The Sunny Side

what it means to be sick.
today i have pondered over the word chronic.

it sounds collicky, hard to digest, like something stuck like a fork prick in your tonsil.
i am astounded at all of these brave people who endure illness every moment, attack it with a vengeance and keep lacing their shoes and buying groceries, writing songs, enduring the sky-heaven-gods, grinning their half-lives with perhaps family, friends, their bodies molding, swelling, overpowering and (un)welcoming them into a life ultimately built on split decisions, dying bodies, dreams unfolding, knowledge of the clean world with ending. ending. it ends. that becomes the best part for some you know. you would never know had you not suffered. had you suffered reality.

today i patted my stomache and talked my spastic colon into eating a bowl of oatmeal. now that i have aquired a relationship with this body, this she-- curvature and savvy shape, drawn muscles, the house of towering organs, purple vein ropes surfacing, characterizing atoms, abilities-- this she that carries me and starts me off in the day, exhausts me, and perplexes me with her sad science, this thing that reverses my better intentions and categorizes me as a "mental issue", this filmy brain attatched, well...she is allowing me to gather her motives, surely now. lonely now, more than ever. one foot in front of the other, no equator to follow, no north star.

today i stepped into a bath of scolding hot milk foam white placid scuddy dip and devoured the closing of the day. i am ears for better thoughts. i have run out of ideas on how to be human, you see. if you soak up to your neck, your muscles will calm in you and you can become as complex and intricate as balanced water molecules. or so they say. so what happens when you must deal with the other parts of the evening? there is sleep, yes, and nonrestorative as ever. you might dream of becoming something, only to find that some otherworldly gift has been relinquished, making you animalistic in nature, and how you must succumb to more and more minutes of sleep before the ambition can boil into a possibility. or perhaps you have now been made aware of how you must treat disease and read up on the lastest in health and medicinal technology before striving for something new, as you should always be completely normal before attacking normalcy. you must be composed before applying your creativity into a composition. your goodwill is wanting to fade to some diagnosis, some tender point. but you must make it to feed her before allowing for that.

there are good things. there is the silence that you can wrap your eyelids around. there is the vertigo, which can make you feel two and free, sing-song, alive because you have no set ground. there are the heightened senses-- the spaghetti noodles smell of italy, the flourescent lights are chemical reactions, the front door opens and you float into the city sounds, the weeds are no longer weeds, they are god's choice fonts for humanity's hop-scotch game on the paved world. the entire earth is an orphan that can only survive by your adoption. CHOICES BECOME CHOICES. actions under scrutiny. your she-body is exhausted and you restore her, foster her development. you no longer exert her. don't focus on the mechanics but don't let faith blind you. there are good things like slowing down, tasting your delicacies and licking the excess unabashedly. acknowledging your friends' successes. jealousy is a child's plea bargain; you waste this moment being jealous and you're experiencing a malabsorption problem. there is plenty to die for, concern yourself only with the battles which you carry enough amo to fight. make lots of allies along the way. i still believe there is goodness and fullness found readily. there are days swolen with it. this morning my back escaped me, i had to realign it, but then i found i was still living rather pleasantly. living is not the handbook i'm writing here.

crawing feelings in my joints; my dramatic dermal issues. poetry in the threshold. achiness on the cutting board. i don't really have time to feel dolled up. what is it that i want done? that is the first goal. i want to master being a just person, never indulge in self-pity, realize my net worth, honor my morality. THE REAL WANT IS TO BE SELFLESS, but since it's impossible, i'll want to be less selfish. i need to find the scope of being and throw myself to it.
tear into the antics.

(and exercise).

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