Welpy-welp.
I’ve officially arrived at the ass end of the snake year.
The boulevard outside my door was soaked in pooling sewer filth from the 27th of December to about January 20th.
The snake has incontinence in it’s old age. Or it is terrified of the coming hooves of the next year.
I remember once being at a picnic with my family on some bright New England day. I don’t know who spotted it, but we– us kids got excited about finding a snake nearby. I believe I was the quickest one and was able to catch the garter snake with my hands. I did not keep hold of it for very long. It was terrified of being snatched up out of the grass by a child and it wet me in defense. And it 𝓈𝓉𝒶𝓃𝓀. I remember the talk turn immediately to best practices for nullifying strong animal odors, skunk smells especially. Tomato juice seemed to be top of the list. We did not have that available– and perhaps orange juice was used instead? I have trouble remembering if it was me who actually caught a wild animal with my own hands. I remember many hands: my siblings’ hands; my parents’ hands. I don’t remember any admiration directed at me for quickness of body, for swiftness, deftness. I remember skunks and tomato juice instead. But a snake had been caught then and admired for a moment.
Last year when the dragon transitioned to the snake, David Lynch was taken away in the momentum. That was something I felt deeply because he was on my mind in the days before he passed. This year, I get shit almost literally thrown on my doorstep. Not much better?
In spite of all the offal at home and abroad– (I see you Myanmar, DR Congo, Rwanda, Thailand, Cambodia, Sudan, Iran, Venezuela, Ukraine, Iran, Palestine… ET FRIKKIN AL)– I have been able to carve out some moments to “appreciate” my health journey since being struck down with the elfshot. I’ve made a curation here of some consecutive Julys that show the goings of this journey:
In July 2021 I was trying to go about my day to day while in a massive continual brain fog state. I was three months out from taking my first antibiotics for Brucellosis. I was functional, but not at all. I was brought along to Mexico City for a music+art thing with Hugo Crosthwaite and The Color Forty Nine. Covid-19 was was taking thousands of people out of life daily. Wearing medical masks was politicized.
Flip forward a year to July 2022. I was in the middle of another antibiotics regimen to clear my system of Brucella and Bartonella. I was taking three kinds of antibiotics for two months straight. This was after taking shots of antibiotics in the ass in November 2021. My body was in so much pain and discomfort. I was begging for death.
No one told me antibiotics make you suicidal.
Flip forward a year to July 2023. I was sporting another major scar from having my uterus taken out in May for which I had to take more antibiotics. I was traveling to San Miguel Allende for the Guanajuato Film Festival: a working vacation. Somehow, I rode a horse.
Flip forward another year to July 2024. I was a stunned animal going out alone, for the time in years, to a strange part of the US (South Dakota)– a piece of driftwood from the Pacific dropped in the Badlands. I was attending a sci-fi / fantasy convention to catch the year in the form of a man. I caught a dragon… or perhaps was caught by a dragon. I met such beautiful humans there that I would keep them forever if I could. It pains me to think of how I was barely present in their presence.
Flip forward another year to July 2025. I was only just starting to truly come out of the brain fog I’d been in since 2021. One year to the day, my “impressionable” little HIGHLY SENSITIVE self dreamt about that sci-fi / fantasy convention.
I broke the July travel pattern by visiting Mexico City in May/June. It was to catch a snake– to catch the year in the form of a man at a sci-fi / fantasy convention– again! It’s not a simple thing to hold an international sex symbol when you understand what that means. Of course, I suffered for it more than when I got the stink of a garter snake on my hands. I lost weight (I do NOT need to lose weight) and my body thought it would be fun to have a pretend menses– something to do with my body continuing to mend from surgery. Harried over-stimulation, not adjusting to the oxygen levels… I was a walking disaster. But a disaster improved from the disaster that I was a year before; but in a different way.
Healing is not a straightforward going.
(Heh. Skål to the Mikkelsen brothers for being a part of my irregular processes. Also, sorry, boys.)
These days I continue to have twitching in my eyes to remind me of my distress. It’s a far cry from when I used to feel like my body was going to stop working if I exerted myself beyond casual usage. I could not lift or carry much more than my own body and even then I had to be mindful. My neuromuscular interconnection was so screwed that just stretching would trigger panic attacks; waking up in the morning triggered them. Doctors don’t tell you the nuances of what anemic “fatigue” is like. They have even less understanding of the gut-brain axis.
I’ve soldiered myself from the fragility of existence to working with weights. I can almost carelessly do jumping jacks. I have muscle tone again. My brain fog is cleared. This is not insignificant. You have no idea the number of times I have broken down crying because I could do something with my body again, and it didn’t hurt in a horrifically unexpected way, or I didn’t expect… repercussions for it.
I mean, hey, it’s not like I was/am an art model and butoh performer. It’s not like I’m not going to be devastated at the loss of what little physical prowess I had, or anything.
The wood burns. The Horse runs swift.
I am here to witness it. I am here.
Be proud for me. I am not dead.