dad that I was looking forward to walking down the boardwalk with my husband, something which I have never done.

However, circumstances etc. means I would have to take a Greyhound to Allentown so I could depart with them. But Greyhound is hell on my back. Seriously. And I already had one back spasm last week. Size medium. Which means I could still walk, but it was dicey for a little while. Amtrak is better but it goes to Philly only. Dad offered last night to drive me from Pittsburgh to A-town. If you will remember, he had originally offered me this when I was set to be with my Dad-Pam for a month, so that I could do Prosody. Now Mike is not sure he can go because of some work-shit that imploded, and my dad will probably no longer be able to take me from Pittsburgh to A-town because of some of HIS work shit that exploded.

Which... disappointing.

But then he said something. He's got to always say something, right? So when I was relating to him how .... brain fog. I just lost my thought. Real time Meds In Action.

So when I was relating to him how Mike might not be able to come he was like, "I want Mike too. I mean it's going to be all couples there. You'll probably feel like a third wheel or something."

REALLY?

Actually what I wanted was to be with my family in the relaxing ocean atmosphere, and the doc even said I could go in the ocean b/c the spots were all closed-over. And I wanted to walk on the boardwalk and buy cute beachy clothes even if I couldn't do it with my husband. And I wanted some time to decompress with my family. Especially more time with stepgoddess Pam. I don't think I can ever have enough time with her. She is like, nurturing to the nth power.

But I don't want to be a third wheel. And what's more, without the sighted-guide of my husband, I'll have to use my cane. And I wouldn't want to attract undue attention with my cane and make the whole family feel uncomfortable.

I know that last bit is taking it out of context. That's not what he said. But. I. I.

I need to go have lunch with Jenn now. God bless Jenn. And all you bloggerinos for reading and sending me good energies. I <3 u.

Clarification

So I'm back in Pgh for a week, then, AFAIK, off to the shore with my dad & stepfamily for a BADLY NEEDED vacation.

I just wanted to clarify one thing in my last post that, upon rereading, I realized it would not make sense for the general blog audience. Some friends i have been telling more than others. And family knows all these details too but some people don't.

I wanted to clarify the part where I was talking about choices and emotionally toxic environments. It was in the last few lines of my post.

1) I said "my mom made her choice." What I mean by that is her choice to refuse treatment for a medical condition that is not (I hate this word) "terminal." I have very mixed feelings about this. On one hand, I think it's important to have autonomy and to be allowed to pass with dignity.

On the other hand, I know my mom has had depression, which she has refused to be diagnosed with (meaning she did not accept the diagnosis and take meds for it, nor did she engage in serious talk therapy for the length of time where it would have lasting beneficial power) for quite a long time, maybe since I was a teenager. Her untreated depression has impacted her ability to get along with family members, to make sound decisions BEFORE this all came to a head, and to make friends, which, besides just the fact that friends are great (thank you friends of Jill!), would increase her support network in times of crisis.

Also, living in the environment she has chosen, a very rural town with pretty good-but-not-the-quality-of-urban medical care (i.e. needing to be driven hours to get certain procedures done, perceived burden on support network) is another factor. I'm not sure how much it has influenced her decision.

Providing an environment where people with chronic illness can have a good quality of life, even if they are poor, is a societal issue that needs to be fixed before I can accept that "right to die" is more good than bad.

I DON'T MEAN TO ELICIT A DISCUSSION OF GENERAL RIGHT-TO-DIE ISSUES WITH THIS BLOG POST AS I CANNOT HANDLE IT AT THIS TIME.

2) I said something else in my previous post about emotionally toxic environments. Even though I have suffered XXXXXXXX SURVIVED childhood abuse from my mother, I don't mean that her sickness alone has created an emotionally toxic environment for this particular trip to GA. What I mean is, SOMEONE had made the decision to keep the severity of her illness from my Gran, who lives in the same house and has age-related dementia.

