Wednesdays are turning into a busy day for me. After breakfast I plan to go to church to begin preparing for this evening’s rehearsal, back for lunch with Eileen, then afternoon meeting with Rev Jen and piano lesson with Rudy.

I must then rest up for the evening rehearsal.

Three days away from my 67th birthday I have to wonder how long I can keep this up. With these dangs hives I’m not in a position to judge about much. My arms are especially bad this morning. They are red and swollen and sensitive.

If Sunday is any indication, I should be able to keep up the energy levels needed to do my gig for a while.

However, fatigue seems to attend my current physical condition.

I received a call from my allergist last night. Unfortunately my stupid phone didn’t recognize the number even though I had put her number in. I didn’t pick up. Apparently if you don’t put in the area code the  stupid smart phone (sic) doesn’t make the connection. She gets in her office after 10 this morning. I will give her a call then.

I’m not terribly hopeful that much can be done about this miserable skin condition.

I finished Lake Michigan by Daniel Borzutzky this morning. What a tour de force! The incessant pounding of his language sets up a telling indictment of what the state can do to  humans, hurting them physically and demeaning them.

It’s not enough to feel shame

It’s not enough to starve

It’s not enough to be dead when others are more dead

I drink coffee in the morning among murderers

My neighbors love nooses and bullets

…

I can sense love in the eyes of my captors

I can sense love in the way they touch me

But it’s an illusion

They would kill us all quickly as they could if it weren’t for the United Nations

…

I live in crate #17

I will soon be shipped across the border       to the financiers who own me

But how much of me do they own

And who owns the blood that drips from my wounds into the hemorrhaging sky that can’t withstand its own illness

The wound-sky and the race wind it dumps on us

We live in the blankest of times

from “Lake Michigan, scene 17

I think in Borzutzky poem Chicago and Chile merge, thus the UN reference. For more see this article and poem by him: Daniel Borzutzky on “Lake Michigan Merges Into The Bay of Valparaiso, Chile” – Poetry Society of America