this is an attempt to hold myself accountable to write a thousand unedited words a day for thirty days.
as soon as i start doing well, i punish myself, as a reward. today was long and it’s only 3 pm. every minute goes by slowly but it feels like yesterday that i had her, that i was recovering, that i could barely stand up, that i would take tramadol and worry if it would pass to her through my breastmilk.
pregnancy taught me that i could expand and expand, inward and outward, that i could go deep and wide enough to hold others inside me.
i am typing and i am not looking up. i am doing my best not to break the flow, not to stop and read, not to notice the typos or even check if there are any, not to reread and wonder: how can i make this better? not to read and think: i don’t think i like this, let me delete.
i am reading two of my favorite books, and as i tell you this the sun peaks in behind me through the parting clouds in the most romantic way, making feel that yes, this is the moment, yes, this is the place to be, you started writing at the absolutely correct time, the universe and its alignments truly never cease to amaze. it’s all so beautiful one is tempted to assume that someone must be behind it all. nobody know beauty like humans.
one book is for my mind and one is for my soul. really i am rereading the, but really really when i read them the first time i had no idea what they were about, so i may as well be reading them for the first time again.
nunu is sleeping and starting to say hi, or is starting to heave her voice out in a way that makes it seem like she’s saying hhheeeei. and she knows exactly when to appear to say it. she knows a lot more than she lets on, a lot more than is necessary for a five year old frankly, she’s up to something.
i will not look up, i will not look up. i looked up, but only to make sure that i’d written up and not “uo”. the o and the p are very close together on the keyboard and my nails are long.
my husband and i are watching the sopranos. like any great show from the ‘90s and early 2000’s, it’s sprinkled with unnecessary mentions of israel that just jump out at you out of no where. you’re watching your show, you’re following the story, you’re invested in the characters, you’re enjoying yourself, and all of a sudden, out of nowhere, a character needs to say “israel” for no reason whatsoever, in no way adding to the movement of the plot or the depth of any character.
god forbid they don’t repeat it enough for you to remember that it’s there. god forbid you enjoy your show in the blissful forgetfulness that a monster lives in your background, and you’ll learn to treat it with respect. of course a hollywood series about an italian-american mafia boss with mommy issues is going to involve peripheral characters who are “israeli drug dealers”, who “have family in israel”, who are “ex-IDF soldiers”. in all fairness, this would’ve been true, this probably is true.
the sopranos is about an italian mobster named tony who reluctantly goes to therapy to deal with his panic attacks. season after season, more lives are taken, more distrust builds between the characters who start off the closest, tony loses more control over his captains, puts his trust in the wrong people, breaks the trust of the right people. season after season you watch this operation decay bit by bit, relationship by relationship. you watch force eventually destroys what it was meant to contain. you watch the fbi bug people and isolate them from their loved ones and trick them into sharing secrets. at many points you wonder who the bad guys are, and at the better and more poignant points you wonder if there are even any good guys. i don’t think there are.
tony’s is a hierarchy of operations, a pyramid, with him at the top, a system where the rule trickles down and money trickles up. in this way, tony is just like the government that spends six seasons trying to catch him, but tony’s system operates in the shadows, and the government legitimizes itself with what it calls “the law” (that it made up).
no stopping, no looking, no going back. the sun is beaming in again, a little softer this time. i had cheese and crackers for lunch while i danced for nunu and now my stomach hurts but i’m craving something. her cheeks maybe. but i don’t want to wake her now that she’s finally asleep. maybe i’ll have some medicine after this, as a reward.
the book i’m reading for my mind is anti-oedipus by gilles deleuze. the sun is suddenly beaming in now and exposing the unexpected amount of dust this desk as collected in just the three days since i moved it here. and i sit here most of the day. it’s a genuinely surprising amount. there’s basically a film of dust all along the sides, the edges, the screen, the screen mount, the podcaster board, everywhere but the keyboard i’m typing on and mouse and the small radius around them. i should probably clean up before the medicine.
where is the green sheep? always asleep, as i should be, considering she’s napping and i should nap when she naps and yet i have not yet been able to bring myself to becoming a napper. though as you can tell i am a yapper and i am in fact dragging out these sentences because i’ve assessed that the length of the page looks to be about a thousand words, maybe just less than that, but i don’t want to look to closely so i don’t end up editing or rewriting anything.
all the world’s women are my daughter. all the world’s people are my children. why did i think of this? i don’t know. i wanted to write something to make sure i pass the thousand word mark and not betray myself, and this is what came.
also, i ordered a guitar recently. i’ll tell you about it when it arrives tomorrow.
cheers,
elianne
But wait, what’s the other book?! 😬
I deeply enjoyed this read Elianne! Kisses to NuNu!