~Bodymagic, Sebrina Scott

good question cz that was ourselves who did (do?) that 
 

Only the candles and the penises changed. The hearts of women were the same. I dropped my coins into the little brass box. I lighted a taper off the flame of a votive. ~Shadow Tag, Erdrich

No, she didn't, she's lying, she's writing what never happened. 

update: iv bp meds and script + steroids and painkiller for back. he's been discharged. they (MTS) told me that for 90 days, there is only one goal: stay out of the hospital. so although Ears has passed out facedown on his online aquarium shopping (he self-protectively just passes out when stressed, which even my vacuuming can trigger), the goal continues to be met for us all (as far as I know).

son-in-law back in the hospital - drove himself south afraid of the bills left behind at Mercy and all of us afraid of Erie Co by half - back pain that might be a heart attack. my daughter is losing her shit, about him and over Everything

they already hang by a thin thread. they can't do what Ears is doing (not functioning at all lifewise and functioning little thoughtwise, unless we talk about aquariums, about which I know little). they are past the window of allowable break-downs and must function, broken or not.

there's also nothing I can do but stay on my feet. truly nothing. and staying on my feet gets harder and harder

I decided to deep clean. especially my witchshit. it's been nearly a year of near constant candlework and other old school hoodoo + prayer, trying to pull protection and light at the end of tunnels, anything and everything I could think of. and everyone is still alive, far as I know. 

but there is always a price. I feel like a helium balloon let go of into the winds. 

the candles, all the oils and feathers and enchanted momentos, they're mostly all used up now, and what is left is in disarray. I'm cleaning the magic pantry, looking over what is left. like the ashes of the dead. scattered medicine cards. luckystep drops for your shoes. a lock of hair, a knotted ribbon, blood ink. liptint and a dirty sock tossed in haste onto it all. I am hoping to reset by cleaning it up, organizing again. putting cards back into their boxes.

until Mark died, he was the person I expected would always let me in if I showed up at his door. if I offered no explanation, he wouldn't ask for one. I just knew that.

it is a luxury to have a person you think of that way, aside from your mother, who will leave the earth ahead of you and before you're ready. Mark left too before I was ready to have no such person like that. I was thinking about that when I pulled the card.

within my power, I have done what I could. for anything else/more/better, a miracle would need to occur. i.e. something out of the clear blue. 

my security system - the alarm is manual and only works on squirrels, but I don't have a gun anymore so what could I do except "shoo!" anyways? besides, nobody knows where/how to find me except Craig (don't believe me? try sending me a greeting card [dare]) who never does anything unexpected whatsoever. he stops for lunch at exactly noon, every day, for exactly 30 minutes. we are both mildly astounded at his implacable habits, each in our hidey holes, watching the birds and the deck-making through the birdfeeder camera

