multiple hazards in effect
perpetually
It is the way things go nowadays. I wonder how people experienced the beginning of the Holocene, if they ever sighed, put down their ochre stump or stone hand axe, looked at the sky, and grumbled “it’s always some fucking bullshit” in front of another magnificent sunset. I imagine they had rich, full lives, very exciting honestly. Here I am stuck indoors keeping my immune system warm, watching reruns of BBC Ghosts (please make S3-5 available for streaming), reading frightening verse from a Dutch study about exercise necrotizing the muscles ask me ask me ask me because if it’s not bombs then it’s the plague the plague the plague the plague the plague the plague the plague that will keep us together.
Right now though I am feeling sad because I may still be harboring some fair wisp of a hope that I can go hiking or ride my bike around town or paint a damn fresco on the ceiling, and now I’m really considering pushing it. Fuck it, I can either be careful and stay alive and bored out of my mind forever or go for a stupid bike ride and collapse for a month. I miss having muscles. Working in a kitchen meant picking up heavy things, balancing sheet pans, dumping giant mixing bowls, climbing up ladders, mopping, repetitive motions like chopping, flipping, stirring. At school I walked up and down hills, stairs, hurried to class. All of these places I traveled to by bicycle. I feel like people who got long covid fairly early have watched the window of healing close in front of our eyes. We were told to exercise and get back into things and felt useless when it didn’t work, like we failed, like we didn’t try hard enough, like we are lazy and just don’t want to work.
I mean, of course I wanted to spend my time and energy doing something other than making potato salad for a bunch of ungrateful yuppies and the Sunday bruncheoisie, and hell yeah I hoped one day I would escape the wheel of that bullshit — but trying to keep my body from collapsing in a broken heap every day is not how I’d choose to do that, 100% I would choose a different way to torture myself. That doesn’t mean I’m lazy, it means I have big giant dreams and this shit was not part of it. The person who makes your sandwiches has big giant dreams too. The person bringing your fast food delivery also has big giant dreams. I don’t use my writing to give life advice or writing instruction or whatever, but if you take away anything from my writing — the people who you hire to do little jobs for your convenience, they have big dreams too. The little kids kicking the ball at the refugee camp and raising their siblings after their parents were murdered by American bombs have big dreams too. I’m not here to tell you how to think, mostly I’m trying to communicate with the outside world and fight boredom and despair.
I’m working on another draft but right now, sitting on a futon on the floor, surrounded by cats, listening to music, trying to make sense of things, and it could be worse I guess, but I also nearly forgot to take my night medicine and now I’m wondering if I need to come up with a system or ask for help, because after taking it I feel kind of overwhelmed. Lots of very frustrating thoughts and honestly, it’s always some fucking bullshit, I feel so connected with the grumbly cave artist.
It is so cold outside and I want to draw on the ceiling.
“100% I would choose a different way to torture myself” -- well said
🤓