Spring healing

[vaneramos]

Spring is a madness. Ecstasy runs through the veins of flesh and leaf. I feel it rising in my chest like heat in a soup pot.

This time of year, the sun shines on my computer screen first thing every morning. It keeps me at bay for a while, forces me to eat breakfast and wash last night's dishes before glomming onto my keyboard and monitor like a magnet.

I still have a homecare nurse coming in every morning to tend the incision from surgery I had on March 25. There are several places where the wound opened instead of knitting together. Apparently this is common with surgery on the intestines, it's so easy for detritus (stuff, shit) to get caught in the incision.

It's amazing to see new flesh forming in the openings. Sometimes it happens rapidly. The other day a hole the size of the last joint of my little finger filled in overnight with fresh, red Van meat. The human body is amazing.

The nurse also told me a story about my surgeon. Dr. L. had a patient who had an accident at work that stripped the flesh right off his index finger, down to the bone. She stuck the hand directly into his soft belly for a while (how long I wonder: a few days or a few weeks?) When they removed it, new flesh had formed on the bone.

The same thing is happening to these little holes in my stomach, in a less spectacular way. But the nurse says I heal much faster than most people. We're surprised to see perceptible changes day to day. She asked what vegies I'm eating, but I'm hardly eating any because they still disturb my digestion. Mostly I'm eating pasta, bread and dairy products, the things that keep my system regular. Not a very balanced diet, but for some reason it serves the purpose. My body must just be special, says the nurse.

I think it's the spring thing. My skin and bones, blood and hormones responding to the rising pulse of sunlight, the sky arching its back like a cat after a long sleep. I'm waking up, waking deeply. I'm anxious to go, move, find work, get on with my life. It's hard to realize I still have to take it easy.

That's part of the reason I started this journal, hoping to make myself write poetry again. If all goes well, many of the entries will be poems like the one yesterday. But I didn't take any time to get familiar with LiveJournal before I plunged in. I didn't spend any time in the shadows. I only heard about the site a few days ago on a email discussion group I belong to. It consists of past members of Themestream, a writers' community website that's now defunct. One member of this group, stephe, invited me to join LJ (thanks!), so here I am. But I haven't found anyone else I know yet. I have that wide-eyed, innocent newbie feeling.

And I'm still not sure what I want to make of this journal. I already have a spiral-bound notebook for my morning pages, my daily practice writing. So this space will serve another purpose, and I'm still trying to find out what it is.

Comments

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

Can fans be mutual? I'm still flitting around like a spring butterfly, looking for happy places to land, so I haven't read back entries yet. But your latest one was beautifully written, a taste of beautiful things to come.