Thursday Beers

I'm sitting with my computer. I never use this thing. I can see why the PC is on its way down and out. I use my phone, phone, phone forever and always and my PC is like a book that I don't open but I set on the floor, set drinks on, set my feet on.

My little big dog is sleeping on the carpet, and I pay 20 dollars a day plus HST for this luxury, the luxury of having a dog who sleeps when I come home from work. She is a sleeping giant and I don't want to move or talk or stir because I don't want to wake her and ruin everything.

So much has happened since last August when I last visited this space.

It is summer again and I'm in a very different place in many ways, except geographically. I'm in the same place geographically- more or less.

This coming week I'm on vacation and I'm not visiting the arctic or anything at all this year, except going to the water, whatever water I can find and be close to. And I'm going group camping, and I will try not to be messy or make a mess of this situation.

I listen to two or three episodes of This American Life a day at the moment. It's painting swatches on my brain. I'm an evangelist for it.

My summer book is going to be the new David Rakoff.

I bought a new car so I'm getting a roommate.

I'm getting a roommate.

Iqaluit

I climb down the hill from the house
The land here always leaves you walking sideways and towards some
Body
Of water.

It's a bit treacherous
It is green and it is squishy
And there are many purple flowers
And arctic cotton
Broken up by Red and desert like rocks.
It's quite easy to slide and lose your footing on descent.

We walk along a little gravel pathway at the bottom
My borrowed sled dog and I
And she picks up bones and drops them
Scattered and bleached white
Powdery and light like chalk
A hip bone
A jaw
Part of an ankle

You spend a lot of time looking at your feet out here
And it's easy to forget.
Where you've been and where you are going

I'm a bit wary
Even with the dog. By myself looking for polar bears. It's unlikely
It's very very unlikely. But they have been spotted not so very far away.
And there are icebergs in the bay
In August. Stranger things have happened. Global warming.
Leads to polar bear warnings.

Climbing back up to the top again
Is when and where things get truly difficult
Heart pounding and breathing through the mouth
The south is soft and the south leaves me very soft
My body unable to work the way it should do

While here I am climbing
And I am trying to climb a little bit higher every day.

Sunday

That moment when you finally rediscover/find your favorite dress
Missing all these weeks
In the pile of discards
Clothing and bedding
On your left side
The bed side that no one is using
Anymore

Hat moment whb you finally rediciver/fond tour favirite dress
Missing all those wrrks
In the pile of discards
Coorhing and bedding
On your lty side
The bed side that no one Is ising
Antmore

Tonight.

I go to work. I look like death but act like I don't. I lift heavy bags of extruded animal protein and binders.

The other moments I spent sitting on a chair.

We usually don't get a chair but my leg
So...

Later I buy a pink and red twisted rope for my dog at home. She lies on top of
It while chewing on
an empty

Aluminum
Can.

I make dinner:
Chicken fat
Tomatoes
Beer

I watch the spreading thing
Going on with my
Leg

And Lori

Traces a circle around it
So that
We can watch it overcome its perimeters

Will I run out of blood?

June One

Two days ago I fell into a ravine. Something about falling, exposing blood and torn flesh mixed with dirt brings back memories of childhood like nothing else can. I am still young. I can still fall and get cut up. The resulting scrape was fairly large but stopped bleeding very quickly. I walked home slightly self conscious about it and the grass stains on the back of my pants. I washed it with orange soap in a lather. By the next day a red rash was growing around it and a swell. By nightfall it was becoming painful to walk and off to emergency I went. Doctor's consult: Rapidly spreading skin infection, wicked antibiotics. I had to start them immediately. The nurse handed me two horse pills and a paper cup of water. I am still young. Still young enough to visit the ER in every town in which I am living. It should begin to subside in 24 hours.

Last month I was bitten by a dog.

There is this constant
heaviness and pressure
in the chest

I think I know what it is now
my heart gets bigger every day

Puppies

There are
some really, really bad things that happen in life and then there are
puppies
you can be hurt so very, very terribly and then you come across an amazing bundle of
puppies
they're on the lawn at your friendly local
kennel
and they're frolicking on the grass (one of the only times it is fitting anymore to use the word "frolic"
it just suits these
puppies
to an absolute frigging t).

And when you climb one leg at a time and over the fence
oh it is so amazing to be one
hundred
percent
covered in
puppies.

"There is something so fantastic about puppy smell" I yell across the field and
he yells back
"I know, the greatest". Some people just really get it---right away.

Puppies pulling down on the skirt that I bought because it seemed to fit
that downtown aesthetic
I was going for at the time
But of course, there is very little need for downtown sensibilities
when you're standing in the middle of nowhere

Just sky in all directions
and a falling down barn behind you
and there are five little souls wriggling around you
each destined for an airplane ride to a far-away family somewhere
but for right now and for just these twenty minutes you are their entire world
and being.

And for you, for anyone else
Twenty minutes can absolutely repair any multitude of sorrows.