Sheena and I (May Day, 2019) Two years after retirement she finds this five-year-old journal entry —Sept 5, 2015: the serendipity of today Such a beautiful first class day. Two courses began - and I returned home to pass out in a deeply pleasurable nap of sheer exhaustion at how intense these initial encounters can… Continue reading Pandemic Journal 11/1/21: a retiree remembers classrooms students hallways colleagues gardens mentors
Category: pleasure
Pandemic Journal 9/1/2022: Excision
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.
Pandemic Journal 26/12/2020: Pleasure’s 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 19/7/20 — 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 —“Gone Bananas” 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 women’s 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.
Pandemic Journal 22/4/2020 — Earth Day Walks
What Brings You Down? Alberta's other contagious and deadly disease - the UCP virus.
Our Alberta provincial government is failing. Unsurprisingly.
They are killing people.
Doctors are fleeing the province. Rural clinics are closing leaving the UCP voters high and dry without medical care. All the better to create a vacuum that will be filled by Kenney's plans to privatize healthcare.