Nudity is Only Skin-Deep

I'm so boring these days. All I do is write. Thanks to long COVID (I finally caught COVID at the dentist office last October), I don't have the energy to do much more. Good thing I have an active imagination!

That being said, I had a public reading a couple of weekends ago for the Cabbagetown Festival in Toronto, and this weekend, I have a reading at the Multicultural Festival of Elmira (I'll be on around noon) and at the book launch for Mihko-Kiskisiwin--Blood Memory book launch at Idea Exchange in Cambridge (from 2-4). I'll be wearing a mask at the indoor reading because I do NOT want COVID again.

An excerpt from my award-winning story "The Tupilaq" has been published by Kinsman Quarterly.

Another award-winning story, "The Snow Hath No Queen," has been accepted for publication by MetaStellar and should be going live next week. I'll share the link once it's up.

My story "The Lupercal" was a runner-up in Louisiana State University Alexandria's flash fiction contest, and my story "The Yolk of the Moon" came in second place. The latter story will be published sometime soon. I'll share the link when it's available.

I was also longlisted for the diverse voices/diverse worlds grant sponsored by the Speculative Literature Foundation, but I didn't make it to the short list. Womp womp. This is my second time getting longlisted by them, so I must be doing something mostly right.

To top it all off, I applied for residencies in Alaska, Costa Rica, and Switzerland for next year. If I get them all, I'm in big trouble.

My essay "The Anxious Writer" has been published by Open Minds Quarterly. Here's the opening paragraph:

I suffer from anxiety. I didn’t know I was an anxious person until I was well into adulthood. It’s my default state. For years, whirling thoughts have been my power generator, but this seems different from most other folks. I’ve always been viewed with suspicion, longsuffering, and irritation by a lot of other people. I’m hyper. I’m outspoken. I’m blunt. I’m loud. I take things too literally. I ask too many questions. I’m kinda...much. And even as a little kid I knew it. I knew I was weird, talked too much, and that the words and noises pouring out of my mouth in a cascade were drowning whatever empathy others might feel for me. I saw faces harden, eyes roll, smiles shrivel into white-lipped aggravation, yet still my words fountained out of me in an attempt to appease, amuse, or elicit something other than hatred or disinterest.

In other news, I am currently taking a horror-writing class and am enjoying it. Once a week for the next month and a bit, I get to learn from a variety of horror authors, and then I get to workshop short stories and excerpts with other authors. I only started last week, and I'm loving it so far.

I recently completed a story called "The Infective" which will be published in the Asylum of Terror Volume 2 anthology next year. It's about pandemic anxiety and is creepy as hell. I began writing about a month ago while healthy, and was diagnosed with my first (and hopefully only) bout of COVID halfway through. I finished it while still sick. It seems apropos.

In another irony, I recently sold an essay called "Hiding in Plain Sight: Life With and Without Masks." It's about my struggles with avoiding getting sick in a world which pretends the pandemic is over. The day it was announced my story had been accepted was the day I tested positive for COVID.

My symptoms were fairly mild, but long-lasting. I was contagious for almost a month, and I spent all that time in solitary confinement, hiding in my room and writing. I am finally testing clear, and my symptoms are almost gone. I am hoping that the disease doesn't have any awful surprises for me further down the road. Several of my friends and family have experienced terrible health issues after contracting this deadly disease. I am very slowly reintroducing exercise. I do not want to increase my chances of developing long COVID. I am at elevated risk of it because of my various medical conditions.

Based on recommendations from other writers and editors, I have started paying closer attention to the masterful dialogue of Elmore Leonard. Based on that, I wrote a new story called "Ethel's Bones" which I'm very happy with. I've begun sending it around to different magazines and expect someone will want to snatch it up. I'm especially proud of its ending. Endings are the hardest part for me, so I get excited when I nail one.

I have entered several novel excerpt contests with my manuscript-in-progress The Everwhen. I'm getting much closer to finishing it. Only about 15,000 more words to go. If all goes well, I'll have my first draft completed before the end of the month. Many thanks to the Waterloo Arts Fund for their support.

