the inside becomes the outside

Today it rains. I am somewhat happy about this. The weather in Santa Barbara can be placid and monotonous. Or else the variations in weather are limited to rearrangements in the cloud cover/fog/marine layer. So rain. It's a thing. An event. It makes noise. Last night we both woke up when we heard something go crash in the house; this morning, I can't discern what could have fallen. Everything appears to be in its normal place. Rain also means the ants come trooping in. I've tried to herd them back outside, traced over their moving black lines with chalk, but they return. They are so numerous. Their stream flows in two directions. I'm not sure which way is in and which is out. I've been thinking of the simultaneity of surfaces -- like klein bottles and mobius strips.

Sometimes it is like I've been asleep for ten months and I'm just waking up. I've tapered down my medicine, and now I'm only taking half of a vicodin here and there. I'm still taking muscle relaxers at night and ibuprofen every six hours, so tapering down those will be the next frontier. I took a percocet on Friday, and consequently spent the rest of the weekend trying to clear the fog. I can't believe that I was taking SIX of those each day. One made me feel like a mummy -- as though my insides had been dehydrated and my outsides were wrapped in cloth.

Physical therapy is opening some new pains. I feel like I've been clinging to the edge of a cliff. I can't let go. But now I'm asking my body to let go, and it is taking a lot of work. I can think "relax relax relax," and yet the muscles remain as hard as rocks, the joints are stiff -- it's like tugging on a stuck door. The physical therapist said my strength was a 20% -- that I had the strength of an 80 year old woman. Before the injury I always imagined myself as strong, powerful. Now I must ask for help all the time. I feel self conscious because I think I must still look strong. I worry people will think "why does she need help." I probably need to let go of this too.

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.

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.