"Deep down in the bowels of our internet, America swims in the electric drool of self-inflicted dementia."
That's a quote from an Adrian C. Louis poem, but I changed "televisions" to "internet". I tweaked my back earlier today, getting the biggest bag of dog food I could from Sam's Club. 52 is a far different movie than 22. There's a lot less action, but the plot moves pretty slowly as well, slow enough you can anticipate the dramatic moments, but you're so lulled into sleepwalking that you still somehow miss them. I took a couple generic Advil because I keep a small container in the glove compartment these days, until the temperature changes congeal the pills into a solid, cracked out mass. Then I replace it at the Family Dollar.
Because my back was tweaked, I decided to take a hot as I could stand bath. My house is old, and one of the benefits of this is one of them big clawfoot tubs still crawling along in the upstairs bathroom, likely dragged up there when they got indoor plumbing. This house was an executive type house for the old Schuyler quarry company at some point, right next to the President's house, so it was surely a major aspect of fine comeuppance for whoever was living here at that time. Now, it's a remnant, but one I love. I got some nice sea salts a while back, from what I hope is actually a Palestinian company and not just cover for Israelis squeezing cash from the Dead Sea, and I use them to mimic the feel of the hot springs up in the mountains. It ain't the same, but it's still pretty good, and I test the limits of my hot water heater to fill the tub and lay in it 'til it all goes cool hand luke. I dug around the stacks closest to the bed for a poetry book, Adrian C. Louis, and thunk briefly to take a picture of me in the tub with the book and make some sort of social media post about "poetry in the bathtub". But before I could find my phone, conveniently misplaced as I am wont to do on Sundays, I realized the human error involved in doing so. Having my phone in the upstairs bathroom would sully the simplicity of the old ass tub full of searing water, and laying there with nothing to do but hope my back got better and read poetry. Luckily, my heart chopped back the infringing kudzu of ego, and I did not try to find my phone.
Poetry in the tub was just what I needed, though it's pretty cold, so the water didn't stay as hot as I would've wanted for as long as one would hope. But Adrian's words were a tonic to my mind, just as the rosemary mint sea salted bathwater was for my body. Like good poets do, he saw beyond the superficial, and I'm thankful my phone wasn't there to hijack the thoughts his words blossomed in me into Instagram ads for frybread t-shirts, or etsy patches of purple thunderbirds. Once I'd had my fill, both for mind and body, I tapped the drain with my heel to let the water free, and it all flowed slowly because I have olden plumbing fixtures in this tub, beautiful and metal and vintage and caked internally with the sediment of age itself. Instead of getting up and drying off, I just laid there, letting the water disappear, and the wetness on my skin to slowly be absorbed, til I was laying in nothing, as I let these words unfurl in my mind, playing with their order, enjoying the way they felt, knowing that by the time I got around to finger poking them into a devilish machine, that exact flow would be altered ever so slightly and it'd never be as perfect as the moment itself. I didn't even dry myself off, just tugged flannel pajamas on over my damp body, and late fall teases of a bitter winter were pounding on the windows, desperate to come in (and winning in neglected gaps). But I felt great, absolutely at peace with the brokenness of it all.
(And as I finger poked this into the devilish machine, I thought to look up whether clawfoot bathtub was "clawfoot bathtub" or "claw foot bathtub" or maybe even "claw foot bath tub", even though there's a giant 1983 library-sized dictionary in the next room. And immediately, before I got an answer, there was a sponsored result that promised "luxury clawfoot tubs", to anyone who could afford to click the link.)
That's a quote from an Adrian C. Louis poem, but I changed "televisions" to "internet". I tweaked my back earlier today, getting the biggest bag of dog food I could from Sam's Club. 52 is a far different movie than 22. There's a lot less action, but the plot moves pretty slowly as well, slow enough you can anticipate the dramatic moments, but you're so lulled into sleepwalking that you still somehow miss them. I took a couple generic Advil because I keep a small container in the glove compartment these days, until the temperature changes congeal the pills into a solid, cracked out mass. Then I replace it at the Family Dollar.
Because my back was tweaked, I decided to take a hot as I could stand bath. My house is old, and one of the benefits of this is one of them big clawfoot tubs still crawling along in the upstairs bathroom, likely dragged up there when they got indoor plumbing. This house was an executive type house for the old Schuyler quarry company at some point, right next to the President's house, so it was surely a major aspect of fine comeuppance for whoever was living here at that time. Now, it's a remnant, but one I love. I got some nice sea salts a while back, from what I hope is actually a Palestinian company and not just cover for Israelis squeezing cash from the Dead Sea, and I use them to mimic the feel of the hot springs up in the mountains. It ain't the same, but it's still pretty good, and I test the limits of my hot water heater to fill the tub and lay in it 'til it all goes cool hand luke. I dug around the stacks closest to the bed for a poetry book, Adrian C. Louis, and thunk briefly to take a picture of me in the tub with the book and make some sort of social media post about "poetry in the bathtub". But before I could find my phone, conveniently misplaced as I am wont to do on Sundays, I realized the human error involved in doing so. Having my phone in the upstairs bathroom would sully the simplicity of the old ass tub full of searing water, and laying there with nothing to do but hope my back got better and read poetry. Luckily, my heart chopped back the infringing kudzu of ego, and I did not try to find my phone.
Poetry in the tub was just what I needed, though it's pretty cold, so the water didn't stay as hot as I would've wanted for as long as one would hope. But Adrian's words were a tonic to my mind, just as the rosemary mint sea salted bathwater was for my body. Like good poets do, he saw beyond the superficial, and I'm thankful my phone wasn't there to hijack the thoughts his words blossomed in me into Instagram ads for frybread t-shirts, or etsy patches of purple thunderbirds. Once I'd had my fill, both for mind and body, I tapped the drain with my heel to let the water free, and it all flowed slowly because I have olden plumbing fixtures in this tub, beautiful and metal and vintage and caked internally with the sediment of age itself. Instead of getting up and drying off, I just laid there, letting the water disappear, and the wetness on my skin to slowly be absorbed, til I was laying in nothing, as I let these words unfurl in my mind, playing with their order, enjoying the way they felt, knowing that by the time I got around to finger poking them into a devilish machine, that exact flow would be altered ever so slightly and it'd never be as perfect as the moment itself. I didn't even dry myself off, just tugged flannel pajamas on over my damp body, and late fall teases of a bitter winter were pounding on the windows, desperate to come in (and winning in neglected gaps). But I felt great, absolutely at peace with the brokenness of it all.
(And as I finger poked this into the devilish machine, I thought to look up whether clawfoot bathtub was "clawfoot bathtub" or "claw foot bathtub" or maybe even "claw foot bath tub", even though there's a giant 1983 library-sized dictionary in the next room. And immediately, before I got an answer, there was a sponsored result that promised "luxury clawfoot tubs", to anyone who could afford to click the link.)
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