I want to tell you about this because it’s so interesting, at least to me. I had a plan to give up Norco. I followed it down to one-half pill a day. That felt okay. Then when I gave up that last one, the full withdrawal symptoms came roaring back! So I cut the pills into fourths, just a sliver, and took it at bedtime. My body was fine with that, but when I finally gave up the sliver, the entire colony of bees swarmed again under my skin! I took a lot of stuff to sleep. It was that or pace the floor. It took two more nights of sleeping pills before, thank God, I got free of the bees. My body sighed with relief and became my own body again.
Maybe I’m especially sensitive because of my many years of heavy-duty meditation. I don’t know. Maybe it took that long to get the accumulations out of my sluggish system. Maybe my imagination got too much into the act and told me I should be having withdrawal symptoms. Nonetheless, the misery was real. I now have a gut-level appreciation of the plight of the addict.
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A few days ago, the sun was shining, the temperature was perfect. I went downtown to take my wedding ring to the jeweler to have it welded back together . (It had to be cut apart to get it off my finger before surgery.) I leisurely walked down Front Street, something I haven’t done in months and months. It was glorious, my legs working properly, my back not hurting, standing straight. I was almost like the old me! I was almost giddy with joy. I’m filled with gratefulness. I’m grateful to the excellent surgeon who managed to do a lot of complicated stuff with rods and screws and laminectomy without damaging my nerves. I’m grateful that I’m beginning to feel strong and healthy. True, I’ve gained a very annoying amount of weight from being sedentary for so long. None of my clothes fit in the waist. True, we’re facing some very difficult times with Jerry’s daughter, and Jerry himself is not in great shape. Sadness does not negate joy, though. It just sits alongside it.
This is more like a diary than usual! I just wanted to say these things. I’m writing again, slowly, but there’s some spark in it again, some energy behind it. For a long time, I’ve been putting words on paper as a discipline, a duty to myself. There’s been little pleasure in it and the work showed that. I’m interested again. I’m writing a series of poems about dolls—paper dolls, the Tony Doll, the Ginny Doll, and now I’m working on Barbie. She’s hard because she is, like, everywhere, and everything has been said about her. There are no shadows to explore. But I can’t ignore her. Maybe I’ll do the American Girl doll. I never had one. They were expensive and I guess still are.
I realize I’m a dinosaur. There’s a special hurdle for us old writers. Our subjects aren’t the subjects that young editors and young readers respond to. Our world is not their world. The Tony Doll is, like, ancient history. So it’s, like, necessary to make the poems speak two languages. Somehow.
More on this later, I think. There’s a lot to say there.