escape from limbo

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October

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-Peel garlic. So much garlic. Peel and bag and freeze, hour after hour after hour. Lose all sensation in pads of fingers.

-Help with dad’s jaesa, a ceremony held on the anniversary of his death.

-Make unnecessary promise to attend every single one of mom’s readings over the course of the next three months. (Still paying for this one.)

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November

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- Meet a cat and a rabbit who are friends. They belong to a Latvian concert pianist my mother somehow befriended at her yoga class.

-Have minor, impromptu eye surgery. Gross + Ow + Wtf = My Life.

- Catch my mother walking home on a particularly gray day.

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December

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-The Garbage Nightmare begins in earnest. My mother is dismayed that I insist on writing lying down. I tell her Nabokov used to write lying down. I don’t know if this is true, and even if it is, Nabokov certainly didn’t write the way he wrote because he did it lying down, but it shuts her up. Victory.

-More babies visit.

-Winter arrives.

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And, Through It All…

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-Hensley keeps me sane via FaceTime videochat, with cameos from
Sir Doctor Simon Delicious Esquire, The One, The Only.