I've also applied for the graduate program at The Writers Studio at Simon Fraser University. I was accepted into the program at the beginning of the year but turned it down because I'd won the Yosef Wosk fellowship with the Vancouver Manuscript Intensive. I have also applied for other fellowships, so hopefully at least one of these options will pan out for me.

I have so many things I am writing and want to write, and it is extremely helpful for me to have mentorships and classes. They help keep me motivated so I don't feel like I'm working in a vacuum.

Scintillating scotoma. Migraine status aura. This is the fancy name for the condition I had from my late teens through to my early 30s. For most people who get this, it only lasts for a few minutes. I am one of those unlucky few who get it as a chronic condition.



For some reason, it left when I moved from New Brunswick to Ontario. My variety of migraine isn't the usual one. I don't typically get pain with it, although I definitely become more sensitive to sound and light. Instead, I get brain fog and hallucinations. I don't see people or monsters that aren't there. Nothing like that. I see strobe lights and fireworks and blank spots and lots of flickering, twinkling floaters. It feels like the visual representation of my chronic tinnitus. If it wasn't chronic, I'd think it was pretty, but it can be debilitating. Between 1999-2004, I would have bouts which lasted months at a time, 24/7. The flickering took over the bulk of my vision leaving me unable to read, see where I was stepping, or follow a conversation. It was there when my eyes were open. It was there when my eyes were closed. It was almost impossible to think clearly or converse with folks because I was being distracted at every moment. If you had a strobe light going in your peripheral vision at all times, you'd be spacey, too.


About a week ago, my own private light show returned. I'm told this is a neurological condition, not a mental health one, but I honestly don't see the difference. They're both in my head, after all. One is just viewed as less "crazy" than the other. I guess it's not mental illness if you go to a neurologist for your hallucinations instead of a psychiatrist.

I reluctantly went to the doctor yesterday. I've never spoken to this doctor about my migraines before because they've been gone for over fifteen years. But here they are again. I suspect they have returned because of the extreme muscle tension in my jaw. I have bruxism, which means I have the jaw strength of a pitbull. If my teeth weren't such a crumbly mess, I could gnaw through iron bars.

These overdeveloped muscles are causing me a world of hurt. Ruined teeth, mouth pain, headaches, wry neck, tight trapezius muscles, dislocated upper ribs.... It's a cascade of body trollery. I am one of those folks who look fit and healthy, but it's a disguise worn by my array of invisible disabilities.



So I went to the doctor and explained what was going on. I told him I'd been on beta blockers before and the side effects I experienced were far worse than the migraines they were supposed to treat. He told me to go to an optometrist (it's not an eye thing), to increase my vitamin D intake (ok), and he wrote me a prescription for a medication called Cambia.

I went to the pharmacist and was given a box of meds. I said, "Wait. What do I need to know? Are there any contraindications?"

The pharmacist lied and told me no.

I got home, mixed my meds up, and drank them. It tasted kind of like someone chewed Double Mint gum and then spit in my mouth.

This morning, I woke up and the fireworks are still there, so I went to mix up another pouch. That's when I noticed that there actually is a fact sheet buried at the bottom of the box, and yes, there are all sorts of contraindications and risks. The more of this stuff I take, the greater the risk. Heck, I could end up with fatal bleeding at any time after taking this. I will not be taking any more. I'd rather deal with partial blindness than have heart failure, bleeding ulcers, increased asthma attacks, kidney failure, stroke, or life-threatening skin reactions. No, thank you. I'd rather live with my own private light show.

Why do doctors prescribe medicines which cause more harm than good? What happened to the hippocratic oath?

Oddly enough, it does not seem to affect my writing. As long as my fingers are on the keyboard, I can write even if I can't see properly. And the light show isn't quite as bad in dim light, so maybe I'll just become a night owl again.

Yesterday'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:

• 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.

I've been spacey lately. This year has been one hell of a theme park ride, and it's all just a bit much these past few days. I've been taking care of myself, and the people who live with me have been helping, too. I live with good people. But still, I am spacey. I go off into my own world, and I don't see or hear people or things around me unless someone or something snaps me out of it. It's not a thing I typically do on purpose (although it has served me well at the Kingdom Hall or riding public transit). When my mind is occupied, it happens all by itself. I guess this is what all those teachers meant by "daydreamer" on my report cards.

