What Schrödinger’s Cat Knows

There is a blank spot where the ideas had been just now. I remember that they existed, but now I can’t remember what they were. Post-Covid sucks. It’s as if a fog lay on the low patch of ground across the road and I stared at it too long and it seemed as though the little white house, the field of sunflowers, and the stream had all disappeared in the moonlight where the fog lay instead. If what I saw, tasted, smelled, heard, and touched was all that was real, then there was no little white house, no field of sunflowers, and no stream. How could I prove that they existed unless I could procure a heat scope—What do you call those things?—and confirmed their existence by seeing red and orange recumbent forms presumably sleeping inside the vague shape of a house. Without an image of warm bodies and the skeleton of a little white house, the scene was like an episode of Schrödinger’s cat. Was there life inside or was there none? The answer was that there was both. Once I took a measurement, only one way or the other would be proven. All of existence is a crapshoot.

Ah, there they are, the ideas. Sometimes, they slip back into place as if they had never been gone. My thoughts used to feel as solid as my faith in my senses. When I was a teenager in the 1970s, I had tried transcendental meditation. It was a thing back then. I had read a book that insisted that, if I tried hard enough and in just the right way, I could leave my chubby body behind and travel the universe.

I just want to tell you that the idea is still there in my mind, waiting for the attention I’ll give it, but there are a couple of things about looking into that lavender room back in time where I sat on an itchy carpet with books spread out on the floor around me. I was not fat. I had always had a thicker waist, wide sturdy bones, a little roll of fat that folded when I sat, but I was not fat, not even chubby. Who can force a duck to fit into the feathers of a swallow? Yet, I could not see the truth of own myself back then, or of the ugly messages that people fed me instead of love. So, instead of sitting in my skin, I wanted to escape into the universe, across mountain tops and into space where distance and time were altered, just so I could escape the ugliness that had ingrown into my body, if only for a moment.

I tried so hard to fly as I looked at the thickness of my strong thighs. I even closed my eyes and tried not to feel the firm skin that held me together. I could imagine the mountain tops and the space around Saturn and the nebulae deeper into space, but I couldn’t feel the space whoosh around me. I couldn’t relax enough, I thought. If only I could do it right. My thoughts remained as solid as the itchy carpet pressing into my legs and butt.

And now, I float. Not even the duvet, the comforter, and the quilt on my bed kept me from floating out of my body last night after the long drive to pick up my son from school. Do you know how you seem to float and spin with a few too many drinks? Ah, everyone should try that sometime, at least once. It takes you out of your certainty regarding the solidity of your senses. It’s a chemical meditation, but it will do if you can’t let go enough to find the space above your body. A hangover is the only payment. But these days, all I have to do to float is to push through when I know I should rest. And with the floating, I can hear the singing of space, a frequency almost too high to hear. Tinnitus makes me so aware of quiet that it hurts.

Which is real then? The floating or the view of my body held down by my covers? The imagined quiet or the singing vacuum of space?

Only Schrödinger’s cat could tell.

Staring Out the Window

The ugly book sat on the desk in front of us. We had work to do, heavy, exhausting work. My student and I sat at a small table near the library window. We often pause to look out the window at Seattle and the Olympic mountains behind it.

“What is that blinking?” she asked. I scanned the horizon and finally saw it, a blinking tower of red lights on a hill south of the cityscape. A pink trail of clouds signaled sundown.

“I don’t know, some kind of lights to tell a pilot not to fly there, I would guess, but I don’t know.” I didn’t know. I think that’s important for her to hear. I don’t know why our society is in such a state of expecting to know everything, even things we don’t know, rushing, pushing through everything, especially work for children.

I had brought mugs, hot water in a thermos, honey, a spoon, and a choice of teas. As she picked a flavor, peppermint, I poured hot water into our mugs, a mismatched set of my favorites. She added honey, stirred, added more, and sipped. For a moment, I explained, she should sit with her hands around the warm mug, breathe in the steam, and prepare for the job ahead. She was worried about work she was having trouble with. I wanted her to realize that work, even unwanted work, could begin with a ritual.

