The Week: Dry Days & The Migraine

Tuesday, 7/19/24

Dry, dry, dry. Hot, hot, hot.

Yet I slowly scaled a steep hillside, stopping at every rock, so easy to pull it from the ground due to the lack of suction from moisture. And even though it was 93 degrees, sweat didn’t speckle my face. I was dry, comfortable even. I’ve felt this way at hot, deep elevations in California. The wind blew continuously up the hill and past me.

The wind blew continuously, up the hill and past me.

Which do I prefer? Where do I prefer the pause?

Anyway, the day was dry as a kiln. I went up and over the steep hillside and eventually ended up walking in a stream near old limestone kilns. It wasn’t until my feet met cool water that I started to feel how drained I was. Although I drank water, a steep hike in scorching temps and a low dew point wrung me like a rag.

Wednesday, 7/20/24

Driving into town, I pointed at the clouds and talked to my husband about what percolates up there. I went on about mushroom spores and how they travel up into the clouds and eventually come back down in the rain. I ask him if he has any idea how long a mushroom spore (or something like it) can percolate in the sky. He talked about the troposphere and that there is no specific answer as to how long a small germ of life or dust can remain up there, gathering moisture, and eventually succumbing to gravity. I already knew this, but hearing it from him made it still feel novel.

There once was a pilot who did percolate up there. His plane had a catastrophic failure while climbing high above a cumulo-nimbus. He had to eject and spent 40+ minutes percolating in the cloud. He bled from his eyes and ears. He was beaten with ice. His torso expanded. Proprioception went out the window. He survived to tell about it.

Thursday, 7/21/24

It started with a guttural laugh. Right then and there in a café hosting a trivia game, next to my friend, I experienced a large bean-shaped pain on the left side of my head. Nausea set in immediately. I clutched my iced tea, summoning the mindfulness and objectivity needed to ride the wave. I had never felt this kind of pain before. I tried to really feel it, its foreignness, its shape (macaroni? bean?), its size (the whole left side of my head), and the dimension (it is curvy, rounded). Instead of admonishing the pain, I walked barefoot in the garden of it. It wasn’t so much that the pain was intolerable--it was tolerable--but that it was new to me. Weird to me. Three-dimensional like a being materializing in my head. I was able to enjoy the time with my friend. I learned new things--like a group of hippos is called a bloat. The pain did fade into the background, turning into electric sandpaper, more texture than body. The nausea came and went in waves. I drove home to house guests who had arrived to help my husband install our new tub/shower. The next several days will be demolish and install.

Friday, 7/22/24

I don’t remember what the green, digitized number was on the AC unit as I tried to sleep through my nausea, but its glow did me in. I saw it with my eyes shut. I struggled with dizziness and queasiness throughout the night. Anxiety shook me but I could barely move. I felt I would vomit if I got up to get some medicine. At 4 am I called my job, requesting to work from home. And so I did as men demolished my old shower. I wished that they would take their hammers to my nausea, break it down into smaller pieces, and put it out with the trash.

The pain was still in the background and the nausea came in waves. At the end of the workday, I went to my town’s “community days” where I people and stream-watched. I shot the shit with a guy named Jim from the county’s historical society. I squinted at him through my queasiness as we talked about a burnt-down covered bridge, water towers, and The Amish. Next to his booth was my friend Steve’s 800-ish pounds of fossils for public perusal. I watched as humans peered down at the rocks, down at deep time, cotton candy cones in their hands.

Meanwhile, drywall covered up a message and photo of Brian and I that we put inside the bathroom wall, rendering us also a future buried message.

Saturday, 7/23/24

The college town was small with about two main-drags and one road of gorgeous Victorian homes. I drove two hours to Bloomsburg to go to my goddaughter’s first birthday party in a Presbyterian Church’s basement. She is such a gorgeous girl and I love and miss her parents. I sat with the mother’s nurse colleagues who talked cavalierly about blood, vomit, and shit, which was expected and interesting. The birthday girl was eating and I was not committed to any specific person at the party, so I slipped away and explored the church. I stood in the light cast by the stained glass.

I perused various shops, talking with their owners. One of them was a man around my age who is torn about getting rid of his late father’s first-edition Stephen King novels. I talked with a woman about manioc, mouth-feel, and blood infections. I talked with another woman about the wild animals we share our lives with.

Earlier in the day, while walking into my half-demolished bathroom, a crack formed in the dry skin of my little toe. Like the ground outside, my skin too was cracking.

Later in the day, Brian and I took our house guests out to eat, about five miles away where it poured down rain. Meanwhile, our yard was untouched.

The migraine remains.

Sunday, 7/24/24

While Brian and I sat in a dark theater watching a movie about rain and tornadoes, the weather outside remained hot and dry and Biden dropped out of the presidential race.

Restless and not knowing what to think and feel, I walked in the wetlands which were parched. In such dry lands, not even the deer can run away from me quietly. Moisture buffers sound.

Monday, 7/25/24

Rain, finally. I wet my dry toe.

I sat in my greenhouse and read while it poured. After over a month of my brain thinking of water as something in sections (water the garden, water the various plants across the acreage, go to the river to be in water, go replenish the drinking vessels for the wildlife), it was weird for my brain to transition to thinking of rain all over, all at once. It isn’t just in the garden. The leaves on the tree over there--every single leaf--is getting drenched. Every blade of grass. Even things that have no care for rain--the grill, the fence, the galvanized metal garden beds, the outside of the rain barrel--all of it is being watered.