I didn't bother reading my funding letter til now - they're gonna give me $2500 which is really just 2k bc it's 500 to register at the conference - but I can't turn down 2k just to write a paper. I'll just blog the fucking thing and bore y'all to tears. I will mos def spend way more than 2k but it'll be kinda trophy-wife-lite, which is fine, because as I said, I only have to write a paper. Not that it matters, (but it feels like it might matter somehow) but this is the conference that Nebraska was at when I was in New Orleans getting up to whatever and while telling Nebraska what to say to the Exec D of MLA - i.e. I scripted his response to her asking "what kind of good trouble could we get into?" and I tell him to tell her HEALTH HUMANITIES, right now, it's where the humanities actually live already (all my students wanna be healthcare something, not fucking English majors ever so where do I live? I work at a nursing college. TELL HER WE ALL WORK IN HEALTHCARE DUH you fucking privileged idiot with your fucking English majors god damn it, bossy af. That was Jan 2020. He loved to retell that story as the start of something big (cz now he'd heard of it 🙄). I'd been saying that for about 5 solid years by then, medical humanities = all we do is teach medical students...WHAT? A: ways to think (oddly/differently/whatever)
this Erdrich trip I'm on makes me feel like a person can teach a way to think by being that waytothink.
I got my way with him, he hotvhis way with all the big hitters like the MLA and even the AMA ("other side") bought in, and evvvverything was about health / medical humanities by March 2020, and I looked like a genius all'a sudden. But I was broken, was what I was saying, because for one thing our healthcare system is kinda killing its workers and we, their "talk to's" (?) like Eng professors were their witness and we were the ones who were not told what to do (not accredited) so we could respond to healthcare workers' work and make that central to our work. A lot of us got damaged over time by the moral injuries to our frontline providers. Like everything felt very urgent and critically under recourced to us too. The dwindling of them we could plainly see. I was already down a nurse and down a nun, drinking too much, doing ... well, and then a pandemic and sure why not believe I might be a genius for a while and get every very expensive drink given to me for free? who wouldn't do that, despite and because they were past a breaking point already? anybody would try that ride, right? 
and yet, I can hardly believe it all happened at all. ya know? I dunno. Alls I know is here I am now, having broken up with chatgpt forever! (god damn it now I'll have to take her stupid ass back, she's in the damn paper title lol fuck), having to figure out how to make 2k go as far as possible (which is maybe the flights? if I take Ears, which I/he's gotta, even tho the other kids be like wtf but fundamentally the paper is about Ears at this point, he read Little No Horse in jail and marked the cats with a "meow" in margin for me - that is going into the paper) and I'd be a nervous wreck to leave him alone (fretfret), and write/give a lit paper on something I pulled outa my ass to get 🤏 $ to go somewhere (like Malta, which my ex made a miserable trip by being a relentless twat, and we both had to give bullshit papers about beasts in literature hahaha), then go there. Boston. like none of anything other than that kind of life ever happened. like that kind of life isn't being extingished for people like me. the only teaching I do has been here just like cats have been and the fireds and grit and more grit has only lived here, really.
but this time, something I wrote here is gonna help get me outa here maybe

update: between appointments, we hit another pet store, me naming every possible fish / reptile option "Cat"

"Neko" (Japanese for "cat") -

he's not the fanciest one, and he's been sitting on the shelf long enough to be marked down, and he has a white streak - 

I know what all of that feels like

a bad decision waiting to happen

update: welp, fuck. is this a deliciously bad decision in hiding in work?

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22). Let go of proving that you earned every pleasure. In this life of cycles, we must seize joy when it's available, knowing that it won't always be. Buy the flowers. Lollygag. Eat up. You made enough sensible choices.

the last thing I posted needed earning was my right to die in peace 

the horoscope's idea sounds better, so

I promise to make a joyously bad decision as soon as I possibly can, as soon as I meet one I will lolly gag all afternoon 🙏🕯

fun fact: I gave Sunshine's # to D-Nozl. she wants to keep the cat and get child support from him for it. not from me, she would not take it from me, "woman, you are taking care of his sick baby and wtf is he even doing?! he don't even know 🤨 stupidfucker bullshit.." 

I have a long day of appts in front of me today, his new psychiatry meds manager dr and then the mts team, etcetc. I will think of this horoscope, think "IF ONLY 🤨" - but, it will give me a little cheer to imagine that 👆 phone call 🤭

whats a woman called who doesnt pay her bills? a: bernadette (Craig joke - he's here daily working on the house, happier that he lost his job every day he that watches me living the alternative)

today was bad

some days are bad

I feel bad when it's my day that has to be bad because I need to be okay but sometimes 

it's not as if there's anyone to talk me down ever (noted)

my therapist has been on maternity leave this whole time. by the time she comes back I won't want to talk to her either

it won't matter, it doesn't matter, I have to keep my kid okay and he is very barely okay and it's a lot of work to keep him that way, that's it

I am very fortunate 🙏🕯 it could be much worse 

I made up something funny that happened today (nothing funny happened) so I could text one of the fireds (like this would be more fun with you here type deal), he laughed and asked about how it's going (onward as if this is perfectly normal, like Orwell or some shit). I told him that my role at work atm is ironically A WIFE, my employer's trophy wife who doesn't do much but look good and go to yoga classes a lot (which has truth in it). drama queens are outward, so not that.

then of course, we went and killed ourselves with sweat and heat. running on or off frightfuel. killedwise, we prefer DIY vs motherfuckers

 

💔 I feel sick

"Water, water, every where,/ Nor any drop to drink."