This year has given all of us stuff to be preoccupied about. We all have our different ways with dealing with stress. Unless I have to do it under pressure, creating is one of the best therapies I have for myself. I do it because I love it, but also because it helps me feel better and collect myself. I also do it because I love to share with you and with other people. It gives me a nice shot of the good brain chemicals.

This past year has been particularly hard on my executive function. All my regular routines crashed and burned early in 2020. Suddenly, I was home all the time, and almost never alone. It began hard to do any of the things I'd always done. Things like cook, clean, exercise, camp, hike, etc. I wanted to do so very many things, but no matter how much I wanted to do them, my body would stay paralyzed on the couch. Or on a chair. Basically, I spent a lot of time on my ass doing not much of anything tangible.

Then I rediscovered MOOCs and online classes and so forth, and I found that if I had a particular time set aside on my calendar where I'd be doing some sort of creation with other people, I was able to get some of my mojo back.

I've been participating in a lot of writing prompt groups online. I love the accountability they provide, the timed free-writing sprints, the prompts, the community, the positivity, and the opportunity to unleash the stories bouncing around inside my head. It's been hugely helpful to my wellbeing. I'm creating things that I'm proud of, and it's low-stress and low-pressure.

Today I joined an event I've never attended before. Although I got some good writing done, I will not be participating with those particular folks again. I joined it with the understanding that it wouldn't be a workshop with critiques, but a basic free-writing session with a meditation component. I was looking forward to escaping the week's anxiety for a while by throwing myself into writing.

The prompt came up, and I entered that liminal zone between meatspace and imagination, that spot where I translate into words the thoughts in my head. My brain doesn't think in images or words. It thinks in a big old storm of ideas and distractions flying everywhere, and I have to catch the best ideas and describe them into scribbles with my pen. I don't remember what someone looks like, but I can figure out how to translate their appearance into finger strokes on my keyboard. I can describe sensation. I know how something feels when it touches my skin. I know what I taste when I hear a certain sound. I know what something looks like when the sun hits at a certain angle, I know what coldness smells like, and while I'm knowing and translating all these things into words, I'm not really seeing or hearing anything around me in the real world because I'm in this whole other dimension right now and wait.... Someone's saying my name.

The moderator was looking at me from the Zoom screen disapprovingly. "I'm sorry," I said. "Can you repeat that?"

She asked me to say a few words about a story which had apparently just been read aloud. Put on the spot, I blinked a few times and said, "I'm really sorry, but my brain is just not cooperating right now. Please skip ahead to the next person."

She then made a group announcement that we should all be paying attention to one another's readings out of respect, an announcement which I'm well aware was directed at me and my foray into dissociation, an attempt to shame me. I wanted to send a private apology to the reader whose story I'd totally blazed on, but there was no time to type one up because it was time for another reader to read. And of course, I wanted to actually listen to what they were saying. I didn't tune out the other reader on purpose. I honestly wasn't even aware she was reading at all.

When the next strictly regimented mandatory comment portions of the session came along, I extolled the virtues of the previous author. I said things like, "I enjoyed your use of metaphor when you talked about the buoy", or "The last two sentences were an excellent way to end your piece," but apparently the moderator expected each person to write down their favourite quotations from the pieces read.

I didn't expect the moderator to use a line from something I'd just read in her own stream of consciousness writing, but power to her. I guess she liked it.

I respect that some people like to have a very particular order to how they create and work with others, but this way is not for me. Throughout the entire session, my mind kept pulling me away into the world I've been describing on paper and on my computer screen. I was drifting away from consciousness without the need of sleep, all the while waiting to be pounced upon for inattentiveness.

So yeah. Anxiety is illogical, but creating can be a good medicine, as long as that creating is done without additional pressure.

Be kind to one another, folks. We're all dealing with some shit.

This is my first post on DreamWidth since evacuating from LiveJournal. I wish I didn't need to abandon ship, but the new terms of service are untenable. I'm part of the rainbow brigade made illegal by the Russian powers that be. I'm still waiting for all the comments from LJ to be ported over here, and then I plan on doing a computer backup of all my files. I'm gonna miss you, LJ. You were my electronic home for at least 18 years.

