𓅯｡𖦹° 09.18.26 The year of the open wound on my body—after recovering from yesterday's procedure, I'll have spent twenty-four weeks out of the last fifty-two caring for a surgical wound. This new scar is puckered and 3cm long on the back of my calf, still sewn tight with stitches I'll have to remove in two weeks. If history repeats, the scar will be pink and raised and ugly. I'm not vain about scar tissue. When a bone snapped off in my ankle from dancing en pointe in my teens, I left surgery with a scar as long as my thumb running up my fibula. After my botched excision last November, I cleaned the wound that had split open on my lower back for four months until the skin finally closed. Now the scar is purple and knotted, a wide plum wound that aches and burns when I run my knuckles across the dense, tangled fibers, hoping to break down the tissue. Tomorrow I'll take the bandage off my new wound and start again. ﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏ 09.14.26 asking myself ✽ what about it do i miss ✽ how can i create experiences that honor this desire but resonate with my life now (both in capacity and expansion) ✽ where is the magic ✽ why does it only feel possible in x space or time ✽ where do i need to make more room ✽ what do i want more of and how can i recognize it in the moment cold today, around 55 degrees. the first fall day! I kept the window in my room open while working until it started raining. after work I made rolls. the transition from craggy flour to smooth dough under my hands after ten or so minutes of kneading is always a delight. in another life I was a baker in seattle and that other life was mine once. whenever I roll dough under my palms I think of making pretzel buns at the shaping table in the afternoon; laughter in the white room lit with floating dust motes, the smell of flour. ﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏ 09.10.26 My body caught up with me today, or pulled me from the pace I’ve been trying to muscle through by will and refusal. I remembered I belong to the kingdom of the sick, despite the days when I pretend I could break into a run. Laying in bed at 3pm in the dark, trying to breath through my migraine, and loosening with each exhalation what felt like every cell in my neck, shoulders, back, I thought in the dreamy tilted state of pain and vertigo: it’s been so long since I’ve relaxed this muscle, this tendon. At the end of pain is a kind of euphoria—what is left but yourself and sensation? What can you hold onto? Nothing, not even the self. It demands surrender and that surrender is marvelous, so much better than grasping. Not the pain itself but the acquiescence to sensation. I always think at that point: I am alive feeling this. When I accept it there is finally relief. I accepted also that something must change; I imagined a new job for myself, everything I need. Somehow that future felt possible inside of my vertigo, only after letting today’s responsibilities fall away completely. For once I couldn’t shoulder them or even care. I was in pain and I laid in bed and I slept and instead thought of every tendon exhaling. ﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏ 09.09.26 J and woke early so we could work out together this morning; I was still frothed in a dream state, awoken mid nightmare and trying to find my bearings. I couldn't quite find the rhythm of inhalation to exhalation. The world tilted, the dream shifted. Suddenly all was green glass and matutinal light and the dream a dream again. In it I had been running with my sister C—who's featured often in my dreams of late—trying to escape something dystopian, fleeing and getting away from an amorphous terror yet unsure if even our escape was evidence we were being toyed with. The last thing I remember before I woke was the two of us running from a home we were scavenging for coats in; we ran around a body of water fringed with stones by the edge of trees and I determined we'd get home. While J clocked into work, I went for a walk to drop off my overdue library books and pick up an iced latte on the way back. I passed clusters of children and their mothers waiting for the school bus on every other corner. My neighborhood is ruptured with holes from roadwork, my normal route impeded by orange cones and construction tape. We must play crossing games with the cars funneled into one lane. I shimmied from street to street. The summer monarchs are gone, the first trees turning, though I can't tell if the burnt edges are from heat or season's change. Every year September grows warmer, fringed with a shimmering, humid intensity. Every year I wonder if this will be the coolest autumn I remember and hope to be proven wrong. J had locked me out accidentally, stringing the door latch onto the front porch door, so I facetimed her and luckily she was not in a meeting, but hurried down laughing. I waved the ham and cheese croissant I got for her in her face and shook my head. "I got you a croissant and you locked me out..." and she cried mock apologies and I teased her and we were very merry until she ran back upstairs, still on the clock. Before showering I trimmed my hair and bangs badly and wiped the cuttings from the counter onto my palm. Now I'm drinking my coffee, diluted