“We should do this every time,” she said as she sipped her tea then picked up her book.

Exactly, I thought, as I breathed steam from my cup, in and out, in and out …

… in and out …

… slowly.

Thank you for listening, jules

Sometimes, books are connected to an author with sinew and bone. Others slide out without only a thin cord to connect them to their source, easily cut and tied off. But I think the best books are those that stubbornly stay connected with the author despite every attempt to control them, make them an entity that can live an independent life of its own, with those who love it in distant places and form sinew and bone connections with them wherever they are.

Sit back in your chair and close your eyes. Can you remember the texture of the scratchy upholstery of the tiny easy chair and ottoman your grandpa made for your big sister when she was a toddler, the chair where you read Go Dog, Go! over and over when you first learned to read, the chair already a bit too small for your little behind, your heels resting on that itchy and faded red wool? That book was your borning-cry to literature, leaving you with the sound of a snap and forever in a hunger for another book. You never imagined it still connected to its author but you’re sure it left a mark when it left his skin.

Can you remember the classroom where Mrs. Winkler, who you were sure loved you, read A Wrinkle in Time and you flew out of your wooden desk the one with one piece of smooth gum stuck underneath and the story flung you into the Universe to find good and evil? That book stayed connected to you by a ligament through skin and into a muscle that twitched now and then. It seemed to have more of a connection back to the one who imagined it, bone to muscle.

Then, there was the white sofa in the hospital lobby where you’d finished your schoolwork and read To Kill a Mockingbird. You saw your own reflection in that book and the author’s too even though you know she was a child shifted into another time-reality. When you heard her history, you knew she was still connected with her book with sinew and guts and bone and and even some flimsy white nerve tissue and she would never be able to let it go completely. Did it cause her pain every time you carried her book, still connected to her, into that hospital lobby where your Atticus father lay dying of cancer three floors up and you weren’t allowed to visit because you were too young to go in with your family according to hospital rules? Could she also feel the tingly impressions that sofa left on the backs of your legs from sitting in one place for so long? Could she feel your hunger when dinner time came and went even though you’d been there since play-practice ended? I’d bet she could because that book was so tightly wound into both her and your own souls. Sinew, guts, bone, and nerve. You can open your eyes now that you remember how that book feels that became a part of your own soul yet stayed connected to its author.

Thank you for listening, jules

Where Do I Begin?

What is real? I feel like me. I’m real, right? But what is me? Are my molecules me? What about the river of chemicals comprising the coffee I drink, rearrange, then pee back out into the water of the world? Are those chemicals me? When do they begin to be me and when do they stop being me? Are they me when they first touch my lips or when I hold them in my mouth? If I spit them back out, along with other chemicals that were me in my saliva, were they ever me? What about food I eat? Air? The molecules I smell?

Are the bacteria and mites that colonize in and on my body part of my body? Do I own them or do they own me? Am I simply a ship of living flesh gathering, preparing, and eating food when they tell me that I’m hungry?

And what about the air that touches my skin? When my husband’s elbow is near the skin of my elbow on a shared arm rest but isn’t touching me yet is emanating warmth from him to me, is he touching me, the real me? It feels like he is.

And what about the words I read, words that can make me laugh, cry, reverse my perspective? Are those words, sometimes whispered into my ear by vibrations from the audiobook on my phone, are they a part of me? Is sound, light, and gravity me when I take them in?

And when I die? At what moment when I take my last breath but still have consciousness in my brain do I stop being me? I witnessed that twice and both times, I saw the person stop being the person I loved. It was a painful yet wondrous thing. I really knew that what had been them one moment was not them the next. Where did the they that I loved go?

I’ve been thinking about what is real. It’s a hard question.

Thank you for listening, jules

The Order of Time by Carlo Rovelli, My Most Recent Favorite Book

What is real? With the problems I’ve had with cognitive function and visual migraines, I’ve been wondering a lot about what is real. Add to that last Thanksgiving when I began to wonder about time too because Carlo Rovelli whispered in my ear as I tried to make lemon meringue pie before the turkey came out of the oven. Actually, it was Benedict Cumberbatch who whispered in my ear with Rovelli’s words about physics and time. That makes total sense, because, hey, Dr. Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. Am I right?

