(UPDATED) The Morkie's rage and other veterinary adventures

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Took The Morkie to the vet to see if there was anything to explain her recent transformations into a wolverine/piranha hybrid (three weeks of seemingly unprovoked attacks on Puppers after getting pissed at Derbz). Doc couldn't find anything physical, prescribed puppy prozac; as we had to go through a pharmacy, we got an amusing call from CVS about updating The Morkie's insurance information. Clearly she's our dependent, but.

(Yes, the The in The Morkie is capitalized; she is The Ohio State University of 13-pound tyrants.)

Noticed on the way home that she was, occasionally, not wanting to put her left hind leg on the ground. Examined and found what looks like a split growth-abcess-infection-blister-who-the-fuck-knows-because-it-could-be-anything-and-everything on her paw pad. Took a pic, sent it to docs: should hear later this morning; planning on another visit in. Efforts underway to not catastrophize (while it doesn't look like it's growing ON the pad but from it, as part of it, leading me to think it's more injury than tumor, I'm nonetheless prepared for the solution to be anywhere from "wait and see" to antibiotic cream and wrapped paw (or booty) to radiation and/or amputation; this being sort of the "check engine" light of Morkies). Going pretty well: if nothing else, we know that her aggressions aren't necessarily because she's a shit and that there is, clearly, something behind them.

I still have to look up how to spell piranha.

"must i write?"

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Current fear: that I used up and exorcised all of my stores of anger and rage and things unsaid in LAST CHRISTMAS and that I needed that anger and rage to fuel and fill the well of what passes for my writing practice. Maybe that's true, maybe not. My wife said to me last night, as she sought to calm my frayed hyperventilations, "but you love writing,” to which I said:

"No, I don't."

It's the first time I've ever said it (aloud) and I know I'm at least somewhat correct. To love an inextricable – for better or for worse – part of myself is a fool's errand: there are days when it's my breath and there are days when it's nothing more than another chronic, incurable autoimmune disorder that I'll have with me until the day I die: I'm not sure that you can love something that's such a part of you that it's become another limb, another part of you that makes you you.

To quote Tina Turner, "What's love got to do with it?"

Thinking this morning of Rilke's first letter in LETTERS TO A YOUNG POET:

"You are directing your thoughts outwards, and that above all is what you should not do at present. No one can advise and help you. No one. There is only one way. Withdraw into yourself... ask yourself in the stillest hour of the night, 'Must I write?' Dig deep into yourself for an answer. And if this answer should be in the affirmative, if you can meet this solemn question with a simple strong 'I must,' then build up your life according to this necessity. Your life right down to its most indifferent and unimportant hour must be a token and a witness to this compulsion."

I must.

i am ready to go back to bed

in

Rain continues and portends a DerbzBall-deficient day ahead but on the bright side I might have gotten somewhere in one of the Things: this is the morning's victory, so far. Shifting schedules a bit in an effort to make my day less clumpy– or am, perhaps, simply without anything valuable to contribute to the world in text-based form; if that’s the case let this casting into the ether live here in this little space of mine carved with a plastic spoon in the dollar store soap that is the internet.

(non)emergent rhythmic backburning

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Current operational theory is that this feeling I've had for a few months - at least since the final days of PRESS (A) 01 – is that I'm moving on to a different rhythm – or, rather, a different representation of my voice – with PRESS (A) 01 being the final statement in that particular epoch (which began with DESCANSO in 2021) and what this this TBD is something new.

(Or perhaps PRESS (A) 01 was/is the start of this new rhythmic epoch?)

Either way: this new unknown rat-a-tat is most likely why the current FictionThing (part of AnotherFictionThing though I suppose now it's MainFictionThing as I've decided to move both MainFiction and ComicsThing(s) to the deep backburner - at least until some sort of new rhythmic permutation emerges, from somewhere) is so appealing – in spite of empty/nowhere: it's in such a nebulous state that I can fiddle with whatever this new/different voice/rhythm is; probably revisit other things only when I can devolve they're back to a similarly nebulous state and find a way for them to fit in with this new? Let things emerge in the writing, not the planning: this is what I'm telling myself.

In the meantime, all I can do is hunker down and stare and fiddle and make sure I don't cross the line into what my therapist once so perfectly likened to forcing myself to fall asleep.

“Hard work doesn’t always pay off”

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Fantastic episode of the CLEVER podcast featuring Taylor Levy, one half of CW&T, the (oft-mentioned here) design studio behind beloved essentials such as the Superlocal and the Pen Type-C. Great interview, with this bit, “Buy lots of lottery tickets,” from their Principles page, really speaking to me:

We’re not suggesting you should gamble, but launching a project often feels like rolling dice. Hard work doesn’t always pay off. There’s no correlation between how much time is spent working on a project and the ultimate payoff. That’s why we try lots of things. We make tons of stuff. And once in a while we get lucky.

While how, precisely, that will manifest in my own work remains TBD, I’m definitely looking to what Taylor and Chei-Wei are doing and using that as a basis for reconceptualizing my practice and how I think about the processes within. You can check out the whole interview here:

write(?) / feel (?) / feral morkie

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Fact: the length of these posts is indicative of the quality of the morning's progress on the MainFictionThing(s) / the work at hand: short here = long there; long here...

Not that these are an "instead of" – rather, they are a tool to clear away cobwebs and to write something, anything. But, as of this morning at least, I'm still staring at screens / scribbling by hand (or what remains of my hand – my left one, the dominant hand, naturally – after The Morkie went feral (again) yesterday morning (she takes her status as eldest dogchild (much too) seriously, RESPECT MY AUTHORITAW, etc etc) and I had to step in and break it up; handwriting not happening for a bit), in search of that rhythm that brings it together. And I'm not hearing or feeling it. Yet.

Question I wrote to myself in large block all-caps: WHAT DO I NEED TO WRITE TO FEEL THIS? (Alt, I suppose: WHAT DO I NEED TO FEEL TO WRITE THIS?)

Rewatched THE FUGITIVE for the umpteenth time this weekend and it remains one of my favorite films (need to publish a list of those sometime). Everything just works, clicks – in spite of apparent production issues with the script leading to Tommy Lee Jones and Harrison Ford rewriting much of it on the fly: let them rewrite more things. All the things.

Like this thing.