I don't want advice about this stuff or for anyone to tell me what to do (I feel like I've had enough of that lately and it stresses me out), although I don't mind comments. I'm not looking for any one to feel sorry for me either. I'm just putting this out here because it happened Wednesday evening and I feel like expressing it to an extent.
As some people know (and some people don't), I have occasional seizures, as a side effect of another health issue I had about 15 years ago. Hard to believe my stroke happened that long ago now, but then again, not really, because time flies faster and faster.
I'm not going to get into an elaborate amount of detail abut my seizures and related factors, but I will say I can usually tell less than a minute before one is about to happen, so I can at least sit down on the floor.
But then afterwards, I don't know exactly what happened (I mean I know I had a seizure but I don't remember the part right after that involves getting up off the floor, walking into a different room and so on). This time I think I was even more confused than the last few times. I was confused about what time it was and how long ago the seizure happened (although that's usually the case). I had trouble finding my phone (it was just on my bed which is where I often keep it). I had trouble figuring out how to use my phone, how to find the contact info on my phone, what to press to make a phone call (later I saw that I had sent Darryl two little random emojis on facebook messaging which might have been me trying to use my phone but being confused). So I felt more confused (and for a longer time) than I usually do after a seizure. I feel like it took me at least 20 minutes to figure out how to use the phone.
I had been upset, stressed and sad on Tuesday. I then felt somewhat better on Wednesday, but still sad. Even though I've been in menopause for about a year or two now, it felt somewhat similar to a variation on PMS, which I haven't had in quite a while.
Then shortly before the damned seizure happened, it suddenly got substantially worse. I started to feel guilty about my FB Wall Posts/personal blog post from Tuesday, my heart started racing a bit, I felt very unnaturally negative and off-filter and as if I was on the brink of a panic attack. I couldn't make it go away and it was getting worse. It was very uncomfortable (mentally more so than physically). I thought about lying down because I didn't know what else to do. First I was going to pee, but then while on the toilet, the sensation I have right before a seizure came over me. I quickly wiped, flushed, moved into my computer room, sat down where I usually sit down there and had the very uncomfortable out-of-control sensation as if my neck is suddenly twisting itself to one side (the right side) and in my mind, I'm randomly sitting on my computer chair (even though I'm actually sitting on the floor) and seeing some random cartoon-ish images. I remember seeing a cartoon chicken.
Next thing I know, I'm in my bedroom, looking for my phone, and after finding it, having trouble figuring out anything about it for quiet a while. I was confused with words, which happens for a while after one of my seizures. I finally managed to call my mom about a minute before midnight (I know she stays up late). But then after we got off the phone, I ended up calling her back again, because I then felt a sore lump on the right back of my head, saw two red marks on the left side of my neck (probably/hopefully just scratches?), and saw that I had bit the inside bottom of my lip. I am not sure how any of those things happened, especially the lump on the back of my head, because last I knew, I was sitting on the floor. Maybe I somehow bumped my head into a door or a wall after I got up. The lump on the back of my head and the scratches on the left side of my neck make me uncomfortable and nervous since I'm not sure exactly what caused them. It sucks not knowing how something happened. It causes me to think a bit about my damned stroke.
The seizure itself also makes me feel uncomfortable and nervous because it's only been a tiny bit more than a month since the last one I had. The last one was October 7, three days after I got my latest Covid vaccine. Normally I don't have seizures anymore near that close together. For a while, I was only having one or two a year. Not one in October and another one in November. Maybe this has something to do with the latest Covid vaccine, because I remember feeling low energy, down and oddly out of it for several days after I got that (more mentally out of it than physically out of it, which I'd not experienced to that extent after one of my previous vaccines). I'm repeating myself again here, but it's bothersome because I don't think I've ever had only about a month before the last seizure. I certainly don't want my seizures to start getting worse or more frequent.
I suppose it could have something to do with hormones or stress. Despite trying not to mentally overreact too much about the election, (not that I'm ignoring it, but I didn't want to escalate my stress into some sort of toxicity) perhaps the disturbing fact that Trump won kicked in more about a week later, plus which some stressful seizure pill oriented paperwork I've been trying to deal with that has to do with health insurance suddenly telling me I might not be eligible for the pills I've been taking for years being largely covered by insurance, so I might have to switch to different generics and deal with different side effects and that's very upsetting to me, because I remember what some of my previous pills side effects were like.
