Rebecca Cook

6/1/25 I got form-rejected by Write Bloody. I am over it now. I did not have a migraine yesterday. I'm pretty sure I didn't have one on Friday either. Kiki and Ben came over yesterday evening and I had two cigs and some whiskey. But the big thing is my arm is culsterfucked, and whatever nerve is doing all of this seems to be also affecting the right side as well. I have been assuming that the weakness... no soreness... feeling…

5/30/25 I am obsessed with getting the results of Write Bloody Press’s contest. They are supposed to be released today and I keep checking and checking and rechecking. Last time, when they were due on May 17th, they extended the deadline to May 30th. Which is today. Come on guys! They are on the West Coast, it may take hours or they may extend it again. Wake up, Rebecca! Quit obsessing. And I especially have to quit obsessing because here's the…

5/29/25 Yesterday was good. NO headache good. I smoked one cig. and I stayed up late (past 11, but not by much). I am seeing Food Coach in an hour. I generally get a bit nervous, so I am going to work on calming myself down to a slow back-burner simmer. And again, this is not about true confession, it’s about getting her help where I need it. I will not play the part of desperately-addicted to food victim. No, I…

5/28/25 I felt like an entirely normal person today. No headache. Glimmers, tiny almost-breakthroughs, but no headache. I had PT in the pool. I went to Publix. I came home and ate. Then I actually, drum-roll, went back out to mail some letters and got up the gumption to go to Wal-Mart to buy containers for recycling. YAY ME! I had no cigs and no alcohol yesterday, but today I was too hungry after swimming and did buy a slice of…

5/27/25 I’ve been dreaming dreams that I remember bits of. I have decided to just never, really never, touch meat again. Nothing raw. I may touch or even eat canned tuna, or deli meat, bacon, sushi. But I refuse to touch any raw-raw flesh again. And then, in a dream, I was preparing a huge slab of salmon for the oven and the salmon turned into a chicken. I am most disturbed by chicken, but that was all of the dream.…

If I could I would write every so many poems the way I used to when I was younger and wilder and much less sane when I danced atop the waves of the midnight sea when I was still visibly-full of stardust still an elastic band bending this way and that a weebling thing a tiggering sort of girl all grins and tears and sudden bouts of anger. But I am no longer so reckless and so devil-may-care I understand the…

5/26/25 Need to keep track because migraines and headaches are back. 1—smoked 3 cigs yesterday. No alcohol. 2—had enormous and long phone conversation with my daughter, fraught and strange and brain-demanding. (we are estranged) 3—had poetry group in which I wrote 3 actual poems geeze the brain explode. 4—cooked twice fast as lightning, oh my but being prepared is everything everything. 5—sussed out mother-daughter weight so heavy conversation with Dale. 6--had headache (not exactly migraine) all day long. That's about 3…

my migraine came back today and i'm worried that it will eat up my life. i had thought i was beyond the migraines, at least these really bad days-long ones, but here i am again, back in the dark dark dark attic with the light from the tv turned way down (can't watch movies, but You Tube is okay) and the light on my pc turned down, and on my phone, and a cloth over the lamp, and just damnit. i…

I have been migraining since Thursday. Or was it Friday? When this happens I become lost in a fog of medication. Currently I’m stoned on oxy. It doesn’t exactly stop the pain, rather it muffles me so that pain doesn’t matter so much. And in any case, I’m not really in pain now. I’m in fear of pain. I’m in the darkness. But I’m coming out of the darkness. I have the lamp on. The left side of my face is…

Another Mother's Day has passed and I am glad to have to over with. My youngest child is not speaking to me, which is pretty rough when that child is 34. Bah. But we had a nice dinner at Puckett's, and we did the NYT puzzle afterward, as we usually do. Dale is at the controls, casts it to our large tv. It's fun. Today I was wondering if my PT (pool) would be canceled because of lightning and it was.…

April was NaPoWriMo. I wrote 30 poems in 30 days. I still don’t quite know what I accomplished. I know some of the poems are very good, most of them are not, and I am certain a good number of them can be worked on/redone and will be fantastic. I have been spending so much time on Substack that I haven’t really thought about this website much. But yesterday I updated my wardrobe page, and today I am updating this blog.…

from Grist, 2012 You are always swimming. Because when you were four years old your father tossed you in the waves, threw you up high and then you crashed down, your ears and mouth full of salt. You sank to the sandy bottom and he lifted you up again, and again, and you can’t stop laughing, even now you laugh with the memory of it bubbling up from your center. You are always six months old sitting in the little tub…