Which means if it were just me and my mom and my aunt and uncle on this trip, I think, although it's a horrible circumstance, I could have stayed the whole time w/o having... shall we say... a nervous breakdown and having to leave a day early. It's the fact that I had to keep my emotions from my Gran, and thus from the environment in general, that really drove me over the edge. I don't know whose decision this was, but I still don't think it's the right one. I *do* know that my family on the maternal side has been all about preserving secrets that would have been somehow controversial or upsetting to certain family members.

Here's a fairly benign example. My other aunt was a Catholic school teacher. She *loved* her job. My grandfather (who was pretty much tyrannical) railed at her all the time because teaching at a Catholic school did not make enough money as would, say, teaching at a public school. Or [insert another business-type job that would make more money].

Like I said, my aunt loved her kids, where she was teaching, etc. I don't know how much of this decision was to appease my grandfather or what, but she got a job as an insurance claims processor. She tried at that job for awhile, but HATED it. She wanted to go back to teaching. So she did. BUTBUTBUT we were not allowed to tell my grandfather that she went back to teaching. This lie lasted years and years and years. Until the day he passed, my grandfather thought my aunt was an insurance claims processor, or some other job that was NOT a teacher.

There have been less benign family secrets than the one about my aunt and her teaching, but they are not appropriate for a blog available to the entire internet. I believe, however, that preserving secrets is like allowing sores to fester and become infected. Sooner or later the secret will come out and when it does, it will be far worse than if it came out earlier.

I guess I still have some poems left in me, though this isn't one of them.

So every time I leave a session with A I dread crossing the street. The immediate surroundings outside the yoga studio are noisy, crowded, and frankly a bit gross. The dive bar on the corner (past which I have to walk to get to the intersection) spawns bees, a smell of decay, extra sidewalk debris, and afternoon drunks milling about. 

If I don't leave the house with payment for A, sometimes I go to the drive-through bank across the street to use the ATM. Lately they have stationed a security guard outside the drivethrough, which has one or two lanes staffed by people, and then a lane for the ATM. The security guard leans against the wall staring down the long narrow parking lot to the street. It makes me feel awkward, much as I feel awkward caning down the sidewalk to my bus stop. There's a whole gauntlet of people slumped along the wall, and they're pretty much watching me. I mean I can literally see their heads turned in my direction, gazing at my progress. Not all of them of course. Some are on the phone or busy attending to children or talking to each other. Incidentally, I felt this way (about the bus stop) before I used the cane. But the security guard is the one I'm thinking about right now. 

So I'm coming out of a rough sesh, and picking my way across this annoying intersection where beer trucks are making deliveries, traffic is backed up, and people like to gridlock. I approach the entrance to the bank parking lot, and I see him. I don't know if it's the same guy all the time. My eyes don't render the face very well. Just a guy, white, stocky build, uniform, mirrored sunglasses. I enter the parking lot. I'm caning down its empty narrow length  toward the ATM. 

I feel like I'm on the runway. Like I'm doing my little turn on the catwalk or something. But (if it's not bloody obvious by now) not in a good way. I'm channeling the fire, the solidity of A as a defense, because she dropped some A-bombs on me at the end of the sesh (I dislike when she does this, but it doesn't happen often) so ironically I'm channeling her spirit because my own aura feels frangible. My brain is a roiling stew of anxiety and racing thoughts. I get closer and closer to the ATM, idly wondering if it's illegal to be a pedestrian using the drive-through. I didn't used to wonder about it, but now there's been this uniformed guy for the past two weeks.

So I've decided to just not look at him, to look at the ground halfway between him and me. And the distance grows less and less, and finally I'm veering toward the ATM. And today he speaks to me. 

"I don't mean to startle you..."

"You didn't." Because he didn't. I knew he would be there and I was watching him watch me. But he doesn't know that. However, it was kind of him to say so, because most people don't think about the fact that 99% of the time, their voices DO startle me because I don't sense them coming. 

"I don't mean to startle you... but ... you're good."

I sort of tilt my head at him, sizing up his comment, and how I'm going to respond. 