With Cumberbatch’s help, I learned from Rovelli’s book The Order of Time that on a very small scale, there is no time, just an exchange of warmth. Wait, what?

I should have listened more as a philosopher in the back of my thermodynamics class. It turns out that, though that professor tried to ruin the class by making it the flunk-out class for the engineering department, I actually like thermodynamics. (Yes, in case you were wondering, I passed the class.) Like the dance between an electric and a magnetic field, there’s a harmony playing between pressure, flow, volume, and time. And now, I’m trying to imagine what it looks like in miniature, when pieces of particles play keep-away with the observer. Most of what we think is solid is really vast empty space. So, what is real?

Is it true that science, at its most basic, is more about statistics than about calculus and trigonometry? Damn. I love trig. (Don’t mock me. It goes back to when I was nine and my dad hooked up a microphone to his oscilloscope so I could try to sing a sine wave for him.) I’ll just have to keep reading and closing my eyes to imagine how a particle might be there and might not, depending on whether or not you’re looking for it. If that’s true, what then, is reality? Now, I’m going to have to read something by Brian Greene.

Thank you for listening, jules

Hypoxia or Euphoria?

I’ve been experiencing a sense of euphoria lately. I don’t know if that’s a good thing, medically, or a bad thing like somethings more wrong than it was. I seem to have come to grips with disability and death. I did that in the summer and fall of 2020. More recently, I’ve become accustomed to the idea of losing my faculties. It was a grieving process beyond that of accepting death. Finally, I came to the idea that these extra days are a gift. It’s one thing for people to do their gratitude journals for Thanksgiving, but I hope what they came to was that their lives really were miracles. Can you stop what you’re doing and feel that? Lately, I’ve been daydreaming, taking flights of fancy around the world and into the depths of space. It’s cheaper and more comfortable than traveling. I credit NASA’s photos from the new Webb telescope and the travel and macro photographers I love. Have you ever seen the smiley-face emojis magnified inside the beach grass? They’re adorable.

More often, I’m looking at my life as a whole journey taken. How did I get from there to here? I never expected to have lived this particular life. It wasn’t what I planned. It was better, the depth of the love, the places I went, the things I tried. I tried a lot of things. I’m glad that I was a person who jumped into experiences. I have lived, worked, and played in a beautiful world with amazing people. I never have told you about the men working at Bell Labs, have I? They loved when someone asked them about their experiments, even as they harbored recent scars on their faces from an unexpected exothermic reaction from an element they were testing. I hope I’ll tell you about those guys sometime.

I keep wondering if the euphoria is from not getting enough oxygen. It goes low sometimes. But I’m going with the flow. A person can’t live forever, you know. Plus, I’ve been having Disney princess moments that stem from the drought, a bad thing that feels like a miracle in the moment. I’ve talked to my wild birds for years, chickadees, hummingbirds, towhees, Pacific wrens, Cooper’s hawks, Stellar’s jays, and juncos. I make a ticking sound whenever I refresh the water in their birdbaths or the hummingbird food. Sometimes, I can tell they’re demanding something, and Mike has more than once been accosted by a hungry hummingbird when the feeders are empty.

Because of the drought, I’ve been watering my garden, the sword ferns, the tree where the Pacific tree frog sings, my maidenhair ferns, hydrangea, Japanese maple, and gardenia. The other day, I sat at my little table as the hose refreshed my hydrangea. I’d recently added some coffee grounds to the soil and it made a puddle. A Pacific wren took a bath in it then rinsed off in the puddle that spilled out under the pot. I was very quiet because the Pacific wrens are so shy.

The next day, hoping to get her to come back, I watered again. This time, I heard the chickadees cheer as I sprayed the Japanese maple. There is a difference in their calls when they want something and when they’re happy. I sat at my table and got us all wet by putting my thumb on the end of the hose and making a sprinkler for them to fly through. They sounded like children laughing. The day after that, it was a flock of hummingbirds and a Douglas squirrel. Usually, the Douglas squirrels don’t come near me. They’re wilder than the European grays.

