Author’s note: This is from a series based on my journal. Unconventional and idiosyncratic punctuation and formatting are intentional.
Soon after coming downstairs this morning I posted the next piece in my journal series. It’s another collage from early in the series. Only a few more remain. After that each piece is more or less its own day. Toward the end of the one I posted today I talk about re-reading books and giving away those that I no longer want. In his comment Culver mentioned that he is also an avid re-reader and feels that re-reading his books is like meeting up with old friends. I would not say that I am an avid re-reader. I am reading my books again only because I always want to have something to read and because I don’t want to acquire any more stuff, not even or even especially books. I also find that some books I have re-read turn out not to be the friends I once thought they were.
Maggie Smith posted a behind-the-scenes look at a poem called A dead whale can feed an entire ecosystem by Rachel Dillon. She considers how art can help people cope with the beauty and horror of being alive and then she shows how the poem’s form and content work together to achieve this especially through enjambed and end-stopped lines. It’s been a long time since I have studied poetry. Maybe I could return to it. Maybe I could do that through a show Smith hosts called The Slowdown where she discusses a poem every weekday. Meg posted a prompt to write a story inspired by a painting called And Then One Day Snowdrops Appeared. It’s by an English artist named Gary Bunt, a watercolor of a stocky old man with a white mustache in a dark jacket and pants wearing a beret and holding a cane. He stands just to the side of a tree around the bottom of which snowdrops grow. To the man’s right a red ball lies on the ground. Just beyond that a dog sits looking toward the ball and the man. Behind the dog two empty glass milk bottles sit on a doorstep. Meg suggests starting the story with And then one day [blank] appears. Prompt words include slippers, smoke, and peppermint. I can imagine only the man’s pants are gray flannel and his jacket is black corduroy. After that my imagination stops. Writing this story seems like it should be so easy. Meg has even provided five of the first six words. It’s not.
At my appointment this afternoon with Danielle we talked about her upcoming wedding and reading and books. She mentioned that she is part of a book group and that month’s selection is a novel called Tender Is the Flesh. Danielle said it was described to her as dystopian cannibalism. I’m going to pass, she said. So would I, I said. I mean, just, Why? Why read it? Write it? I don’t understand. When Danielle was doing the anesthetic I tried to see if I could get through it without wincing or flinching. I made it until a shot right above my left front tooth. Yeah, I know, it gets right to the bone there, Danielle said. It almost made me sneeze and I wondered how sneezing with a needle stuck in my gum might work. You’re low, Danielle said when she took my blood pressure at the start of my visit. It was 80/68. My pulse was 44. Both have always been low. In the psych unit three years ago I always had to stand when the nurses took my vitals or they would get a reading so low they would think that I had coded. The most trying readings were those that occurred at midnight and six in the morning because I always had to be woken for those and I always slept so well. At home I finished reading Ablutions. In some places the behavior of the bartender and his customers is almost ludicrously depraved by the writing is remarkable. In the paper I read about a local nonprofit that introduces teenagers to aviation mechanics and engineering. I don’t build airplanes, said its founder, I build people. He is a retired aircraft mechanic. I got a few notifications of readers liking my post this morning. I am always surprised how gratifying and encouraging the smallest engagement can be. Richard Spalding sent his proposal for covering the bare places in the yard. I love both his drawing on graph paper and what he calls the narrative explaining the nature of the work and how they epitomize Garden Artisan as the name of his business. His work is attentive, personal. SURGE was the answer for Wordle today.
To read my previous post, “Wonder: 134,” please click here.
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Dental hell. I had a funny text exchange with my Dentist and I’ve been waiting to use it in an essay at some point. It went something like this I said to him :I have had a UTI and I’m on antibiotics. Will that affect the procedure you need to do ? and he said : not unless we’re going to have sex.
Oh my you made me laugh aloud and it’s only 7:20 AM! The thought of anyone wanting to read a book about “dystopian cannibalism” is beyond my imagination. I love the feel and smell of a new book so I still purchase them but am known to pass them on to friends without a wish to have them returned. That lust for new books goes back to my childhood and now I simply say I am supporting writers.