On the way to my appointment with A, I already took out my visually-impaired ire on a guy who was loading his car and decided to put all his crap in the middle of the narrow sidewalk and not move it out of the way even though, if he were paying attention, he could see and hear me coming down the block. 

For as much ire as gets channeled into some of these blog entries, I don't actually express it to the appropriate party most of the time. Today though...

When I was finally RIGHT UP ON the car loading guy and his pile o' crap he was like, "Oh shit, sorry," and I muttered something non-amicable. I didn't swear at him or anything, but still felt a little guilty for not accepting his apology. My parents raised me to be polite. Painfully polite. Self-effacing, even. I do accept the apologies of people most of the time, and I felt this guy was being particularly stupid. And he got my push-back. 

Because I think sometimes it *should* be okay to not accept someone's apology if you don't know them, if it's not an accident, if he was being particularly unaware or inconsiderate. And he was. 

I know that I hold most people to a far-higher standard of interpersonal consideration than average, because *I* am *always* hypervigilant of my body, my stuff, where it is and where I am and if it's blocking or inconveniencing anyone. And most people just aren't aware aaat aaaallll. They put themselves where-ever and expect you to just go around them. 

For example, people who hold conversations in the middle of busy sidewalks. I can't get riled about them because there's just too many. Apparently it's human nature and I'm the one overly conscious of my own taking-up-of-space. 

Back to the guard and my already-roiling stew of anxiety. 

I've heard his comment from other people too, the "you're good" thing. From repeated analysis, I believe he means that "although you are using a white cane, you move with the grace of a person who has more vision than I assume you have." I'm not okay with his judgment because it's normative. It's privileging the way "regular" people move. When I am seen as coming closer to the standard, I'm called "good." 

But his expression was friendly. And my brain was already full of too many problems. Personal angst and obsessing about family stuff. Leftover outrage from an essay I read this morning in the Kenyon Review detailing a / the latest egregious human rights violation.

I made a rare decision to let it go. The expression on his face was friendly. He was (like they nearly all are) well-intentioned. He really had no idea what his comment actually said to me. He thought he was paying me a compliment. So I just smiled and said thanks. I used the ATM. And then I bid him to have a good day as I walked away and I knew he was watching me still.

negotiations.

Dear My-Hip-and-Lower-Back-Muscles:

Please forgive me for not remembering all of your names. I need you to really cooperate here. I need you to not spaz on me until after 7/27. Really, August 1 would be ideal. I realize that I'm not keeping up my end of the relationship as well as I could. I have been remiss in some areas, and I'm sorry. I'm dehydrating you. Not feeding you protein. Sleeping in contorted ways and then having nightmares which stiffen my whole body. You can't blame me for that last bit though. The unconscious can be so wily. I'm going to try harder to at least give you more fluids and maybe yoga on Saturday. You like yoga, remember? I realize holding my torso up is a real task, and many times I tax you with bad posture. After that thing I have to go to tonight, where I'm sure the seats will not be to your liking, if there are seats, I'm going to try to remember to do some stretching before bed, which should help, yes? Please don't make me put on the back brace. Everyone agrees on how much we hate it.

Yours in bodily unity,

Jill

The picture will not change

17.5 hours later and I am staring into the same dark, inhabited by the lights that look like tiny globes from here.

I'm afraid to say what I really feel at this moment.

Tomorrow is the reading in Lawrenceville.

I got all my stuff together this afternoon.

It will be vulnerable.

Oh please hear me.

No one's going to read this.

This is not a 20things but if it were then I'd feel more distance from it and I could write something bizarre and pretend it's not real.

I hide my need with a smile.

Okay, a half smile.

I'm charmingly quirky.

Except right now, in this moment when I'm afraid to say what I really feel, I'm uncharmingly crazy. It wouldn't sound any better if I told the whole truth.

If I was the one reading this I would back away.

The ceiling fan is making the same sound it was making 17.5 hours ago. The air is still plenty warm from the day.

I swallow need.