And yesterday, as I headed to the library to pick up my holds, the chickadees demanded that I make the sprinkler for them again. When I got back home and started up the hose, they cheered and laughed in the rain I made. Maybe I need to buy a sprinkler.

What are the miracles in your life?

Thank you for listening, jules

Flights of Fancy

These days, I go more easily on flights of fancy. People spend thousands of dollars on vacations to experience what I get to do for free when they go on a trip to a different culture but then they complain that the food is too weird.

There is some kind of beauty in having a more tenuous hold on reality than I used to have. I can look at a photograph and get drawn in, lavender fields in France, steep green hills in China. I get to float over them in my mind for as long as I want.

See, the thing I keep holding onto with all my long covid trouble is my students. The poor kids’ minds are being fed the most nutritious mental food injected with the worst spices of boring, hard, and serious. Sometimes, I feel so crappy but then, I sit down with a kid, she mentions chemistry, then we wend our way through the chemistry of cake and snowflake angles, look at videos of the art of repeating fractals, read about the benefits of reintroducing grey wolves into Yellowstone, pop into a book she needs to read, pause on a phrase of beautiful language, then spiral around inside the body talking about the amazing bags of chemical reactions that we are.

After we’re finished, her mind might go to a completely different focus, what her friends are saying on her phone or what other homework she doesn’t want to do right now. I, on the other hand, sit with my eyes closed on my recliner for a rest and can continue the journey of chemical reactions in my mind.

Thank you for listening, jules

Fur Therapy

Do you remember the cat, Blitz, that I wrote a book about and then didn’t finish that last edit? I called the book, Dirty and Afraid. I almost had an agent. I cried giving my elevator pitch for the book in front of a publisher without understanding the reason I cried. It was an ugly cry. There’s no recovery from ugly crying. And then, two months later, I woke up at 2:31 in the morning and knew exactly why this kitten and his fear meant so much to me. He was me. His fear was my fear. I rewrote it to add the part that was missing, but I didn’t finish that last edit before I got sick.

I want to update you about Blitz. He’s still afraid sometimes, like when people drop off packages outside, but he’s not so dirty anymore. He runs up the stairs with me in the morning. At about the third stair from the top, he falls over and throws his legs in the air. You need to understand, he’s like a baby seal, and almost exactly the width of the steps, so when he falls over, he inevitably starts to slide back down the stairs like silly putty and I have to do belly rubs and hold him in place at the same time.

Then, he walks circles on the kitchen floor and yells as I try to make coffee and toast. Me first, me first, me first, I’m hungryyyyyy.

But what I’m here to tell you is that he’s become the zoom therapy cat. How does he know that my kiddo is overwhelmed because school started too fast? At just the right moment, he jumps onto the quilt behind me and rolls over with his legs in the air. How does he know to make her laugh? I have earbuds in. He can’t hear her tone. Both cats have this kind of timing with my students.

Plus, I have had long days of headaches and chest pain. These two cats snuggle in, one on my lap and one on the pillow next to me so I can curl my arm around him. Sometimes, I fall asleep after or tutoring. When I start, I am sometimes on my own but I often wake up with a headache with both cats have cuddled in. Am I just a warming bed for them? Maybe, but Blitz will push his head into my cheek or my hand. He lets me endlessly play with the plush fur on his belly or the little pink pads on his feet. Sometimes, he spreads his toes for me. He only twitches his ears a little when I put my fingers into them. I pet him in my sleep.

It’s boring and lonely reclining on the couch so many hours, so many days, so many months at a time. But I am never alone.

Thank you for listening, jules

Maybe Tomorrow

I’m here. I’ll tell you. Long Covid pacing is a bitch. All I have to do is do one thing I don’t necessarily want to do and what I want to do is pushed back into the oblivion of maybe tomorrow. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe.

