#hashtag-i-cant-anatomy-right

[gibbearish]

a weird little thing abt me is i will definitely mock shitty ai art but it never feels right doing it about the hands simply by virtue of the fact that a lot of them look indistinguishable from the hands i was doing years ago when i first got a drawing tablet

[zecoritheweirdone]

hey, looks like jellie found another bug.

[lisamccrack]

Life goes on... I guess.

I've been living 'cancer free' for 6 werks now. I act like it's all okay, and I'm doing well. I guess I am physically, but there isn't yet complete peace in my mind. I suppose I should accept that it wouldn't be normal to take all those punches and come out as good as new. My body has betrayed me. It has taken my health, and not just for the short term. Even if the cancer stays gone, there's a whole load of other crap that I'm trying to deal with too. I've had three UTI's in recent weeks. I cant be sure yet if I'm just unlucky or if it is a side effect.  Probably the latter. They never develop into anything major, 3 days of anti biotics sorts it out. Still just as irritating though. Fertility. This is bothering me the most right now. It was never really on my mind before, but I suppose it isn't when you just assume that you will get your chance. I'm 28, I have no children. My dream to carry and give my husband a child is gone. Well, it's gone in reality... but it hasn't yet been mentally accepted. Every other day now I find myself thinking about it. It seems everyone around me is getting pregnant. I can't, we cant, escape it. I seem to go through phases where I care more one week than another. My mind and soul are exhausted, so we decided to book a last minute break 🌴 get away from everything and everyone. The hotel and surroundings were beautiful. I have never really rated Tenerife before now, but this had everything we needed. Everything except the conveyer belt of pregnant women that rolled in 🤔 During the week, 13 pregnant women came and went. Thirteen!!! How does that even happen? Never before have I gone away and been surrounded by that many bumps. I'm certain it's not just because it's now on my radar, and I am noticing it more. This was a definite first. I resorted to taking sneaky pics on snap chat, with their number hashtagged to it, #10 #doublefiguresnow. Photo proof to my friends that this isn't one of my many moments of exaggeration. There really is some pregnant society going on out there. Lee kept saying "it's the season". 🙄 Sometimes I find myself wondering if it is a punishment for something I have done, in a past life maybe. Or maybe it's the good and the bad evening itself out? You can have a clear result but you can't escape your reality. Can't have it all! I do wonder though, why can't we just be given a week where we can free our minds? There is always something somewhere rubbing my, our, noses in it or something that goes tits up with me health wise. I must remember to be less selfish and stop making it all about me. Lee is suffering this too. 🙈 I don't know. 😣  😑 We wondered down to the beach one of the days, I'm not a huge fan of the sea, but this beach was really nice; and, NO bumps in sight. You could call that a win, but instead we were faced with old women and their saggies flopped out or trapped under their arm pits 🤣 (o)(o) What's the lesser of two evils? 😂 We chose going back to the pool. Despite my over active mind, I did enjoy our time away. I wished we could have booked longer than a week. I think my parents may have died from sleep deprivation if we did though. The dog doesn't seem to follow the same rules in their house. Lee doesn't have the holidays at work either. 😣 While we were away I started to get this pain in my stomach too. A new pain I've never felt before.  At first I put it down to the bladder niggles I was having. The pain came and went, and I said to Lee that I must remember to mention it to Dr Mak when we get back. Could it be indigestion or something? I didnt think of it again, until it happened again. It was more painful this time. A kind of squeezing pain coming in waves. Our last night away was ruined because of it. I couldn't eat, and I didn't want to be sat in a bar holding my stomach either, so we went back to the room. After an hour or so the pain disappeared, it is really strange. I was fine flying back home the next day, and forgot about it again. We had an early night, and around 3am I was woken with the pain again. This time it was really intense. I knew something was wrong, but I went out of my way to avoid showing Lee how painful it was. I knew, if he knew, then he would have had me in A&E. I was sure that it would pass again anyway. 5am came and went, and Lee had left for work. I didn't even make it until 6am and I was calling him to tell him I couldn't cope. I had made the usual mistake of consulting Dr Google, and convinced myself that I had appendicitis. If I didn't come clean now, own up to say that I am suffering, then I would just lie here and die, and no one would know. A friend of mine works nights, and came to my rescue before Lee could get to me. Lee left work, and by the time he got to me the pain was finally starting to subside. I knew it would eventually! Sods law after he has rushed home to me. We agreed that going to my GP was a better option. I still get straight in at the doctors, I'm not so sure that's a benefit, some would argue that it is. The Dr had me doing pregnancy tests 😩 Does this woman have any clue? Of course they came back negative, and she went on to have a poke at my stomach. She said she could feel something, fluid perhaps, but was just guessing. Yep. Guessing. ☝️😂😭😫 She can't be sure, as she doesn't know if my anatomy has changed since radiation. Great, so, that was a waste of time. I did get an urgent blood test out of it though, the results were supposed to be available that evening, but even by lunch time the following day I hadn't heard anything. I seen Dr Mak on the Tuesday, and explained to her my latest drama. She went over all of my scan images with me, as I expressed my disappointment of how my NED results were delivered. She isn't sure if my latest symptoms are related to treatment. It's possible, but she couldn't feel anything. Not even this fluid that GP mentioned. I've been prescribed more pills to see if they change anything. They're for gastric issues, so we'll see. I'll be rattling if I take all of the pills I've been prescribed at the moment. I say If, as I still haven't started to take the HRT yet. I just can't bring myself to do it. Despite all of this, the good news is.... My 3 month check up was a good one! Still cancer free, and still going. Roll on August for the next one. If i get a good result then, it will be HONEYMOOOOOOOOON booking time. 🎉🌴👰🤵

[topmixtrends]

KIM ADRIAN IS wearing socks. (Socks over tights, as it happens. Ankle-high, cashmere, periwinkle socks.) As are, I imagine, our fellow diners in this cafe, in Boston, in December. I — a Californian — am not. But in this matter, as in most matters, I really ought to follow her lead. Adrian is one of those people who just does life better — considers things, and what those things might mean — with greater depth and purpose than most of us.