Here's a song (Neutral Milk Hotel : Two-Headed Boy Pt. 1)
You might as well close your eyes because the picture will not change.

Taking stock halfway through the year

It's about quarter after four in the morning. I can't sleep because the cat has parked his large self in front of the window a/c and is taking up all the good cold air. Why, you may ask, do I not just toss him? Because he is older, and his kidneys are iffy, and he sort of has this grudge against the world, and I am his favorite person, and he only lets two people pet him besides me. He is a huge cat, with large intimidating fangs that he has used in the past. I can wrap my arms around him, play with his paws, look in his ears, feed him unpleasant things. He will snuggle with me in the bed. Not at my feet like many cats, or in the crook of my knees, but he wants his back against my chest. His head under my chin. And then he purrs.

It is rather flattering, in an odd way, to be the preferred, nearly exclusive  company of such a... I don't want to say unpleasant, because he's not unpleasant to me... such an idiosyncratic animal. I know that he wishes he were the only cat in the world, and that I were the only human. He's really neurotic. The vet says he should maybe be on prozac. But I've held off. I worry about him in the heat. He's spent most of the last two days wrapped around the water bowl. I'm scared that somehow the heat is going to make his kidneys go south. I will dip my hand in the water and spread it over his ears, his head, down his back to cool him off. I am probably the only person he would let do this. So he has discovered the window a/c we've turned on for sleeping, and he's, like, RIGHT up in there. And he is a huge cat. Long, tall, broad, muscular. Some people think he's overweight but I don't think he technically is any more. Still, he takes up all the damn room. So I can't sleep. I came down to get an ice pack for my neck, which has been in pain since this afternoon. Oh bones. Oh muscles. Oh delicious cold.

What does one do with insomnia? I don't have it too-too much anymore since the med switch. Years ago, I used to do dishes in the middle of the night. Ha! not anymore. So of course I just sit in the dark and think and think and think and think and think.... and apparently tonight I blog.

June just ended. It's halfway through my year of not-working. It's easy to go down the vortex of rumination tonight.

A surprising envelope arrived in the mail yesterday. Shocking, really. After I politely declined to teach this past spring (which was really really really really hard to turn down), *and* they took my picture off the adjunct faculty page (you can see a little blank space in the web page where I used to be), lo, do I get a contract for the fall. Mind you, I've never spoken with anyone about my schedule or whether I was teaching in the fall. The contract just mysteriously showed up.

It's still sitting on my desk.

The familiarity of it, the structure, the certainty of what I would be doing, is appealing. Without teaching, somehow I don't feel legitimate --although I am starting a temporary CW teaching gig on Monday that makes me super-excited (not comp! not comp! not comp!). But, my neurotic brain says, it's not at (cue choir of angels) the Almighty University. I don't know when I'm going to have another university job. I don't know when I'm going to want said job. Adjuncting was absolutely draining for me.

And, I'm going to say this next part out loud (well, type it out loud) even though it scares the crap out of me: I don't know, with the combined forces (forces? sigh. it's 4:30 am) of my multiple disabilities, if I will ever be able to handle the rigors of a full-time university job. But I probably won't ever get to teach anything but comp without one. Thinking about this for too long takes me to a very bad, lonely, anxious place. I cannot predict the future. So I just need to not go there.

[I push off with my feet so that my desk chair rolls to the low spot in the floor --this house is 100 years old; nothing is plumb. Away from the monitor, I can't see anything in the absolute darkness of the living room except the amber globs (globs?! it's 4:55 am) of the streetlights, or maybe those lights are from the cemetery...]

I think about turning off the monitor and lying on my back on the floor in the very-dark. Sometimes my back likes the unyielding wood surface. But the other two cats will think this is a game. They will come and climb on me. After 5 now. It's their hunting time. They amuse each other but I am the ultimate amusement.

I am trying to keep the following things in mind. Since January (the start of my year off)

Sent to 45 journals. 34 rejections, 9 pending, 6 acceptances, with 13 poems taken.
4 MSS sent. 2 rejections, 2 pending.
Readings given: 4, with another one tomorrow night. And I have another tentative thing lined up for September.