Anyway, apparently it's just been one of those bothersome weeks and hopefully I feel better tomorrow. And hopefully everyone else who is overly stressed out or upset feels better too (but without ignoring real issues).
11/13/24
HELLO! DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME? DO YOU HEAR ME?
I know how my own brain works and how it feels. Sometimes I feel like certain people seem to think or act as if I'm less intelligent than I used to be or less intelligent than I actually am. I'm certainly not a genius, but I'm certainly not unintelligent. I have some word issues. I am not great at quickly and easily explaining some things. In some ways I'm different than I used to be, but doesn't that apply to most of us in different ways? I have some memory issues. I'm a rather slow reader and need to concentrate harder than I used to in order to initially process something and then not too long after that, I might forget certain things again. But just because my reading is slower and my processing takes longer and I have more memory issues than I used to, that doesn't mean that I don't understand things when I concentrate on reading them.
It also doesn't mean that I need someone else to repeatedly explain things to me as though I don't understand or to repeatedly talk over me or to tell me what to do as though I'll make the wrong choice if they don't or to indicate that I'm less than I used to be. Just because things take me longer and require more substantial effort and repeated concentration, that doesn't mean my brain is a broken down mess.
It means my brain is different.
My brain is still my own. Not worse. Not less than. Different.
In addition to the above (or perhaps somewhat interconnected with the above), I am feeling rather sad (and like I'm not getting enough accomplished in a timely manner, whatever that even means). I guess that's just the kind of day (month? year?) it is.
Somewhat related to my own slow process, on the plus side, one really positive thing about slow reading/processing is that I'm used to that and enjoy it (sometimes) because of poetry. Poetry has always been a preferred form of reading and writing for me and poetry is a form of writing that I have often chosen to read (and re-read) slowly in order to process (and interpret and interpret again in different ways) because that's how poetry works for me.
Along those lines, I will say one thing that is causing me to feel a bit sad is this meme I've seen quite a few of my poetry friends sharing on social media that shows a burning world on fire and then underneath that image of a burning world, a silly comedic "poet" asking, "Do you need any poems?"
Quite a few people are commenting that they don't know whether to laugh or cry and I feel that way too, but it mostly makes me feel upset and like crying and like maybe nothing is very important; not even the things we really like and are strongly drawn to.
I think a lot of us poetry/art people already know that poetry is not hugely important to the mainstream. But regardless of that, I still think it is a very worthwhile and meaningful form of expression and connection and sharing. Even if it's relatively little on a larger scale, I don't think that makes it meaningless or silly. I think it is meaningful and important to a lot of different people for a lot of different reasons.
It also doesn't mean that I need someone else to repeatedly explain things to me as though I don't understand or to repeatedly talk over me or to tell me what to do as though I'll make the wrong choice if they don't or to indicate that I'm less than I used to be. Just because things take me longer and require more substantial effort and repeated concentration, that doesn't mean my brain is a broken down mess.
It means my brain is different.
My brain is still my own. Not worse. Not less than. Different.
In addition to the above (or perhaps somewhat interconnected with the above), I am feeling rather sad (and like I'm not getting enough accomplished in a timely manner, whatever that even means). I guess that's just the kind of day (month? year?) it is.
Somewhat related to my own slow process, on the plus side, one really positive thing about slow reading/processing is that I'm used to that and enjoy it (sometimes) because of poetry. Poetry has always been a preferred form of reading and writing for me and poetry is a form of writing that I have often chosen to read (and re-read) slowly in order to process (and interpret and interpret again in different ways) because that's how poetry works for me.
Along those lines, I will say one thing that is causing me to feel a bit sad is this meme I've seen quite a few of my poetry friends sharing on social media that shows a burning world on fire and then underneath that image of a burning world, a silly comedic "poet" asking, "Do you need any poems?"
Quite a few people are commenting that they don't know whether to laugh or cry and I feel that way too, but it mostly makes me feel upset and like crying and like maybe nothing is very important; not even the things we really like and are strongly drawn to.
I think a lot of us poetry/art people already know that poetry is not hugely important to the mainstream. But regardless of that, I still think it is a very worthwhile and meaningful form of expression and connection and sharing. Even if it's relatively little on a larger scale, I don't think that makes it meaningless or silly. I think it is meaningful and important to a lot of different people for a lot of different reasons.
11/8/24
NEW! Happy to have my poem "Disabled Cook Resigns" making an appearance in the Autumn/Winter 2024 Issue of Sein und Werden!