Maybe tomorrow I’ll write. Maybe tomorrow I’ll go swimming. Maybe tomorrow I’ll paint something. Okay, I’ll admit. I don’t paint anything but rocks. When they’re dry, I put them back out into the wild, little messages to the world. Once, I visited a friend’s home for lunch and saw one of my rocks in a bowl with other rocks in her living room. She and I were connected in more ways than one. I didn’t tell her it was mine. I haven’t painted any blessing rocks in a long time. I used to think of it as a way to thank the space where I wandered and the other people who wandered there.

Maybe I need to paint some new blessing rocks. I loved doing it because I didn’t hold myself to any standard of beauty. I just tossed the ugly ones deeper in the brush, to bless the little plants that grow wonky in our world.

But first, I have to make my breakfast and go to yet another appointment.

Thank you for listening, jules

Wanting to Talk to a Mirror Touch Synesthete

Today is almost a free day. I have book club later, but I don’t have much else to drain me. I always love starting a free day but when I actually get to it, I almost always use it to rest and that’s disappointing. When I’m mostly through and I realize it, I get a sinking feeling. I know I need to adjust my expectations, but I haven’t yet. Anticipation is giving me grief.

I’m still grieving over lost parts of my brain. My librarian hugged me yesterday. I told her that I miss being myself around my sister, Lily. She met my sister once and they began to talk as if they’d known each other for years. I ended up telling her about this process of grief.

My sister Lily is one of those people who can feel your pain, a mirror touch synesthete. Oliver Sacks’ books reported that it’s a real neurological reaction for some people, to literally feel pain when someone describes pain. I don’t wish that on Lily, to feel pain. She just can’t talk about this. She couldn’t talk about when I felt I was dying either. I had been blacking out and having a very high heart rate back then. Every time I tried to sleep, spinning or floating, I felt I might not wake up. I faced mortality in a way I never had before. A lot of people couldn’t talk about it. Now, I’m grieving over losing parts of my brain, one of the most important events of my life along with accepting my death, and I can’t share it with so many people I love because they feel uncomfortable talking about it. Thank God for Nick and Mike, and for four or five other friends who can sit with these thoughts. Thank God for my librarian friend.

I still miss my sister.

Thank you for listening, jules

The Problem with English

Most of the time, when I sit down, I have nothing to say. Today is that day, so I’m going to resort to verbal diarrhea which is what my cognitive therapist calls the drunk talking that I do when I’m too tired to leave her office, a tutoring session, or my friend’s house on a Friday night.

Damn. I’m beyond the verbal diarrhea stage and going into the sitting silently with Airpods in my ears set to any random podcast that I might or might not listen to while I look at Reddit on my phone.

I’ve typed diarrhea twice now and you know what? I want to protest the spelling of that word. Who’s in charge of correcting the words that are totally spelled wrong in the English language? I want to make a complaint. Here’s a list of some of the spellings that annoy me:

  • diarrhea (I have to apologize to those people who visualize as they read. Seriously, I’m sorry about all the verbal diarrhea, word vomit, and just being a big green snot in general.)

  • enough

  • phonics (Really? Who the hell thought of this word as a way to simplify sounding words out for children? Who was that asshole?)

  • through (It’s halfway there thanks to the drive thru crowd.)

  • dough (Look, donut made the transition so dough should follow. In fact, it should have led the way. But, will we confuse our newest readers if it looks like do, did, doing? Maybe dow would do for a downut. Dammit, I can’t get this down.)

  • psychotic, psychic, and psychology

  • sorbet (Maybe we should change it to psorrhbeigh.)

  • straight, light, fight, tight, right, night (I don’t know what we should do with knight, do you?)

  • knife, knock, knit, knowledge, knackered, knot, knob, knees, know (Well, that makes a new problem: what do we do with the duplicates for nit, not, no, and rite for that matter?)

  • when, what, where (Dammit, there are too many complications like were, was, and the potential switch in pronunciation to werewolf. I think I’m done. I’m defeated. Now, I’m staring listlessly at the word done and wondering why it doesn’t rhyme with bone, cone, tone, hone, zone, lone, alone, and phone. Shit, dammit, sack-sucker lug nut.)