from melted ice, and trying to begin work when all I want to do is lay on the deck and stare up at the blue sky almost emptied of clouds, read my book, take a nap in the sun. ﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏ 09.07.26 found notes from 2019, that early spring of grief and the summer before I moved from seattle and began again in nyc, seven years (and three moves) ago now: 𓇢𓆸 "Maybe it is all a beautiful accident Ahead of me, far ahead, the boy and his father run beyond me" 𓇢𓆸 "My friend Sophie dries my eyes with a branch of her hair" 𓇢𓆸 "Sadness and I look down to a tiny green bug on my arm And a baby on the bus waves his hand, pointing his fingers out the window, Look" 𓇢𓆸 "How the wind through the leaves, like rain, fills the open spaces Like rice poured in a bowl, later expansion Like a tarp tied to the ground flapping in an open field" 𓇢𓆸 "Tremulous gift of seeing my sister’s annotations in her poetry books, what she underlines" 𓇢𓆸 "The man carrying a paper cone of flowers There will be an absence in your spot [ ] said" ﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏ 09.03.26 Last night I didn't want the lights on, I laid in the dark in my room and looked at the leaves lit up yellow and green by the streetlamps against the black ash of night. The tree crickets sung in one great chorus, no break in their humming, bright and clicking through the closed window. One long undulating trill, a call and response supplied at once like a memory of the future. When we moved here, both my partner and I were amazed at how we could hear crickets again in the summers, how night was more than the rumbles of trains and exulting and crooning voices of strangers ambling through the city. I wanted to lay on our deck and look at the stars I know are there under the smog of light pollution and listen to the crickets until I was one of them, my silence added to their song. I thought of the safest place, as I do when I feel small or sodden with sadness, and instantly I thought of my mother, my grandparent's home, the lake we used to visit. I closed my eyes into the room I shared with my sister a few summers at my grandparent's cabin, with the wood paneled walls and the orange and green crisscross wool comforter and the window that opened up horizontally and latched onto a hook painted white in the ceiling. Outside the room, it was morning, and someone was making a pot of coffee. My grandma padded across the linoleum floor. I heard my grandpa shuffling the paper at the table. Without opening my eyes or door to see, I saw the light streaming through the windows into the kitchen and dining nook, saw how the particular quality of light in the morning came off the spray of lake water and carried the rush of lacustrine dawn. Perhaps it was Monday, still early enough in our week at the lake that we could pretend this coming and going from cabin to cabin was real life, not the respite. My mother would be by shortly I knew, opening and closing the door quietly so as to not wake still sleeping adults. With her would be one of my brothers, perhaps Sam. She'd ask to borrow an egg from my grandma or she'd sit at the table with us for breakfast, steal a sausage from the pink plastic plate wreathed in paper towels. I saw her back to the window and her hair curled from the humid air, the loose blonde strands piled atop her head and haloed in sun. If I kept my eyes closed, I could live there a moment longer. If I kept my eyes closed, there was no beginning or ending, only the present past. ﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏ 09.02.26 Late morning and long walk in the humid air; each breath felt watery and thick. Every other street was blocked off for construction and I passed men in hardhats deep in enormous pits of craggy earth where the entrances to roads once were. Their heads were level with my feet. When I dropped off my library books, there were two women standing outside near the drop-off slot, one a tall and slender woman looking at her phone while holding her bike, the other an older woman with grey hair who was on the phone with someone and saying "the library is closed, I meant to go today but it doesn't open until noon." On the way home I took photos of the native flowers near the monarch butterfly house to make sure I'd identified them properly, then got a ham and cheese croissant for J and an iced oat latte that was lukewarm by the time I got home. I'd like to declare today the true first day of September, away from the harried and lurching energy of August at last. 𖥔 I have photos to edit and proofs to send and messages to respond to but there's something about a morning in the open air that makes the rest of the day feel possible, regardless of time and deadlines. I hope I can find a few contract gigs or some illustration work in the coming months—some of my regular clients have a shorter business year so I'm again looking for new projects. I refuse to let worry eat me alive! The only gnawing I will do is on an apple core. 𖥔 the respite in a beautiful watermelon, sweet and cold, my mouth full of dark seeds. ﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏ say hello ⋰⋰⋰ yourworldoftext.com/~rhizomehaunt/ I archive these logs monthly ⋰⋰⋰ are.na/han-olliver/channels