I’ve had increasing pain in my incision sites the last week, and last night I couldn’t sleep with my CPAP mask. I slept in my bedside recliner so my snoring wouldn’t keep Dale up. I was heavily medicated for the pain, so my sleep was in and out and I kept looking at my phone. This pain is sharp and I think it is normal. It’s a kind of stretchy feeling, like my skin is stretching and crawling into a new…

I saw my physician’s assistant to the dermatologist on Thursday. She is the one who diagnosed me with HS. I've been seeing her for years and we had discussed this HS diagnosis before, but she had been reluctant to make it. I think the main reason that she went ahead and slapped that diagnosis on me was because I have been on a pretty highish dose of doxycycline for inflammation and I still flared up, and so that she could get…

I have woes oh woe is me I try so hard to never give into the woe is me my skin (diagnosed with HS yesterday look it up oh the shame of it! Silly silly don’t be ashamed. Started a Biologic yesterday) and woe the head and its fissures of electric green terrible aching never know when it will hit how can I ever keep to a schedule if I can’t ambulatory myself on any given day and also notwithstanding the…

So let's talk about skin care. I'm not good at it, but now that I'm 60 it seems to be more important...well, maybe because I just had the considered-medically-necessary brow lift and I'm thinking, well, time to make a greater effort. The biggest problem has always been rinsing, the hassle of it, getting water everywhere. And the yuck of heaviness of just-moisturized skin. And the sweatiness from it. And the hassle of just wanting to go to bed already, or just…

it's a little like being two people. no. multiple people. i am a colony of girls i am a company of birds my brain looks and divides observes and pronounces sifts through and lifts up. my brain is a ticker tape never ceasing, not even in sleep how can i ever be expected to pay attention to what? to how? to be slow is to be in-between to be peering through the space between behind within the eyes the green place…

Perhaps the way to make a lasting change is to be the change, be the path you want to be walking on, let the road rise to meet you at ten am because you’ve already been on that road since five am yesterday.  If I want to eat, less, better, differently, then I really must needs WANT to change the way I eat right now. Already. Today. Just a moment ago when I made the decision. Changing a habit, and there…

My mouth now sometimes thoughtfully considers the tastes it discovers, the tastes it anticipates, the breakfast the lunch the mostly boring suppers; the mouth likes boring things, likes the sameness of the days, the sameness of the hours counting down each day; the mouth is more aware, more greedy, more forgiving, more obnoxious, more me and myself and all things bread & butter, brown sugar, steaming oats, lentils & rice, watery things with tiny bubbles all working toward the good–this is…

Writing poems is a fire, blue and hotter than anything else. Writing poems is a kind of violence, a taking over, a spinning and dropping and flying thing that possesses. And consumes. And refines. Words are the flame under the kettle. I am the kettle. I am the little tea pot. I steam up and the water comes pouring out, scalding, poem after poem after poem, hot off the presses. I will be famous, I will be remembered, I am genius…

The hardest thing about learning to be mindful is slowing down, is learning to pause. I do meditation using the CALM app every day. Even though it is very difficult for me to make new habits I have made this one. Am I good at it? Do I do it “properly?” Do I sometimes fall asleep? I've learned to ignore these questions and to simply concentrate on showing up and breathing. The bonus is the daily lesson that is almost like…

My birthday is tomorrow I will be 60. This stretches my credulity. And yet….of course I am 60. Today I will make myself a coconut cake, trying to recreate my granny's coconut cake. Or I will make MAGIC bars and shoot for very-low sugar can she do it? I have begun pulmonary rehab and I'm having so much fun exercising. I get tons of attention and as far as I can tell I am never really short of breath so I…

Today I went to a local surgery center for an epidural in my C Spine. This is routine, I’ve done it 3 times before. No biggie. The nurse who took me back was a little flaky, but I just thought, okay she’s a little flaky. She was asking routine questions and I told her I wanted to be clear that I had had COVID 2 weeks ago. She then began a sort of mini tirade about how COVID is the FLU…

It's fall, though not as much fall as I would like. But it’s apple season and I need to get out and hand pick some apples. Sumo (orange) season is my favorite fruit season and that is in  January, but a close second is apple season– when the apples are good. I want to drive over to Ellijay and get some apples there. I would like a Big Mutsu,  some really good Winesaps or Romes. But every year is different. The…

I have begun a meditation practice. I'm reluctant to call it a “ practice”  because I don't want to jinx myself. I want this pattern to continue.  I've been trying to begin a meditation practice for quite a while, years actually, but these last few days I have found myself actually doing the “daily calm” on the Calm app.   It's interesting because in a way  I think of this particular meditation as a kind of daily “devotion” with a lot of…