11:20 AM – i have created yet another blog for no one to read. this one is called my mundane days and is meant to be a log of sorts, something to document the hours regardless of how interesting (or not) they may be. i meant to purchase the domain mundays.blog, which i thought was a clever portmanteau of mundane and days, however i somehow ended up with another-day.blog, a domain which had been in my cart previously. it seems the back button was not enough to undo this selection. oh well.

the reasoning behind such a blog is as follows: first, i don’t remember anything unless it’s written down. therefor this may be considered a form of memory. i have tried and failed for many years to keep a physical journal. perhaps a digital one will have better odds of success. second, i am a victim of monographia, a mental illness which instills those afflicted with a wild faith that their writing has or will have some relevance or meaning to anyone but themself, and will be anything other than completely ignored and forgotten the moment it is produced. because of this, i require a receptacle to hold all the words i must constantly produce as i deal with this disease. third, and related to the second: because of these delusions about my future as an ‘author’, i am compelled to imitate those writers who i admire, such as franz kafka, anais nin, virginia woolf, mircea cartarescu, and many others, all who kept constant and in some cases one might say excessive diaries. if one wants to ‘be a writer’ then one ought to be writing constantly and always and about everything, and those writers mentioned above all did and do produce countless pages about each moment of their lives. is this mania for journaling a pattern among talented writers? some part of me believes it must be, and that if i copy that pattern, i too will become great.

so here i am with yet another blog that will in all likelihood be forgotten after a dozen posts. or, maybe not. maybe this is the one. maybe this time is different. maybe now it will finally happen, and i will become a writer.

2PM – i am seeing a doctor for some pain beneath my navel, a kind of swelling, tenderness to the touch. it feels as if something is just below the surface and growing. I have always cringed at the thinness of navels. the so called ‘belly button’ seems a kind of weak point in the whole body organ called skin, somewhere that ought not be touched, a kind of strange opening, one that do well to be closed up with a zipper. this swelling became apparent two days ago. In the waiting rooms of such places, one finds mostly the old. crumbling bodies sit waiting for anything to keep them together, some paste or mortar to delay their inevitable collapse. my name is called. blood pressure, temperature, heart rate. medications? allergies? the usual questions are methodically checked off, then i wait again in this other, smaller room. seeing is believing, says an inspirational poster of a mountain lake on the wall above me. that this poster is framed strikes me as somewhat disingenuous. the bent and frayed edges of the common poster paper are clear beneath the glass. the text, however cheap and fake its bearer, does seem an appropriate motto for a doctor.

after twenty minutes of waiting, the doctor finally arrives with his student (the approval of which i gave earlier when making the appointment.) the student is given the opportunity to ask me all the required questions about this sudden and mysterious swelling, which he earnestly does. he is very tall, and not in a lumbering way. his manner of questioning strikes me as overly familiar, and thus loses some of the authoritative tone that doctors otherwise always possess. after the student has conducted his interview and recorded my answers, the senior doctor returns and with barely a glance at the student’s notes and only a brief prodding at my stomach, informs me that i am now the proud owner of an umbilical hernia.

hernia, an organ pushing through the muscle or tissue that contains it. my insides are indeed trying to get out. the pain and inflammation, however, are a signal of something gone wrong (even wronger than the hernia itself) and i am referred for surgery urgently. something inside me is twisted or pinched. the doctor used the word incarcerated. some section of me is cut off from the rest of my body, then. something is locked away and suffering. something must be set free.

8PM – after returning home from the doctor, I make my daily circuit of the various and numerous plants. the jungle requires its rain, and I play the role of Tlaloc. harvested: 1 zucchini, 2 cucumbers, 4 shishito peppers. green tomatoes are forming everywhere. bees float among the clover. if i unfocus my eyes i see them all at once, black dots bouncing up down and all around, not quite in unison but seeming to contain a pattern that i’m always one repetition away from understanding.

for dinner, burgers: grilled. a beef patty for me, turkey for S. the shishitos are charred and placed atop the toasted bun. all the while i feel the presence of my shirt against my belly. whenever i  must crouch or bend, the pressure of doing so paints brightly that knot or kink inside me. shortly after we eat, there is a knocking: our neighbor carrying foilwrapped grilled chicken, a repayment for the vegetables i dropped at his yesterday. then, a stroll around the neighborhood, wild blackberries, so much of the grass is browned and dry.

10PM – the pain is increasing, the redness is reddening. but not so much that i wont be able to sleep. brenda, the cat, also has a hernia. hers is not twisted in a knot, though, and simply hangs there, a loose, soft lump under her skin that i feel sometimes when I hold her.

the night, silence. i so very enjoy sitting in silence. in the silent stillness of my office, with piles of books standing all around, and artworks hanging, and perhaps a cat asleep on the chair behind me. when it’s silent enough for long enough, my ears ring. as if they cannot abide a soundless moment, and must create their own.

is this, perhaps, what dreams are? the ringing of a silent brain