"Cat"

I got an axolotl head-to-toe and filled it with a kid

my daughters are passing that 👆 around today. it's funny but maybe I am not anymore a lot. of all things to be slipping away, I will miss my own laugh. maybe I will do like my mom and retreat into my mind where the fun was, hang out with the ghosts of funny stories nobody remembers anymore. 

what is the one thing I would/could/might do to make life better? A: a 4-day 32-hour work week with no overtime option for republicans, martians, I don't give a shit, everybody make room for a cup of coffee. 

 I'm looking for something else.

 A kiss is an efficacious drug. 

Revise.

I went and found Polish Black Mary.

 

she refuses to look at you (me); there's an interogation light in her eyes like CIA (not a flash)

so she can only give you sideeye

I parked in front of this.

Then I went to my own Mary. 

I brought home a candle for Ears to light for Tbone. (Take the shot, Dad.)

Lady Godivas

"Grind" class (grit evolved) assignment

presumed audience: NUR (or Pre-med or PA students) 300 level-ish

READ

(citations)

WATCH 

The Sacred Sundance — 69 minutes

Indigenous-made. Brian J. Francis is a Mi'kmaq filmmaker from Elsipogtog First Nation.

The film follows the transmission of the Sundance from Blackfoot ceremonial knowledge to Mi'kmaq communities. It includes firsthand testimony about fasting, piercing, sacrifice, prayer, illness, addiction, and healing. One participant describes undertaking the Sundance on behalf of two critically ill children.

The ceremony itself is not filmed.

Circle of the Sun — 30 minutes

Actual Sundance footage. Filmed at a 1956 Káínaa (Blood Tribe) gathering in Alberta, with the community's permission.

Features Pete Standing Alone, a Káínaa man who narrates aspects of the experience. It also shows everyday community life and the tension between inherited traditions and changing circumstances.

Directed by a non-Indigenous filmmaker, and its 1960 framing is iffy af.

CLINICALLY TRANSCRIBE AND ILLUSTRATE IT

Write a detailed anatomical description of the Sundance physical process. Include at least one detailed anatomy illustration, parts correctly labeled (see Anatomy: A Coloring Book for examples if you're unfamiliar—just google it).

WRITE IT

To the best of your ability, describe how the process would physically feel. 300 words.

This is not clinical transcription. Use sentences and plain English and feelings.

REREAD

FINAL QUESTION

How can everyday language (fiction and non) tell truths about wound survival that clinical language alone cannot?

or

OPTIONAL REFLECTION

The novel talks a lot about what resonates. What resonates with you differently now, if anything? Do you ever kill yourself a little so you don't kill yourself a lot?*

*Consider the question figuratively, not as an instruction to injure yourself.

I got head-to-toe, then filled it with the kid. Something about that order of operation resonates yes again.

Make ready and make room.

 

burn the other end - billy strings 

2005

in Wab Kinew's book there is that scene, with the skulls, along with very precise anatominal description of how the scalpel makes the cut then the the black hooked pegs are carefully slid under the muscle, then the pull until the hooks come back out by tearing through. and it's presented as the alternative to suicide

thing is, I made those margin marks years ago, long before I read Kinew's book and no place else in Erdrich's writing does that scene happen at all. I just thought "that resonates" to/for me: the alternative to suicide is deeply physical, painful, personal. Yes, I thought.

I imagine he struck her like that.

yea well all I did was send a strawberry candle not move nextdoor to impose my "care" on anyone to DEATH. so, fuck this too.

"The wish I have to make him feel better, which seems so pure, may be selfish." ~The Painted Drum

"I thought and I thought in order to avoid something massive. But whenever I stopped thinking, it lay before me just the same." ~The Painted Drum

I went home, made polish gumbo, went to yoga w Ears, did all the Things, and then ran back to my books (awayawayaway).

Craig will begin wall removal and install starting Monday and will be here most of every day for the following couple few weeks. Then E will have to fix the caved in ceiling for a week or so...

Human shield deployed. 

"feed me"

Bad Thoughts 

halfway through the first episode, Ears said "this is psychologically traumatizing" - we watched 3 episodes laughing our asses off

our people are The People of Bad Funny Thoughts

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22). Someone may want to spend more time in your home or become more involved with your family. Invite them closer at your own pace. You'll give a warm welcome, not a complete one. Parts of your life are private.

All of my life is private. 