I read an explanation once of why we don’t go straight for spelling phonetically because it would become unintelligible to the general reader. Then, the author of this explanation gradually moved to spelling phonetically and by the end of the paragraph, I couldn’t read what he wrote. Okay, I get it, but couldn’t we agree on about ten words a year? Surely, the English speakers could relearn to spell ten nasty words a year, just some of the worst one?

Couldn’t we?

I think I heard an Englishman in the back whisper, “Have we had any luck in London changing the spelling of colour?”

Thank you for listening, jules

The Cloud of Probability

Poor Blitz still isn’t used to having people come into the house, especially after Covid. The pandemic has been good for the cats in the world, except for those homes that have humans who dress up their cats or make them dance for TikTok videos. I was out of the house for a few hours the other day and Mike said that the cats wandered around and cried even though there were still two perfectly good humans to sit down and pet them.

Right now, Blitz is crouched low on the floor next to his puzzle feeder and periodically stopping to look around because my nephew stayed over after a late flight brought him here... Oh, it’s a story all its own, but he left his car parked in our driveway.

But his quiet presence in our house, his laughter and his smile, has sent poor Blitz into the netherparts of our house. Nick said that Blitz is an electron and the house is his cloud of probability.

This morning, I realized that Blitz was probably hungry from hiding. So I filled his puzzle feeder and put it down under my bed, a location of high probability for the electron Blitz. Then, I added a bowl of water. I wish a litterbox would fit under there, but he’ll have to brave the bathroom during a quiet moment.

Don’t worry, Blitz. The intruder will leave sometime after breakfast.

Thanks for listening, jules

Hockey Pucks and Unidentified Wet Lumps

What kind of bullshit can I cheerfully deliver to you today? I’m a jumble-sale of thoughts, not even information: should we talk about the heat wave, the books I’m in love with (The Girl Who Drank the Moon, for one), the reason my hydrangea is lush but isn’t blooming, being gerrymandered into Lake Chelan for the pirmaries, or access to safe abortions? That last ones wouldn’t occur in the chatty side of this blog.

Honestly, I’m happy today, but I’m fatigued and fribbled-fried in my frontal lobe. I can’t think of a thing to grill for dinner, not a damned thing. It’s too hot to go to the grocery store. I want chicken parmesan but I don’t want to heat up the house, stress our minor air-conditioner, cook to an internal temperature of 97 degrees. I wonder if I could make grilled chicken parm work? I’ll bet I could.

If not, it will be one of the vague recipes of a tired mind and my guys will eat it without complaining. I have fed them hockey pucks and unidentifiable wet lumps and they ate them. They even thanked me for my effort.

Thank you for listening, jules

Servant

Sometimes, I forget to sit in my body and feel it all in the morning, aches of arthritis fading with all my stretching and the hope for a blue pill, gory dreams fading (please fade), hunger whispering quietly, my eyes still tender to light. Cat demands begin before I’ve eaten, before coffee, before I’ve relieved my bladder. “Mrawr, mrawr. Rarrrr!”

Why is it that I can’t take care of myself before I take care of them?

I am servant. My needs come second. I am peasant. They are entitled to food. I recall, barely, that I put kibbles into Blitz’s food puzzle sometime between 2:30 and 4:00 am when I got up to pee. Seriously? Yes, that is a memory, not a dream. Then, the little bastard had the temerity to stomp across my legs between 5:00 and 8:00 am. Second breakfast! Rrarwr!

I am reminded that I am servant, aches waiting for morning pharmaceuticals, gut grumbling for toast and coffee, eyes still not wanting summer’s bright light. I am servant. Always servant. Servant first, human second. Are you also servant too?

Thank you for listening, jules

Giving Away My Dog; A Dream

I’ve been having realistic dreams. Last night, I dreamed that I decided to give my dog Teddy away because I was sick and couldn’t care for him. I was anguished over it, but I knew it was the right thing to do.

Months later, I started getting better. I was walking every day plus I wondered how much of a burden I’d given the family with the two small boys, to have to take care of a dog as well, even a wonderful dog like Teddy. I drove up to their house and stopped by. The house was a mess. The boys were loud. Teddy was lying on his bed in the corner of the living room. I just blurted it out to my friend, “I don’t know how bonded you are to Teddy, but I’m better and I want him back in case you’re looking for a way out.” I didn’t want to cry so I made an excuse to go to the vet to check out something in Buddy’s files.

