some days are bright and sunny and it seems so easy to feel happy and optimistic. & it seems a little bit amazing that feeling happy and optimistic can be easy -- that it persists. the word it makes me think of is resilience.

I've been thinking about desire and fantasy, and thinking that desire is like a drive, is like vim. Desire as a site of possibility and health -- that to be in touch with one's desire is to be healthy. Like, wanting is good. This is different than thinking about desire as a lack. To me, right now, desire feels full.

Good Faith

I invented things

you discovered

& took. This

is only what

happened, not

how it felt.

Always there's

a part of the story

we'd rather leave

out. Motives, arrows

thrown about

like trash, like ghosts.

I came when you

called for me:

I only wanted

to help.

variations on the epithalamium

I really like this poem by Brenda Shaughnessy. It's called epithalament.

A few years ago, a wrote a few poems that I called "epithalamianagrams." I wrote these for friends who were getting married. The idea was to compose a poem that used only the letters in their names -- to use anagrams to symbolize their marriage. Those poems were incredibly satisfying and fun to write.

Recovery is the New Category

& there are new types of victories. The pill countdown, the pain's clean edge, tart and bright as a razor -- so defined, no longer muffled or suffuse. It dwindles to this hard clean edge the glows like neon in the dark. I am aware of parts of my body & I search for pictures: networks and ribbons. And there are phantoms that wander over my skin, a new type of radiculopathy -- syndrome spreading sensations from point a to point b -- something is felt where nothing touches. & there's a pulse to it, like waves.

post post-op

a thing happens like turning down the corner of the page, and the next page is there. a turning down that feels a bit like a seeing through. a counting down of pills. dreams of apple trees growing inside silver, financial cones. a sort of institutionalized kindness that is just good enough. just seeing through. how the disembodied becomes you again. yes, this is my head, my hair. I'm seeing through. I try to wear jeans, but the incision seam is still there, up my back like a zipper, the plastic stitches underneath my skin. For weeks, it bubbled. "an allergic reaction." this is what my surgeon said. my surgeon? I want to ask him what he saw when he looked inside me. I want to say "describe it." I feel shy asking questions, ask my husband to take notes. In the car, I ask him over and over, "what else did he say?" and "how did I seem?" How do I seem? Am I here? The bottles collect like...a snowdrift of bottles -- everything in the orange RX. but recovery is the new category.

ghostings

I like (and like to write about) ghosts.

I loved Juliet Cook's piece about poltergeists.

And I also really liked this piece by Kate Bernheimer.

Also, this is awesome.

post-op

the whole thing was like a dream, which is probably the most banal thing I could say, but I think some of these drugs make my brain banal, so-.

Sensory-wise, the most vivid sensations were those related to temperature and sounds. The machines beep beep beep conversation/announcement of my body -- "my vitals" and the cold air on my skin which felt bare despite the gown and blankets. I felt small and childlike.

the first attempt at inserting the IV didn't go very well, although I have "good veins" -- fat blue veins at my wrists and in my inner elbow (there must be a better word for this part of the body, right?). I wanted to go home. I had visions on the needle penetrating the vein and exiting the other side, of all my body's warm blood soaking the thin sheets. I looked away and saw K and my mother, but it was like they were far away.

I felt see through -- like a ghost -- there like a film. like a film projected on a sheet. my face is one of those faces that cannot hide feelings well unless I have the energy to feel a different feeling. I had no such energy. It's like I was wearing paper. I *was* wearing paper, but I mean my *face* felt like paper.

When the doctor came in, I felt a little more brave. I smiled, but my lips were trembling.

It's a good idea -- anesthesia. The nurse kept telling me that it is so much more sophisticated now compared to just five years ago. The anesthesiologist was young and pretty. "Will I dream?" I asked.

"One person told me they dreamed of being in a casino, and all the machines were spitting cash!" she answered. When she put the first bit of medicine in my IV, she murmured "some people compare this to a margarita, others to champagne."

The world got farther away. And the bed was moving. My sense of how far the bed was pushed -- how many long hallways were traversed and large elevators entered and exited -- must be exaggerated. It seemed to last for hours. It felt vaguely like being in that movie Tron -- neon and maze-like.

The operating room was cold and black. Huge, round lights -- like flying saucers -- hovered overhead.

I survived!