Sorry, What?

Tuesday, 11/12/24

Sanitize. Snap the nozzle, mix the liquid antibiotic with saline. Connect the IV tube to the medicine bag. Squeeze the reservoir until it is half full. Open the IV tube to allow flow through the whole tube. Ensure there is no air in the tube. Close the tube. Administer a plunger of saline solution in a pulse-like manner into the PICC line after sending a spritz of it into the air to ensure there are no air bubbles. Connect the IV tube to the PICC line and open up the tube, allowing a flow of one drop per two seconds. Wait with him a half hour, meeting his eyes over a bouquet of orange flowers in the middle of the dining room table. Once the medicine bag is empty, close the tube and disconnect. Cap the IV tube. Sanitize. Administer another plunger of saline in a pulse-like manner into the PICC line. Sanitize. Administer a plunger of Heparin in a pulse-like manner into the PICC line. Put a cap on the PICC line and do everything again in six hours.

Wednesday, 11/13/24

I watched a flock of Starlings land on a power line and was moved by how they scooted over to make room for one another on the lines. They looked like musical notes dropping into place. Starlings are scorned in this country but they’re somehow still better than us.

A colleague pulled a tick off my scalp today. First its body. Then its head.

Thursday, 11/14/24

It is on the television. It is in the memes, the infographs, and headlines. It is on the radio, in the grocery line, and opinion pieces. It is how elections are won. Certainty is often confused with knowledge, control, and leadership. Certainty leaves no room for consideration or curiosity. It leaves no room for questions or quests. How can everyone be so sure? Why is curiosity strewn to the wayside? I guess a slogan like Let us figure this out, together or This can work if we try sounds ridiculous. But I don’t know. I don’t think that honesty is ridiculous.

Friday, 11/15/24

Libb Thims, an electrochemical engineer, believes that human thermodynamics can explain many aspects of human life, summing everything up with “love is a chemical reaction.” He created the web-based Human Molecule Encyclopedia, or Hmolpedia. He writes about how a human can be reduced to their chemical components and uses research stemming from biologists and philosophers of yore. His work is a conglomeration of asides, anecdotes, and charts. In one breath of reading there are five tributary links to research, experiments, or literature. The act of navigating the horrible syntax (constant run-on, non-sensical sentences separated by commas) of Hmolpedia is a navigating of Libb Thims himself. Here, we learn about him at the age of 4-5 where he ponders the ideas of right and wrong after having dropped a bird’s egg from a balcony and watching it crack open. Here, we learn about how puzzled he is by social constructs such as getting married and falling in love. To better understand the logic of these constructs, he creates a graph of his top 19 girlfriends, photographs and all, ranking them in ten different categories such as “fun factor” and “grandmother likes”.

Why am I sharing this? Why did I spend so much time clicking the tributary links and zooming in on the charts? I do not know. I can wager a guess that it’s the structure. The compartmentalizing. The passion for progress or knowledge to be sourced from its roots. Or the fact that such a neuro-network exists online where I can freely navigate it. It exists so raw in an arm pit of the internet. I discovered it only by accident. I am reliving the wonder that I possessed when I found Nikon’s “Universcale” over a decade ago. Show me any knowledge database that provides tributaries to other sources of knowledge (Wikipedia, Maria Popova’s “The Marginalian”) and I am a happy woman.

Saturday, 11/16/24

A cold has rendered my ear congested where traces of sound get lost in the labyrinth of my inner ear. The narrow passages too inflamed, sound simply dissipates. I never have ear issues and now I find myself turning up the volume, saying sorry, what? I press my ears shut hundreds of times a day but no relief.

I administer Brian’s daily four ear drops into his ear and snort at the sympathy pain.

Sunday, 11/17/24

Swinging on the pendulum

of sleep and

sorry, what?

Monday, 11/18/24

In the film (cautionary tale) “The Substance”, Demi Moore plays Elisabeth Sparkle who gives birth to a newer, younger, sexier self named Sue through her spine. The camera panning over the topography of Sue’s ass, zooming into the cavern of her crotch. In a startling scene, Sue, with visceral excruciation, pulls a chicken drumstick from her belly button. In an even more startling scene, Elisabeth is rendered a crone, her skin gray, craggy, bulging with arthritis. In an even more disturbing scene, Elisabeth is the picture of Dorian Gray. No longer a lovely-looking woman, she is a monster or monstrocity of flesh, everything raw and in the wrong places. A breast hung where breasts don’t hang. A mouth opened where mouths don’t open. She yells out to an audience I’m still me! but who was she in the first place?

When washing Brian’s hair, I noted the incision behind his ear. I am intrigued with how his ear was opened like a book where like a book mark his ear drum hung. I remember the soft, reflective voice of his surgeon explaining how the ear drum had a hole and was full of inflammation. And how inflammation was so deep into the canal, it had reached bone. And how it was so deep that it if he cleaned it even further, it would compromise the nerves that controlled Brian’s face. I have lived a lifetime of watching body horror with intrigue but after that phone call I wanted to vomit. In hindsight, I am intrigued and even jealous that a stranger got to see a part of my husband I will never see. I have marveled at my own body this way—the scrim of skin that prevents me from seeing beneath. Prevents me from seeing what I carry with me everywhere. When I look down at my left ankle, I do see protrusions where screws hold my ankle in place. I press down on them, my skin the only barrier.

I recently looked at my fingernails with horror. These keratinous protrusions continue to push out of my flesh and what do I do with them? I decorate them, use them to peel open the packaging of Brian’s medical supplies, scratch at an itch on my scalp that is actually a lodged tick. What if these keratinous protrusions suddenly pushed through the skin of my elbows or cheeks?

I took a walk along the river near my house today and listened to a podcast about body horror and the male gaze. The river is terribly hungry for frost. I can walk across parts of it without getting the tops of my feet wet. On my way back to the house, a hunter with his compound bow walks towards me. He is covered in camouflage, green and brown paint marking his face. I imagine his arrow slicing the air and puncturing the heart of a deer, my friend. I imagine the disembowelment, how pulling out the guts is similar to pulling out a sweater hanging in a closet. The heart, purple and defeated. The hunter said something to me in passing. I turned around, removed my headphones, said sorry, what was that?

Nice evening for a walk, he said with the most charming smile like I was the most wonderful thing he has seen all day. That smile convinced me that he would thank the deer for its sacrifice. That smile convinced me that he would gaze at that deer as if it was the most lovely thing he had seen all day. I smiled, said absolutely. 

I eventually walked past his truck, his license plate indicating that he received a purple heart.