When I got back, Buddy was pulling a rag with the toddler sitting on it. He was laughing like crazy and Teddy, though he was pulling with his teeth, grinned as he pulled the boy around a recliner. The bigger boy ran circles around them. My friend worked in the open kitchen making dinner, something with chicken and garlic. It smelled delicious. Their dad, however, sat stiffly in an upright chair by the dining table.

Before I sat down, he said, “You can’t have him back. I walk him every morning before work and every night before bed. We’ve done all your work while you were sick. I’m glad you’re better now, but you just can’t have him.” Then, he relaxed a little. I noticed that he looked more trim than he had been when I dropped Teddy off. Back then, he had looked dubious and tired and annoyed, and chubby. He held my gaze but he didn’t say anything more. Then, he looked down at his boys who were both piled on top of Teddy. Teddy rolled onto his back and was pretending to wrestle, his mouth open and teeth showing. I’d seen him do the same thing with puppies at the dog park.

It dawned on me that this reluctant man loved my dog. He was the one who walked him at dusk and again in the dark after the boys were in bed. He had watched and probably joined in with his two boys to play with the dog. The yellow rag sat abandoned on the floor, ragged at the edges but still big enough for a boy to sit on. This was a whole family that needed Teddy and he needed them too.

I called him over and held out my hand, “Come here, Baby Dog.” He separated from the pile of boys and came to me, looking back to them. He put his head on my shoulder and I hugged him but when I let go, he went back to the boys and laid down between them. Four little hands buried themselves into his fur.

I looked back at their dad, “You’re right. It’ll be hard to let him go, but I can see he’s happy here.”

My friend, with hot steam curling her hair, said, “You can come visit. Just call ahead next time.” I nodded. Before I could cry, I got up and left.

I woke up and lolled about in my bed for a while. It felt more like a memory than a dream. I think my new meds do that. But…

Do you believe in reincarnation?

Thank you for listening, jules

Finding Joy in a Shrinking Cage

Boy, it’s been quiet in here but I’m here right now, even if it’s just for a moment.

I don’t want to talk about long Covid. I really don’t, but my whole life now revolves around pacing and brain fog. If you had to pick one thing a day to do, groceries, having coffee with a friend, having an argument, doing your part-time tutoring job, getting some exercise, or cooking a meal, how would you choose?

I’ve decided that making meals for my guys is important. I clean the cat litter, but I also choose to read books. Yes, reading has become something that’s harder for me and takes a toll. I still choose reading. I also still choose a few friends. Losing friends has been hard. I find myself telling my physical therapists more than I’d tell a friend over the third drink.

Can you see my brain injury in my writing? I’m going to have to let it show eventually. It’s embarrassing, thoroughly embarrassing. But I can’t organize the way I used to. I hear it when I talk, I don’t make as much sense. I used to do all that without a thought. My subconscious mind was smarter than I was, and the organization just happened. The ends of some stories just reached out and touched their beginnings. Now, I make lists and sometimes have trouble following them. It’s mild, but I feel it. Mike and Nick notice. I wonder if some of my friends notice.

And I really didn’t want to talk about my limitations today. But sometimes, it feels like a cage around me. I can look out and see the rest of the world, running freely, but the wires keep me in. The sad part is that I’m not sure those free people can feel the joy of their freedom. I’m learning to feel what joy I have left, but my cage keeps shrinking as I try to be quiet and stay joyful.

Thank you for listening, jules

Binary Illogic

I don’t have anything to say, especially anything cheerful. Welcome to Monday. I don’t know why I’m here. I need to lie down. I need to close my eyes, except that I just got up.

Family came to visit yesterday and today, I’m tired, so very tired. What is the cost of staying too long? The next day.

Why can’t I think of something else? Every day, I wake up thinking of things to do and every day, I’m reminded that I can pick one thing to do if I haven’t overdone it the day before. Instead of cleaning and shopping for groceries and editing and taking a walk and painting, I can clean or shop or edit or walk or paint.