Her new book, Sock, one of the latest titles in Bloomsbury’s “Object Lessons” series, is an utterly engaging investigation — not so much of that object, per se, as of human evolution, anatomy, physics, sexuality, fashion, painting, consumerism, manufacturing, and motherhood. Of trending, sock-ish Twitter hashtags. Of myriad topics to which Adrian’s curious and nimble mind turns as she examines, explains, and otherwise elucidates the humble sock.

The effect of her approach to all of this is to make one feel a little like a guest at an epic dinner party — the kind to which I’m always hankering for an invitation. The kind where great conversation zings around the table, along with the homemade chutney or slow-roasted heirloom beets: discursive, sparkling talk that leaves you feeling nourished and sated from the neck up.

For the record, I have never been to a dinner party at Kim Adrian’s house, but once a year, if we’re lucky, we meet for a couple of hours, on one coast or the other, to pick up the time-worn thread of our grad-school friendship. Our conversations — her side of them, anyway, are a lot like this treasure of a book: illuminating, erudite, deeply intelligent, and always delightful.

¤

SARIAH DORBIN: Of all the objects available for your examination and consideration, I have to ask: Why the sock?

KIM ADRIAN: Well, my original pitch had to do with knitting. The “Object Lessons” series has a very inviting website — they solicit pitches right on their landing page. It didn’t take much to sell me on the series as a concept — I love exploring big ideas through small windows. So I’d landed on their site with a lot of enthusiasm, and without really thinking things through too much, I pitched a book about knitting because I’m a long-time knitter, and I’d written about knitting before. It wasn’t until several hours later (in the middle of the night) that I realized — adoy — knitting isn’t an object. It’s an activity. So at 3:00 a.m., a bit insomnia-addled, I parsed my options: sweater, hat, scarf … sock. I’d never knit a sock in my life, but the idea appealed to me because there’s something just a bit silly about socks, something inherently absurd. They’re vaguely human somehow. Maybe because they’re smelly, and they often seem to have a mind of their own — wandering off. I wrote to the editors in the morning, amending my pitch, and they loved the idea.

Sock is not just informative and intelligent but surprisingly charming, witty, and, at times, quite personal. How did the tone of the book assert itself — and how does that tone relate to your other work?

I knew going in that tone would have to do a lot of work in this book if it wasn’t going to be a complete snore. The object of the sock interests me precisely because it’s so ordinary. So ostensibly boring. What’s to say about a sock? (I liked that challenge.) But if you were a Martian, and you knew nothing about human beings, socks would probably be very interesting to you. Hmm. They put these little bags on their feet all the time — I wonder why? I wanted to look at the sock like that. But I knew I’d have to pull my readers on board with me. Like, let’s be Martians together. Basically, I had to create a playful atmosphere. It’s a pretty different tone from my normal one, I think. Closer to my real-life conversational mode than most of my creative work, which is often a little more formal. Weirdly, formality frees me up in some contexts. But not this one.

Over the course of the book you present the sock as an ingenious tool of the most basic functionality for Neolithic man, and then, transitioning into our current moment, as an object of fetishistic desire, a totem of bittersweet maternal longing, a barrier between our skin and what some consider the earth’s “healing energy,” emblematic of all that’s wrong with our disposable culture, and, somehow, also, as a symbol of the ways in which we can fight against that very culture. Did you know, going in, that the sock would prove to be such a rich subject? Or do you believe that any object can hold such depth of history and meaning?

Absolutely I believe that any object can yield enormous insights if you examine it closely enough. There’s an “Object Lesson” called Dust. Dust is fascinating. An incredibly rich subject. But not if you don’t look at it carefully. If you just glance at dust, it’s nothing. I think of the “Object Lesson” books as extended essays more than anything else, because that’s what essays do — look closely at things. I’ve always felt that the essay is kind of a Buddhist genre for this reason. Maybe that’s stretching things, but what I mean is, a good essay examines its subject very deeply, without preconceived notions, without judgment. Your only real tools, beyond language, are your observational abilities and your curiosity, and you have to hone these qualities, because the goal is to see what your subject will yield to them. You can’t have flabby curiosity. You can’t give up just because something seems boring or insignificant. Nothing is truly boring except, maybe, our own thought patterns. And a good essay might be said to disrupt those patterns.

¤

Sariah Dorbin’s short stories have appeared in the Antioch Review and the Bellevue Literary Review, and anthologized in The Best of the Bellevue Literary Review. She holds an MFA from the Bennington Writing Seminars, and works as a creative director for a Los Angeles advertising agency.

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