In cheerier news, I have passed the first round of selection for the Arctic expedition. My references have been contacted, and their deadline to get their forms in is the 14th. I think I have an excellent chance of getting selected, and that's exciting.

I've been steadily working at getting my health and fitness levels back up to snuff, and it's not comfortable. Stepping outside your comfort zone is always uncomfortable, by default. On Sunday, I did a couple hours of escrima and then went for a run. Yesterday, I did strength training at the gym, went for my first bike ride of the year (~7 km), and did a flamenco class. Today, I went for a run, and tonight I'll be working on gymnastic skills at the gym.

My strength and endurance continue to improve. In the meantime, I'm stuck always feeling a bit sore and tired. The first couple of weeks after increasing activity levels are always like that. Here's a clip of my most recent session playing on the rings. My equipment wasn't quite set up ideally.

I learned recently that I've created my own personal Pavlovian response. I've been using asthma inhalers for over twenty years, now. In case you've never used one, it goes kinda like this:

1. Shake inhaler.
2. Exhale fully.
3. Raise it to your mouth.
4. Spray it in your mouth as you simultaneously inhale.

I also have been using a steroidal spray to help counter post-nasal drip, which is a big trigger for asthma. It goes like this:

1. Shake bottle.
2. Exhale fully.
3. Raise it to your nose.
4. Spray it in your nose as you simultaneously inhale.

I've recently started taking Vitamin B12 supplements in the form of an oral spray. Whenever I go to use it, I do the first two steps every time. There's no need to exhale. I drink the stuff; I don't breathe the stuff. Yet it takes a major conscious effort to avoid exhaling. Not that exhaling makes a difference, one way or the other. It's just fascinating to me how I've formed this habit.

Conditioning is "a behavioral process whereby a response becomes more frequent or more predictable in a given environment as a result of reinforcement, with reinforcement typically being a stimulus or reward for a desired response" (Encyclopedia Britannica). I'm not even getting a reward for my reinforcement. Well, not an immediate, perceivable reward, at least. So I guess it isn't conditioning, after all, but ritual, instead: "A ritual is...any act done regularly, usually without thinking about it" (Cambridge English Dictionary).

What are your rituals and conditioning?

(Elder Squirrel Demon Ritual Summoning Circle)

I remember when I had no difficulties learning how to use devices and software. I was a quick study, and could do complex combinations after being shown them. As an example, when I was volunteering at a charity shop, I was able to do a complicated return on the glitchy, tricksy retail software months after having it demoed to me. No one else at the shop knew how to do that, but had to consult with the manual every single time.

Just a couple of years later, I was put on propranolol for my chronic migraine headaches, and my ability to comprehend multi-step procedures vanished. I could no longer do certain things I'd always taken for granted, and my abilities to comprehend continued to dwindle as my dosage increased. During the height (depth?) of this, I was working at a radio station. I hosted a weekly show, and was supposed to record each show so that it could be rebroadcasted later in the week. I was never able to figure out how to do this despite being shown how on an almost weekly basis. For years, I had been a sound technician for theatre and radio. I had once created radio commercials, teched shows, and multi-tasked like a pro. Now I couldn't operate the machinery to record my own radio show. I often couldn't even follow a simple conversation because of the mental fog in which I was mired. I was fully aware that my IQ had dropped precipitously.

I felt like I was in a Flowers For Algernon situation. This decline in my cognitive abilities distressed me. I was terrified I'd continue to descend in a dull, mental fog. It was made even worse by some of my co-workers who berated me for what they perceived as willful stupidity. I tried to explain that my migraines and the medication I was on made it impossible for me to do what I'd once been able to do quickly and efficiently, but my words fell on deaf ears. While they touted the importance of affirmative action, they made it apparent that my particular circumstances didn't count. I had become disabled, but the people around me did not recognize this because I didn't look any different than before.

