bike: 25 minutes
bike stand, basement
run: 1.25 miles
treadmill, basement
Slightly warmer. Only felt like -26, not -29. But the wind was blowing. So blustery! Tomorrow it should be much warmer. In the 20s, I think. Decided to workout in the basement again. Watched almost all of the final episode of Cheer. I can’t believe I made it to the end without the ending being spoiled. I can’t imagine competing under such pressure. I have never enjoyed the intensity of performing when it counts or the high you might get from putting yourself under such pressure and then achieving greatness. Is this a bad thing? Do I fail to push myself enough? Are there other ways to understand how we might push and stretch and challenge ourselves outside of this model of performed greatness? Do these questions make any sense?
I listened to my playlist again as I ran. At one point, I stared at the reflection of a big round lightbulb in a dark window. Last month I mentioned that it looked like the moon on lake superior. Today I noticed something at the top of the reflected globe of light that looked like clouds. Then I thought about how I usually imagine or see clouds at the bottom of the moon, not the top. Is that accurate? Suddenly, I imagined that the moon was upside down, or the world in the window was right side up and the world in the basement, on the treadmill, was upside down. Strange. Even stranger while running in place on a treadmill matching my foot strikes to the beat of the music.
What Kindergarten and Partial Hospitalization Have in Common/ IZZY CASEY
Assigned: seats, affirmations, adults with anorexia nervosa.
Breakfast, supervised.
Crying all day long because small things feel like big things.
Drumming drums in a circle, droning, “don’t be so hard on yourself,” disappearing the ability to desire.
Every body’s invited, every “cloud” has a silver “lining.”
Flushing a chocolate chip cookie down the toilet and taking a huge dump on it, fear of growing.
Growing
Hairs in weird places.
“I’m telling on you.”
“Just let someone know if you go to the bathroom. Don’t go alone.”
Knowing there’s a chance you’ll need to come back and do it all over.
Lunch, supervised.
Mental math, milk monitors, mindfulness of breath.
Nurse Eye Patch haunts your wake.
Ordering onion rings at the Olive Garden Field Trip, since the overseers claim opera cake isn’t in budget.
Perishing into fits over whether you get your second cookie, third, or fourth.
“Quit running, quit shouting ‘where are the fucking cups,’ question your definition of ‘friend.’”
Refusing to get up off the floor and participate in Dance Circle with the other girls and boy.
Singing “Let It Be” with the boy during music hour, then all together.
Taking turns: with the triangle, talking with your mouth full.
Unaccompanied dinner.
Validation that you are one of the biggest losers.
Withholding from weeping in public on the long walk home.
Xeroxed handouts of Dr. Phil’s “On Choosing Forgiveness” equals confetti.
“You’re the child not the parent.”
Zookeeper’s Nightmare.
I love Abecedarians and this is a great one. Powerful in this form. Abecedarians are fun to write. My only problem: the dreaded x. There are only so many x words to use. Maybe I should make a list or find a list. Just searched, “good x words for abecedarian poems” and this was the first entry: What About X? Writing the Abecedarian. Yes!