I am quarantining with my parents after having dinner with a (vaccinated! boosted!) cousin on Tuesday who subsequently tested positive for COVID.
No symptoms yet, and we ate together in a spacious kitchen with the doors open, and - yeah. Sticking close to home and getting tested on Sunday morning. Plans to hang out with other family members are now off the table, and in a way I’m *almost* grateful (you know what I mean) because it was feeling increasingly not wise to go be around, well, anyone.
So, I’m in it with the rest of you, and spending all the rainy downtime getting organized for January and taking naps and drinking coffee-coffee-decaf-chai, and having way too many sweets, and hoping that if we get sick it is manageable. I’m sending out all my good wishes for a safe and restful holiday. I’ll see you Tuesday for our last essay of 2021.
All my love always,
tuya xo dani
📖Read: Caught this via Helena Fitzgerald’s Griefbacon and I’m going to write it out here because I so want you to read it (out loud!):
If You Get Sick
if you get sick i will not tell you you should have eaten better exercised more taken herbs worn a condom stayed sober been safer
i will not try to figure out at what precise moment of your particular, human carelessness you contracted the disease
i will not tell you it’s your fault that you were selfish or high risk or reckless with this body of yours, vulnerable as mine and just as capable of betrayal
i will not say well what did you expect it was a matter of time you get what you deserve you asked for it because if shame was medicine we’d all be healed by now
i’ll think about how viruses are proteins, looking for hosts and how we are animals, alive and desperate warm-blooded and whole, and how we are humans, exposed and terrified, making up stories of borders and boundaries, as we live in self-contained units where nothing comes in and nothing goes out
honey- if you get sick (when you get sick) i will love you i will ask you what you need to feel better and i will do my very best to get you that cup of ramen extra blanket hbo login pack of spirits grocery delivery
i will tell you that you’re not alone send you memes and whisper your name in soft prayers of healing by the hot pink candle on my window sill
i’ll send my biggest rage and grief to the state, the stars, the forces that abandon us, that make us go to work and then pay for healthcare and pay to survive
and i will keep loving these bodies yours and mine that are always our own and always each others porous and sublime, that make way for touch as they make way for sickness
👀Watch: Y’all know I love Barry Lopez and this short film in tribute on the one year anniversary of his passing is ambient and lovely and slow and moving and maybe also something you want to cozy up with.
🎧Listen: I know that I am late to every. single. party. BUT I just started listening to this and it makes me laugh and I realized how little I really laugh these days and maybe you need to laugh too.
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I laughed when I saw the title of this essay. (Thank you. I do need to laugh) and that poem is gorgeous. ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️
every time you comment i feel a little brighter. thank you for that ✨