In the years since, I have made a full recovery from the physical debilitations. Although the mental fog abated, I don't have mental sunshiny days. I have not regained my prior mental acumen, but this does not stop me from making the attempt to get it back. I keep my brain active. I regularly take classes on a wide variety of topics. The material in scientific and technical courses continues to confound me, but I sign up for them anyhow.

While some abilities have diminished, others have increased just as dramatically. My dexterity and hand-eye coordination continues to improve. I went to a juggling workshop on the weekend as a rank newbie, and the instructor was shocked at how quickly I picked up the rudiments of basic 3-ball juggling. Apparently, I caught on far more quickly than the average Joe. For years, I was unable to learn choreography. This inability has been leaving, although I don't think I'll be giving up improvisation any time soon. My artistic abilities continue to improve, as well, and I catch on to new techniques in new media much more adroitly than ever before. I guess my neural pathways are rerouting stuff. I may be weaker in some areas, but I'm far stronger in others.

This gives me hope.

I got up at 6 on Saturday, stumbled out of bed, and looked out the window at a cold, wet, grey day. I put on my workout gear and had a big breakfast. Today was going to be brutal.

I was signed up for the O Course, which is a training course run by an ex-Marine drill sergeant. Today's course was a fund-raiser for young women diagnosed with breast cancer. Many of the participants were taking part as a symbolic gesture of solidarity for people going through breast cancer treatment, or in memory of those who had succumbed to it. I was participating to prove to myself I could. My own cancer surgery was just last year. I got off lucky. I wasn't sure what to expect today other than a rough go. I got that right.

My CrossFit training buddy Ahmed picked me up and we drove off to Burlington where the event was being held. The weather didn't improve. It got worse. There were times on the 401 when it felt like we should've been in a boat instead of a car. We arrived at the venue, confirmed our registration, and then sat in the car until it was time to do our warm-up. It was freezing out, and I was shivering.

Sgt. Tony mustered us up, and we took a knee while he explained what we'd be doing. The cold distracted me from what he was saying, but then we all grabbed a long block of wood and ran to the beach. The shore was a morass. Young people surrounded me. I think I was the oldest participant. I saw a lot of university students, including a team of cheerleaders decked out in matching pink hair ribbons. I overheard one say she didn't bother putting on makeup or doing her hair today.

The warm-up was a blur. The drill sergeant and his helpers barked orders, and we struggled to comply as quickly as possible. Get down into pushup position! Get up! Too slow. Get down. TOO SLOW! Get up! TOO SLOW!!! We moved faster and faster until all 60 or so of us were moving fast enough to meet his expectations, and then we did another speed drill. We carried the blocks of wood overhead and ran through the quagmire back and forth to the tree line. We backed out into the lake, wood held high overhead. Shoulders screamed from the effort of holding the stick overhead so long. Feet got stuck in the mud. People fell. People helped one another up. Shoes disappeared and were recovered with much effort. The blocks of wood never touched the water. They mustn't touch the water. KEEP IT OVERHEAD!

We rolled in the mud, belly crawled through slick brown stinking dirt with bits of grit jamming into forearms and elbows and bellies and knees. We through fistfuls of mud at one another. I never realized how many tiny plants grow in the mud until I was pressed into it for the better part of an hour.

( Read more... )

Today I'm a bit grumpy because it was cold and rainy out, and I wanted to bike, but knew if I did, I'd be absolutely drenched for my aerial silks class. My shoulder/neck has been overly tight for a while now, and my tendinitis has been tweaking for two days. I have a dance workshop with Louise Lecavalier in three days, and I don't want to have to worry about my neck and ankle slowing me down.

*cue sound of needle being scratched along a record*

Wait a minute. How about some perspective, Shan?

Three months ago, I wasn't sure I'd be able to walk on anything but level ground again without a limp. Any time my foot skidded out on a bit of ice, or I took a step with anything more than a mincing nature, it felt like someone had taken a potato peeler to the inside of my hip joint.

My hip has improved drastically. My worries from not so long ago have already dissipated.

These sore bits are nowhere near as scary as the hip issue was. I'm hoping a tune-up with an RMT tomorrow will do the trick.

In the meantime, ( here's something I did today, which my hip would NOT have allowed me to do even a month ago. )