I always want more than I have. I always know I could be doing more. Those journal subs fall short of my goals. I should have sent way more than 45 by now! And the MSS total... sad. The damn thing will never get published. I rarely pause and think, how great this is. I've accomplished more in six months than I did in six years of adjuncting.

I will turn off the monitor now after I press the "publish" button. I will lie on the floor in the dark to ease my back and neck. And the fucking cats will think it's awesome, and I will not think they are awesome. And I will stay there for as long as I can stand it. And then I'll get an ice pack, de-hair my shirt, and try for more sleep.

20things : energy

1. This guy passed me on the street and said loudly, directly, so I knew it was addressed to me : you look good! You walk with such energy.

2. I walked past him. Ignored him. With energy, I suppose.

3. My energy was somewhat more tense after that.

4.. Full disclosure: I was walking to meet friends...

5. And nearly unraveled once I met these friends, but it was not the time for unraveling.

6. Also someone bought me pie.

7. By the time I was done with the pie, I was centered.

8. It took 10 years of training and humiliation to make me walk so well. Am I doing the math right?

9. You can hardly tell I ever walked funny at all!

10. The white cane is certainly a distraction, though, to one's observation of my feet and what they're doing. Usually.

11. And / but it's like a metronome to me. 

12. Fuck him anyway.

13. I can fall with energy too.

14. In fact, my falls are quite spectacular.

15. I saw my sister fall once. She looked so soft, like a ballerina plie-ing off the edge of the driveway.

16. In fact, some ligaments in her knee were bending the wrong way at the time.

17. I feel like there's some aphorism here about not judging the outside of someone, etc. 

18. Once I was clothes shopping and the shop clerk told me I looked like a dancer. I made a scoffing noise and then felt bad. 

19. it's not you it's me it's not me it's you it's not you it's me

20. : metronome. 

20things: Talking points

1. I don't think it's exaggerating to say that in January I began to emerge from a six-year fugue state called wage slavery + chronic illness.

2. I looked around for my comrades but they had scattered or fallen away.

3. In the meantime I'm trying to carry out everything I meant to do in those six years. To pick up conversations where I dropped them. [not drowning, but waning]

4. Please write me back. 

5. And considering not killing this tomato plant.

6. It's really hard to kill a tomato plant.

7. Keep in touch. Take care.

8. I used to have a thick garden. I would wander among the containers, watering, pruning, testing. It felt like immersion, like not-thinking. When was that?

9. Last summer I let two small basil plants die. Every day I made the choice to neglect them, until their stalks shrank and crawled along the porch floor. Pent anger was starting to leak out of me like when you view a house, on fire, from the street, but the fire is still furtive. Was that a flamelet creeping up the siding? Does anyone else smell smoke? Did you hear an alarm?

10. [Casually]: Did you get my email?

11. Sometimes you can't anticipate a full system crash. And sometimes you can just feel it coming... a spirit haunting the circuitry. You take steps, make preparations.

12. She made an observation about my heart chakra but I wasn't paying attention.

13. The writing is going great. {{{{take large sip of cocktail}}}} I have so much material I don't know what to do with myself. {laugh now}

14. Sometimes I fantasize: I push my hand down into the dirt, scrape away the superstructure until I find the root ball... and then just pull hard and fast until the whole thing comes up in my palm. And then throw it as hard as I can onto the concrete.

15. You're canceling the next workshop? 

16. Nothing will stop the thoughts from revving behind my eyes, between my ears. Nothing that I'm willing to mention here, anyway.

17. Did you get my friend request? I don't mean to seem needy. No, delete that. Don't send.

18. My latest bruise is dissipating in the form of an eye, an arched eyebrow. I swear I can see a hint of cheekbone. These things don't show up the same in pictures.

19. Hello. Hey. Hiya. Halloo. Howl. The speaker in this poem says what?

20. pls wrt