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I Don't Always Sparkle
May. 3rd, 2021 09:55 amYesterday's coffee incident caused a setback. Last evening, when it was about time for bed, my guts returned to their old familiar bloat state. "No worries," I told myself. "It was only a mouthful, not a half cup or anything, and you've experienced far worse pain than this before. Far worse."
And so I held cautious hope.
Too early this morning, gut pain woke me up. (Insert Darth Vader NoooooOOOOOoooo.) The exhilaration of my yesterday felt pressed to death beneath the distension of my swollen, creeping intestines. But there's the thing. My intestines were creeping. They weren't lying there like roadkill snakes. They were moving. For so long over the past year, my guts felt like dead things containing slowly fermenting food and the gut flora who gorge on whatever I eat, burping and farting it out while my cilia were apparently comatose. I was pretty excited any time I heard a borborygmus. My belly and I cheered aloud together.
I went back to bed, telling myself I'd feel better the next time I got up. And a while later, I got up, and did not feel much better. After the joy of feeling healthy and awake and clear-headed yesterday, this descent was just not fair. Not fair! I felt myself planning a pity party.
But I didn't want a pity party. Those have never worked for me. Not even on the short term.
I didn't feel well enough to go for the walk I'd wanted to go on this morning, but I did feel well enough to sit and tinker with my erasure poetry project. I picked up a copy of Stephenie Meyer's New Moon from a Free Little Library with the intention of vandalism. I've been keeping my eye out for a book I figured no one would miss if it were repurposed for art. I was idly looking for one of the ubiquitous 50 Shades books, but New Moon served my purpose well enough. I decided that every day, I would read one page of this book (I'd never read any of the Twilight books before), and sculpt its words into something else. I call the project Twi-Write, and you can see it on my Instagram account.
Today is day 8, and here I was, beating myself up because I hadn't stopped myself from having a big glug of Tim Horton's rotgut special, hadn't remained on that strictly vertical pathway to recovery. I would never blame someone else for going through what I was going through, so why should I be so rough on myself? I sat down, opened New Moon, and threw myself into page 8. After about an hour of scribbling and editing in my journal, I came up with something fun.
That's when I realized that although my guts were still sore, my mental state was much healthier. Not only that, but the lightened mood had lightened the pain load. This perked me up. Thanks, Stephenie Meyer. If someone had extolled the the panacean powers of your books at any other point in my life, I'd have had a good belly laugh. But there I was, planting lettuce in my garden, tidying the kitchen a bit, making myself a gut-friendly breakfast, and starting the laundry all before 10:00 am. All while wearing pants with a waistband. Not bad, Shan. Not bad. Six months ago, I'd have been happy to accomplish that much in 24 hours.
As for my Twi-Write project, I'm finding it's making me look at words and structure and editing in a very different way. Some pages are more challenging than others. I feel like this exercise is excellent for my brain, helping me form new neural pathways. Ideas snap into focus, and I fiddle around with them on paper. I'm looking at rhythm, rhyme, and maybe even bits of cryptic wisdom. It almost feels like I'm casting a bibliomantic spell.
My self-imposed rules are these:
Wanna join me? I like it better than Sudoku or crossword puzzles.
And so I held cautious hope.
Too early this morning, gut pain woke me up. (Insert Darth Vader NoooooOOOOOoooo.) The exhilaration of my yesterday felt pressed to death beneath the distension of my swollen, creeping intestines. But there's the thing. My intestines were creeping. They weren't lying there like roadkill snakes. They were moving. For so long over the past year, my guts felt like dead things containing slowly fermenting food and the gut flora who gorge on whatever I eat, burping and farting it out while my cilia were apparently comatose. I was pretty excited any time I heard a borborygmus. My belly and I cheered aloud together.
I went back to bed, telling myself I'd feel better the next time I got up. And a while later, I got up, and did not feel much better. After the joy of feeling healthy and awake and clear-headed yesterday, this descent was just not fair. Not fair! I felt myself planning a pity party.
But I didn't want a pity party. Those have never worked for me. Not even on the short term.
I didn't feel well enough to go for the walk I'd wanted to go on this morning, but I did feel well enough to sit and tinker with my erasure poetry project. I picked up a copy of Stephenie Meyer's New Moon from a Free Little Library with the intention of vandalism. I've been keeping my eye out for a book I figured no one would miss if it were repurposed for art. I was idly looking for one of the ubiquitous 50 Shades books, but New Moon served my purpose well enough. I decided that every day, I would read one page of this book (I'd never read any of the Twilight books before), and sculpt its words into something else. I call the project Twi-Write, and you can see it on my Instagram account.
Today is day 8, and here I was, beating myself up because I hadn't stopped myself from having a big glug of Tim Horton's rotgut special, hadn't remained on that strictly vertical pathway to recovery. I would never blame someone else for going through what I was going through, so why should I be so rough on myself? I sat down, opened New Moon, and threw myself into page 8. After about an hour of scribbling and editing in my journal, I came up with something fun.
That's when I realized that although my guts were still sore, my mental state was much healthier. Not only that, but the lightened mood had lightened the pain load. This perked me up. Thanks, Stephenie Meyer. If someone had extolled the the panacean powers of your books at any other point in my life, I'd have had a good belly laugh. But there I was, planting lettuce in my garden, tidying the kitchen a bit, making myself a gut-friendly breakfast, and starting the laundry all before 10:00 am. All while wearing pants with a waistband. Not bad, Shan. Not bad. Six months ago, I'd have been happy to accomplish that much in 24 hours.
As for my Twi-Write project, I'm finding it's making me look at words and structure and editing in a very different way. Some pages are more challenging than others. I feel like this exercise is excellent for my brain, helping me form new neural pathways. Ideas snap into focus, and I fiddle around with them on paper. I'm looking at rhythm, rhyme, and maybe even bits of cryptic wisdom. It almost feels like I'm casting a bibliomantic spell.
My self-imposed rules are these:
- The words must be used in the same order as they appear on the page. eg. "Charles came in with a pizza box in his hands" can be turned into "Charles came in his hands," but not "In his hands came Charles."
- I can ignore and create punctuation at will.
- I can carve smaller words from bigger ones. eg. "I reached up on my toes to make the kiss last longer when he pulled away" can be turned into "I ache to make hen pull," although I have no clue as to what that means.
- Whenever possible, I do one page each day.
Wanna join me? I like it better than Sudoku or crossword puzzles.
