Yesterday, a week and a day after the second surgery, the eye doctor gave me the okay to resume normal activities so this morning I was happy to finally get back to my morning yoga routine. As well as other aspects of my daily prepare-my-body-to-function regimen including one that was recently featured on Oprah and now, hilariously, is suddenly flying off the shelves at Walgreen's.
What a weird summer it was. The first part was unbelievably wonderful as I spent a month on a writing fellowship at the Saltonstall Foundation colony in Ithaca, NY. There I worked on my new novel. Then, what I'd meant to be a two-week writing hiatus, after which I planned to review what I'd done at the residency and get back to work, instead turned into a rest-of-the-summer medical leave of sorts. Not from wage work but from writing. First I hurt my back, bringing pain such as I've never before experienced. I had to keep going to work but that was all I could manage. It took a good six weeks until the back muscles fully healed. Then in the midst of that came the first and then the second cataract surgeries and the resultant vision difficulties. There've also been some family health issues to grapple with.
Now it's autumn. October. I feel almost normal again. Ready to write. Ready to--dying to--read as soon as I get me some glasses that work. Thinking about what kind of contribution a red reader and writer, and, now, blogger, can make at this moment of capitalist economic crisis that will soon be dumped onto the shoulders of the working class. And preparing to party next week when my comrade and lover Teresa and I celebrate our 20 years together.