"A nervous breakdown stuck inside
an Easy-Bake Oven
with pre-designated frosting mix
doesn't easily keep me all together."
in my poem "Disabled Cook Resigns", which is now appearing within the NEW Autumn/Winter 2024 Issue of Sein und Werden, with its Locard's Exchange Principle theme.
an Easy-Bake Oven
with pre-designated frosting mix
doesn't easily keep me all together."
in my poem "Disabled Cook Resigns", which is now appearing within the NEW Autumn/Winter 2024 Issue of Sein und Werden, with its Locard's Exchange Principle theme.
I'm delighted to be included and excited to read more of the issue!
Here is a link to my poem - http://www.kissthewitch.co.uk/seinundwerden/autumn-winter24/page41.html
And here is a link to the whole issue - http://www.kissthewitch.co.uk/seinundwerden/autumn-winter24/
11/1/24
Happy or Unhappy November! Creeping into November with Dissolution and Decay, a new poem of mine in Rogue Agent!
Creeping into November with Dissolution and Decay, a new poem of mine is now appearing in Issue 116 of Rogue Agent!
"Decayed
limbs lurch
themselves out of trees.
Broken branches
spurt dead seeds."
Read more here - http://www.rogueagentjournal.com/jcook-3
Dive in to the whole November Issue here - http://www.rogueagentjournal.com/issue116
10/31/24
It is still Halloween/ Me on Halloween night 2024!
A photo of me on Halloween 2024. It's hard to believe that October is about to end.
10/15/24
NEW! A collaborative poem by Daniel G. Snethen and me is appearing in Issue #106 of Yellow Mama!
"...The cruel teacher barks,
cancels recess, hideously instructsstudents to place their heads down
on the desks. She is prepared to lash out
at anyone who moves against her
and bite or slash them in the neck.
I was the shy one. I couldn't move.
I was afraid to breathe.
I didn't want her to hear me.
I feared I might get stomped or cut
into even tinier pieces."
in "Dire Wolf Consequences", a collaborative poem by Daniel G. Snethen and me, which is appearing in Yellow Mama Issue #106!
Preceded by art created by Keith Coats Walker!
Here's a link to the collaboration, but read Daniel's individual poems in this issue too, as well as investigating some of the other creepy fiction and poetry and art!
https://blackpetalsks.tripod.com/yellowmama/id3342.html
10/8/24
NEW! Two of my creepy poems are appearing in Cul-de-sac of Blood!
I have two new short poems appearing in Cul-de-sac of Blood!
Usually when I have new poems up, I share a few lines from one of the poems, but this time I'm sharing Cul-de-sac of Blood's description of my poems because I love their description!
Furthermore, after you read the two poems, if interested you can click on "Learn More About These Poems".
"Rotting bear dolls & chicken brains erase our heads & replace them with images of themselves, & though we might not have a name for this process, Juliet Cook’s poems show us what it feels like to find ourselves somewhere between foreground & background."
Read the poems HERE - https://www.culdesacofblood.com/juliet-cook-3
 |
| This photo of Henry Spencer (played by Jack Nance) in Eraserhead (directed by David Lynch) initially inspired the first poem. |
10/7/24
If I suddenly died, my poetry files wouldn't make sense to anyone else...
Most of my poems seem to range from one third of a page to one half of a page to almost a whole page to a little bit longer than a page to a page and a half (with occasional exceptions that are shorter or longer). But the poem I'd been working on for a while and recently finished (at least for now) is almost three whole pages long (and at least somewhat different from my norm in other ways too). I'm not usually drawn to long poems, because I'm a slow reader, and so if I see a poem that's more than a page long, I'm less likely to dive into reading it if my time feels limited. But this poem of mine is a weirdo and is doing what it wants to do.
Somewhere in the process of working on this poem, I also started thinking about how my process has changed over the years. For many years, I wrote everything on paper until a poem seemed almost done; then I would switch to the computer to see how the formatting looked when I typed the words from hand writing to the screen. I'd make a few more revisions on the computer and then print out the completed poem. If I changed my mind later and made more revisions and then printed out the revised version, I'd still keep the previous version(s) on my computer and on paper with the previous version(s) stapled to the revised version(s).