I don't only like books. But I can like them as much as I want. 

maybe I only like books

"He is the kind of wind that blows up your skirt, throws dust in your eyes so it's hard to see, cools you when heat and effort have drained you, warms in pockets between you and a living thing, goes in circles for no apparent reason like a desert genie, disappears suddenly making it hard to breathe, stirs up what's moldering in corners full of waiting. He is the kind of air that smells best and feels kindest blowing across a quiet lake."

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22). Focus: You can become attached to someone's texts, calls, jokes, opinions or the pleasure of having one particular mind available to yours. Conversation creates its own intimacy. When you miss someone, you also miss the exchange itself.

I do. 

in the [boot] laces

~ Books and Islands

we went to yoga. fri night is cheap if u pay cash. it's very very hot on friday, notoriously brutal with humidifiers full blast all afternoon before hand, the floor is covered in sweat when you get there getting mopped up, the studio feels like the mouth of hell. we love it. Ears says it makes him nauseous and weak in a good way, like throwing up makes you feel better only different. it's always crowded, full of people who feel like that. 

I think a "unique bond" could result in being similarly/simultaneously afflicted, by disease or by whatever if it's bad enough. I think it could cause cancer in someone who has zero cancer in their family. That's entirely plausible to me, that one person could take another into their body, and I think that it happens all the time, we all impact one another all the time and feel it in our bodies. As dread, terror, grief for instance. And anger. That's why you should try not to make people feel lousy things, and if possible do the opposite. Of course other people can give you cancer. And they can heal you too, sometimes. There is no remedy for other people except more people. That is especially difficult to fathom for loners especially if their nerves are shot - they might just have to die over it 🤷🏽‍♀️ And Erdrich taught me much of this "way to think that is useful" as huckforcats put it, which includes sensibilities as beliefs. I realize I think/believe all this mid-class. And it feels like throwing up, or maybe like popping a zit. A stuck thought bobs to the surface.

I actually believe that 👆. I don't believe that is what happened to her. I have no idea. But that doesn't matter. I believe it, is what's important. And I've taught that shit to thousands of other people. I've got 80 people reading The Roundhouse over Thanksgiving so they can feel conflicted about Thanksgiving, which most of them do feel for one reason or another or another or another. It will seem entirely plausible that a feeling could kill you, fast or slowly, if you hang out with me for a spell. 

“Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won’t either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up.” ~ Louise Erdrich

"I want to take my own life," Tootins said. "But I don't have the heart to shoot myself in the head. So I use this bottle instead." Tobasonakwut never gave up on his brother, despite the fact that he drank until the end of his life. ~The Reason You Walk, Wab Kinew

there she is

the "other" woman

makes sense. if you wanted to bond with such a woman, you'd have to do so uniquely. (and he's no easy walk in the park of a person either)

2010, they both got cancer

the better part of bravery - the decemberists released today

this one is for Ears, so I'll leave it

Ears hasn't spoken to anyone but me or a caregiver since 9/3. 

The compromise to seeing his father, finally, is Ears invited him to take a hot yoga class together for his birthday. 

I want yoga all the time. I am sick nearly to death of putting my self off around what is now a whole life of waiting for life to be able to happen. I am beyond 💔 and I "live" there now.

Nobody gets near me. Ears likes that natural bubble around me (even though I do not), and he stays inside it. I go to yoga, he sets his mat right next to mine. I am not dead (I think), but I am his guarding spirit as if I were already.

And then Ears threw a wrench: come and see me (do things that you cannot do). D-Nozl agreed. This weekend. Now.

I didn't see that coming.

Ears is an injured badass in that scorching room of relentless mirrors. I wonder if this father will have the ability to look at that. If he doesn't, I can tell, it will be a pretty profound reversal for Ears to see himself as the stronger man. It was a pretty profound invitation, from dead silence to that. 

Ears discovered gravity. 

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22). You know how a certain person keeps score: Every exchange must end with more on their side. Even if they are the only person around, avoid dealing with them. It takes effort to seek a different scene — worth it.

oof, that is 💯 a description of Andy, he can't even help it, it's just who he is. and ya having HIM be the dude texting me constantly is not the lifestyle shift I wanted at all. makes me feel like "maybe I only like cats" even more 😣

the National Endowment for the Arts bio page has a huge error - they say she lives in MN with 2nd husband and "their" daughter. there is no 2nd husband. there is/was a baby daddy, about whom she writes in Books and Islands. Tobasonakwut Kinew. Father of grandmotherly baby, Azure she's called mostly but she has at least three names. He's dead. Been dead since 2012, though the NEA seemingly mistakes him for alive and married to her as recently as 2018. there's prolly like 2 people left working at the NEA, so can hardly fault them for a shitty citation back to an obscure interview. I remember thinking "that can't be her hair" of the photo but didn't clock the cancer of 2010 intil after the fact cz she never wrote about it. Until now I wasn't in any kinda fangirl mode, I just reread the novels whenever I felt awfulest for 30 years, tattooing my brain. 

