Little Steps

couple notes and recs from the couch, post-op

Hey everyone…

Just about a week ago, I was anaesthetized on a table as a team of specialists stood over me, one of them gently scraping half the tumor out of my frontal lobe, not damaging anything else, as far as we’ve been able to tell so far. He even took the photo I’d asked of him, since in the end they couldn’t wake me up during the surgery as I’d hoped. Though it didn’t have the bro on spring break selfie aura I’d been imagining… I guess surgeons need a strictly even keel, to put it one way, to be able to come back to society every day, after the things they do.

Anyway, I decided not to send that one, but here’s a couple from shortly before I got cut open.

About seven hours after getting put down I’d start stirring, or they’d inject me with whatever to bring me back to the living. I haven’t found the energy to research it, don’t know how it works, just that anaesthesia is incomparable to sleep, and seems wholly unnatural, not least of all in our inability to perceive it.

A few hours after that I’d vomit the contents of my distressed stomach into a bowl, and feel my divided skull move and squelch in wholly unprecedented ways. I suppose I’m getting bogged down in details. Little steps. Too much now and and I won’t be able to finish this for another week.

I’m feeling about the best I have since surgery, and am already starting to flag. So let me say, don’t think of this as a newsletter. Just a hello, lifting my head up off the pillow, letting you know I’m still here and hope to be so in a greater capacity, when I can.

Will you accept some links and recommendations in the meantime?

Here’s one all you new subscribers might not have seen yet, on health and rhythms and showing up, which is pretty applicable to where I am now. How does your health clash or collude with normative rhythms? I’d love to hear.

Rhythms of labor, labors of love labors

Just before my surgery I managed to do an interview, together with Tom Nomad, with It’s Going Down, analyzing the impacts of the recent indictments against Trump and power struggles amongst conservatives in the US. Read it here: https://itsgoingdown.org/elite-crisis-interview/

Want to read some speculative fiction? Did you hear I’ve been writing some? (under the pen name Alan Lea)

https://detritusbooks.com/products/hermetica-by-alan-lea

I’m participating in a GoFundMe to raise some money for myself and other people in the area dealing with health problems, trying to share our platforms.

https://www.gofundme.com/f/support-peter-kaniku-other-cleveland-organizers

Won’t be able to work for the near future, so support us if you’ve got some extra.

And for anyone who enjoyed that recent full moon, or is hearing a similar tune, this struck a chord. From the Many Moons Lunar Planner.

Stuck on the couch, reading news about, for example, Supreme Court rulings and progressive indignation with conservative “colorblindness” doctrine and then watching some of the awful TV series out there that manifest colorblindness and ahistoricity in the most pernicious ways... I’ve found the distinction between progressives and conservatives elusive. What is the line between Clarence Thomas and Bridgerton or The Great? Because it isn’t all that clear to me. In any case, it’s lovely that Harvard is now getting sued over its policy of legacy admissions (which help mostly white and almost entirely wealthy applicants) quoting the elitist Supreme Court majority back to it, one week later. May they all run around with their hair on fire, squawking loudly in their panic as their entire murderous, hypocritical edifice falls to pieces. To our amusement! Salut!

Trying to think of more things to recommend... I enjoyed The Big Sick. Anything you can send my way?