In more recent years, I don't care so much about saving all the drafts of a poem in progress. I'm not saying I delete things fast, but if a poem in progress ends up turning into a very different poem, I don't usually have a problem deleting the earlier version and just starting over with the new version and so on and so forth. I do still print out a copy of every completed poem though, so they're not just on my computer. But the printed out versions are oddly organized, as are the online versions. I mean, I know how and where I have them organized, but if I suddenly died, my files wouldn't make sense to anyone else.
I'm not a very organized person in terms of how things are stored in my home OR on my computer. As far as my computer files go, I store and organize works-in-progress in various phases, but there's so many works-in-progress that I save while they're in progress and then forget to delete all those in progress documents. I do have a somewhat organized separate file for my completed poems though, entitled "Juliet POEMS".
I'm someone who has been writing poetry for over 30 years now, so if I saved all my drafts and in progress poems, my space would be inundated with works-in-progress, as well as documents from the past that I just never deleted or got rid of. It already is to a certain extent. I guess I'm in the middle with that sort of stuff and maybe I always will be. I most certainly don't desire to forget or ignore or delete the past (especially in terms of my poetry), but I most certainly do prefer to focus on the present.
On a semi-related note, another part of the reason I still have a lot of files, documents, and pieces of writing (most certainly not just poems) from the past is because I don't feel like focusing on a bunch of past documentation (such as old hand-written letters, old photos, old files, etc...) in order to decide what I should or shouldn't get rid of, because then my mind would focus on the past to make those sort of decisions.
Somewhere in the process of working on this poem, I also started thinking about how my process has changed over the years. For many years, I wrote everything on paper until a poem seemed almost done; then I would switch to the computer to see how the formatting looked when I typed the words from hand writing to the screen. I'd make a few more revisions on the computer and then print out the completed poem. If I changed my mind later and made more revisions and then printed out the revised version, I'd still keep the previous version(s) on my computer and on paper with the previous version(s) stapled to the revised version(s).
In more recent years, I don't care so much about saving all the drafts of a poem in progress. I'm not saying I delete things fast, but if a poem in progress ends up turning into a very different poem, I don't usually have a problem deleting the earlier version and just starting over with the new version and so on and so forth. I do still print out a copy of every completed poem though, so they're not just on my computer. But the printed out versions are oddly organized, as are the online versions. I mean, I know how and where I have them organized, but if I suddenly died, my files wouldn't make sense to anyone else.
I'm not a very organized person in terms of how things are stored in my home OR on my computer. As far as my computer files go, I store and organize works-in-progress in various phases, but there's so many works-in-progress that I save while they're in progress and then forget to delete all those in progress documents. I do have a somewhat organized separate file for my completed poems though, entitled "Juliet POEMS".
I'm someone who has been writing poetry for over 30 years now, so if I saved all my drafts and in progress poems, my space would be inundated with works-in-progress, as well as documents from the past that I just never deleted or got rid of. It already is to a certain extent. I guess I'm in the middle with that sort of stuff and maybe I always will be. I most certainly don't desire to forget or ignore or delete the past (especially in terms of my poetry), but I most certainly do prefer to focus on the present.
On a semi-related note, another part of the reason I still have a lot of files, documents, and pieces of writing (most certainly not just poems) from the past is because I don't feel like focusing on a bunch of past documentation (such as old hand-written letters, old photos, old files, etc...) in order to decide what I should or shouldn't get rid of, because then my mind would focus on the past to make those sort of decisions.
10/1/24
Happy October 2024!
Happy October! I hope it is brimming with creative delights, poetry, art, reading, writing, submitting poetry, genuine communication, creative flow, and positive dynamics. And also delightful spookiness, disturbing horror movies, and fun socks. And also time not speeding buy so darn fast.
 |
| Happy October from Leyland! |
 |
| Happy October from me and my socks! |
9/18/24
Only a few copies left of my CONTORTED DOOM CONVEYOR...
My poetry chapbook CONTORTED DOOM CONVEYOR (published by Gutter Snob Books in 2023) is now Sold Out/Out of Stock from Gutter Snob Books, BUT you can still acquire a copy directly from me, from my Blood Pudding Press shop HERE - https://www.etsy.com/listing/1527609127/new-contorted-doom-conveyor-a-poetry
Also too, here's a recent review of my CONTORTED DOOM CONVEYOR. Thank you very muck to Cat Russell!
"If you love creepy visceral poetry, Juliet Cook is the best poet you could possibly read! Imagery from your worst nightmares combined with vulnerability and insight, you're sure to love this book."
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