Shit, I’ve become an OR gate. I used to be an AND gate. You know, binary logic?

Do you know binary logic? An AND gate means that 1+1+1 = 1

Now, I’m 1+1+1 = …

Wait, I got that wrong. Logic is the first thing to go when I’m tired. It makes me rethink trying to edit my book today. I’ve tried to edit other days when I was tired and I made messes, lost work, did and undid and did and undid work.

__________________________________

Okay, I’ve had some rest. It’s three days later, Thursday. How did it get to be Thursday? Now I realize that I’m not

1+1+1+1+1 = 5

but

1+1+1+1+1 = 1.

So, instead of needing to do five things and being able to get five things done, I need to do five things and get one done. I get to choose one. Instead of being math that your kids learned in elementary school, I’m a five input AND gate, sort of, because sometimes I’m

1+1+1+1+1 = 0.

Shit. I’m a five input AND gate with an intermittent connection. What do you call that?

Broken.

Thank you for listening, jules

If Not That, Then This

I’ve been thinking of the things I’ll probably never do.

I may never again get on a plane to go somewhere but it is beautiful right here. Have you looked at the colors of the sky lately? My favorite is the graduating blue just after sunset, pale where the sun just disappeared moving through the values to get to that velvet navy I love to see past the silhouettes of my trees. How can a color be so saturated and seem so transparent at the same time?

I may never be able to care for a dog again. I can’t go for the daily walks. Sometimes, I can’t even go somewhere and sit easily. But the other day, a curly-haired dog wiggled his way up to me on my way to the grocery store, I asked if I could say hi, and I buried my hands deep into his fur and tickled the soft skin underneath. His eyes were wet and brown, and he knew me. He knew me.

My time has been short lately and I feel it now. The next time I mourn what I’ve lost, I’ll remember that I have so much time to read and read and read the books that beckon me.

Thank you for listening, jules

The Hell of Being on Hold

It’s been a day of doctors, doctors who will only meet online, doctors with history who fit us in immediately, doctors who are backed up and leave a person on hold for a half hour and counting. I wish I could make an appointment with the online doctor while I’m on hold for my results with the other.

It’s been twelve days since I had my Covid test and I should have received results by now, but instead, I’m on eternal hold.

I want to talk about being on hold. Don’t they realize that they should leave a person on hold in peace to focus on other things? Don’t they realize that the temperament of the person on hold would be much better if they smoothed out the on-hold situation. It would save their phone staff time and free them from the responsibility of smoothing feathers of the irate on-holdee. The music cycle should last more than three minutes but more than that, there shouldn’t be any abrupt interruptions to get your attention if they’re not yet ready to talk to you. It really is annoying to try to work while you’re listening to the abrupt change on-hold sounds repeatedly grabbing for your attention. The absolute worst is when they use it as a way to advertise to you constantly for the time you’re waiting on the phone.

Yes, I am on the phone waiting for you. I do not need to be advised as to your total gifts to the world in exchange for my undying devotion, AKA, cash. I do not need to know about this feature I have no interest in hearing about. I don’t need more ways to spend my cash. You’ve likely already encouraged me to spend my cash in deeper and more creative ways than I ever thought possible.

Just pay for ten minutes of decent music, will you?

I swear, I think there’s only one person answering this fucking phone for a population of three million. I’m going to die in three years with this awful music still in my ears.

This is no way to write, the annoyance increasing, my mind blanking now and then as to why I’m holding on this call. I just want to know the results of my Covid test that I took twelve days ago. I would guess that it’s negative since the quick-results test was negative, but gees, can’t you just confirm it?

The only reason I’m calling is that my son is having some symptoms that could be Covid. Shit, almost any symptoms could be Covid, there’s such a wide array of them.

What, what is the answer? Yes or no? Yes? Or no?

Still on hold. Still listening to an awful three-minute loop of music. Still getting my thoughts interrupted by the abrupt stop. Yet, at this point, I hold no hope for actually speaking to a human. I’m in limbo, floating in space to another galaxy. Why is there so much space between galaxies?

Thank you for listening, jules