She didn't marry baby dady, either ceremonially or any other way. His obit lists someone else as his wife. In Books and Islands, she clearly respects him, he'a some kind of Native badass. Sun dancer. Outlaw. He also seems like a bit of a prick 🤏, or at least Not Around. The baby stays with her. He doesn't. 

He dies in 2012. No cause of death but a request in the obit for donations to a cancer center in Winnepeg. She gets cancer in 2010, recovers, and in 2012 she publishes The Round House and wins the National Book Award. She also revises The Antelope Wife - like Love Medicine, there are 3 of those, and I am missing the 2012 version (ordered it). 

It is possible that they both get cancer at the same time, but he doesn't get better.

It's also possible that they stopped seeing each other long before that, or not, or something. She never writes about him other than in that one little known travel book. She's palbably single mothery after Dorris, never linked w a steady dude publically. The Round House is a political book, and profoundly pointedly unsexy. Kinew was a politician. 

I am not sure what she did to The Wife in 2012. Does my paragraph survive cancer? 

While I wait for that book to get here, I am reading Kinew's son's biography of his father - we was some kind of big deal, a warrior for traditional cultural restoration. Maybe this son never knew about Erdrich at all or maybe I'll run into her here in a very out of the way book about Manitoba politics.

"Most of what I wrote about was my all-consuming emotions. I was someone who lived at a very high emotional pitch. ​"

You were a drama queen?

"A drama queen is outward. I was inward..."

every day

I am reading interviews, trying to find that thing about nurses. that 👆 is 2024, and she is wearing my clothes. like, I wore that yesterday. the harness boots, the wranglers over n slightly bunching at ankle, the black shirt, the silver earrings that follow the jawline. identical until you get to the hair. weird.

Her breast cancer falls almost exactly at the midpoint of what is explicitly called Erdrich's justice trilogy.

The three novels are:

2008 — The Plague of Doves

Wrongful lynching, historical violence, collective memory, and the persistence of injustice across generations.

2012 — The Round House

Sexual violence against an Indigenous woman, the limits of legal jurisdiction, and the consequences of institutional failure.

2016 — LaRose

Accidental killing, responsibility, restitution, grief, and forms of reparation that exceed the legal system.

Three different legal problems, three increasingly complicated questions about what happens after bodily harm. 

I finished Doves before circling the Antelopes. Doves is a fever dream of relationships impacted over time by violence. It is so nearly impossible to make any straight lines that I stopped trying to draw it out; the point is that despite intentions, what happens between people is often not up to them; they inherit conditions that are insurmountable. Reading it, I noticed, made the heavy rubberband ball in my chest squeeze tighter: I'll never get free of this / this is my last chapter and it will only get worse. 

That 👆 is how I feel when I can separate "me" out at all anymore. 

The 3-novel summary leaves out the fact that my paragraph gets stricken in that same timeframe. The Wife becomes the Woman in 2016. And I remember what Erdrich said in an interview (eliding the illness itself) about nurses, that they went about the business of saving her life without the burden(s) of feeling anything at all. I remember thinking it odd that she of all people would conclude that. And now I find it even more iffy - the first horribly unkind scene is in a hospital in The Round House, the nauseating dread that any kinda ER puts in your gut, the desperocity to be anywhere else. Hardly a 'business' devoid of feelings. Erdrich never writes about having breast cancer, but dread and blood and hopelessness seep into the stories. And, of course, everything is still related to everything.

Today, I will cook and clean and do all the needed things, of course as usual. Perhaps, if Ears is in the mood, we'll work on a jack-o-lantern. Current idea: barfing and half buried in stones = Rock-Bottom-o-Lantern. 

I need to get his mind off the cat, which has gone missing with Sunshine 😪