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 heavy, as though more pain may come at any time. Heavy and hot-ish. Cheek, temple, eye socket.
I was doing a search of my documents yesterday and I stumbled upon my journals from 2013. It turns out that Ed died that year. I began the mental-health odyssey, the renewal, remaking and reawaking that year. Turns out the surgery on my salivary gland was the same month as my hysterectomy. Yikes. Turns out I had a lot of publications that year and, evidently, wrote scads and scads of poems. It was quite the year.
I am always embarrassed by my journals, by my self-absorption, my constant yammering on about my mood my bipolar my sad my yuck my this and my that. It’s so weird. Twelve years ago I was an entirely different person. I have been replaced by myself, a newer me….I feel this sort of slippage, this change, so often. I will find myself inside a moment thinking, where am I where was I? And then I try to find a way back into my life, back into the “real” which was been rattling along quite nicely without me.
I found a few posts that have “would-be” poems in them. I plan on turning them into poems. I need to come up with 20 poems to submit to Write Bloody Press if I make their first cut. I don’t know that I will. First of all, I had to put my poems into columns because they are too long for 8 pages. That’s what they wanted—5 poems on no more than 8 pages. My 5 poems would have taken up, like 20 pages, so I’ll bet they disqualify me. But if they don’t, if they consider them anyway, I feel that I surely have a good chance of making the cut.
I have come up with 10 poems, and I have loads of others from the past decade that haven’t been published, but I rather like submitting newer things. I always like working with new pieces instead of dingy old closeted things.
So my migraine is at bay for the moment. I am teaching myself to crochet. I have a butterfly drawing going. I have worked out some of my cookbook stuff—i.e., cookbooks, for someone like me, are a hinderance in a way. Part of it is that the titles of the recipes are stupid—“Essence of Young Broccoli with Golden Angel Marinade and Garlicky Tofu Squares” or “Egg-less Taco Salad with Mistic Bamboo Gravy and Power Greens.” Im’a never make that. It’s confusing. And so often recipes call for shit I will never have on hand, like fresh herbs and weird spices. (I have TONS of spices but there are still so many I’ve never heard of) Second, most cookbooks have only a few recipes that I will ever make. Third, cookbooks are often heavy and unwieldy and I tend to get food on the pages and they stick together….bah blah blah.
So I am cutting recipes out and pasting them into this perfectly-sized cookbook. The ones I don’t paste there are going into these….sort of like binders….the recipes will be in plastic sleeves. I should end up with 4 of these small binders, the cookbook of recipes pasted in called VEGAN BOARDS (all the recipes in this are in the back of the book so it makes total sense. Anyway, as with so many other areas of my life, I want to LIMIT my options, not endlessly expand them. I want to use the recipes I have, after the fashion in which I use recipes, and keep it at that.
I will cook, mainly vegan, and I’ll keep it simple. As simple as possible so that I will keep cooking. I do need to learn more method and techniques, but I am close to where I want to be, it’s just a matter of thinking of food a little differently.
I am so bored and I think, lonely up here in my garret. Regardless, I will go downstairs in a bit, and I’ll stay there unless my head really hurts a lot.
~r.
