Today the surgeon Dr. Mary Stephens dug with some determination into the sweet spot where the temple arteries run on the right side of my face directly in front of my ear. The arteries were delicate and elusive and it seems to have taken longer than usual to extract a piece of the artery to examine. A delicate specimen that indicated success in her handiwork. During the hour I was wide awake on the pillow, I turned my head on its side. In my ear throughout the procedure I hear a clanging and squishing and the inaudible gestures of a surgeon's blade. I resort to pranayama yoga breathing in my mind and in my mouth and in my lungs. The discipline calms me as a I think how this day surgery is definitely a very good strategy for torture movie scripts. Excruciating begins to encompass it.
Category: the measure of things
Pandemic Journal 8/1/2021 – Simone de Bรฉbรฉ
Boxing Day 2020 It was a clear day. Warm for a city not too far south of the prairie taiga. The temperature had risen to just below freezing. This walk with Helen wound its way through Riverdale along the river. We stopped to investigate a perfectly round hole in a hollow tree, the work of… Continue reading Pandemic Journal 8/1/2021 – Simone de Bรฉbรฉ
Pandemic Journal 26/12/2020: Pleasureโs encore, a dream.
The dream was compensatory. In the dream, they could have been anyone. Anywhere. ... The discovery was simple. If you looked closely, out of the body of the main character a dark powder grew, sloughed off, eroded. The substance floated to the ground like cocoa. The collaborator learned the skin released this effortlessly. The effect? Sensual arousal.
Pandemic Journal 3/8/2020 โ Thunderstruck! (a letter to my daughter on her birthday)
My often privileged life is long enough to have had many ups and downs over almost seventy years including navigating the unevenly distributed challenges of this global pandemic. My daughter is the highlight of my life well-lived. I am grateful for the gifts of adoption, for the lifetime of love that ties us together.
Pandemic Journal 19/7/20 โ Summer in the city bricolage: masks and masculinity, two gardens, a nearby beach, a Chinese grocery, a market, and David Suzuki
Pandemic Journal 22/5/20-17/6/20 โโGone Bananasโ Notes From My Solitudinous Solitude
By day, I count the inequities now underscored and bathed in broad daylight by pandemic effects. The youth with no future. The aged warehoused in dead zones. The mothers whose workday suddenly expands with childcare, teaching, and at-home paid labour. For instance, in my old haunt - the university, academic womenโs publications have fallen off precipitously since COVID-19 appeared. The pandemic operates like a magnifying glass of injustices. ...Once I went for walks in the ravine. Now I listen to the rain from underneath the covers. The monsoon that is late May and sometimes June promises to go on through the summer. My psychic drama.






