(k)(4)

i'm thankful to have recently seen the 1980 classic comedy 'nine to five' for the first time, in a theatre. i'm thankful for lily tomlin's effortlessly hilarious performance. i'm thankful that when she sits on a hospital bench with dolly parton and jane fonda, resignedly calling herself a murderer because she thinks she accidentally poisoned her boss, dolly says 'you're not a murderer' and lily corrects, 'i'm a murderess,' just as resigned. i'm thankful for the pilot episode of the new netflix series 'alias grace' in which the main character muses that, given the choice, she'd rather be a murderess than a murderer. i'm thankful to have spent some time afterwards meditating on the difference between the two. 

i'm thankful for the proto-winter stage of autumn where most of the leaves have fallen and the sky and the ground are the same concrete color and the only birds still around are crows. i'm thankful that a group of crows is called a 'murder,' for no other reason than that they seem ominous. i'm thankful for my friend j's house which faces a large cemetery populated by murders of crows and lots of mostly barren trees, a proximity which i realize many people might find uncomfortable or creepy but i really enjoy...which is to say that i also find it creepy but i enjoy the creepiness. i'm thankful for j's adventurous cat who is running out of neighborhood creatures to prey on as they begin to either migrate or hibernate. i'm thankful for the gruesome story j told me about the squirrel her cat stalked forever and finally killed in the backyard, eating various parts of it over the course of several days: first the head (skull and all), then the hands, then the feet, all with what j described as 'surgical precision.' even though i feel no kinship with them and wouldn't want to own one, i'm always impressed by domestic animals that are brave and self-sufficient outside their homes, who always scrape by and find their way back safely, who kill just because they can. i'm thankful that my own housebound cat seems incapable of killing; that when a moth flutters inside her habitat she bats at it clawlessly, with not even enough force to slough a dusting of flour from its wings before it eventually flutters off and she forgets about it.

i'm thankful to be trying to stop biting my nails lately; i'm thankful to have done this successfully for a stretch last year thanks to the anti-depressants i was taking at the time, which i am no longer taking. i'm thankful to remember doing my homework at a bar-top table in the restaurant where my dad worked when i was a kid, and his older coworker passing by me to say hi and calling me a 'nervous girl' when he glanced at my writing hand. i'm thankful to now have a more nuanced conception of the nailbiting habit and to know that it comes less from nervousness and more from the obsessive-compulsive need to correct a flaw when it is felt, paradoxically creating additional flaws in its wake. i'm thankful for the mysticism of gala mukomolova:

'a gemini is a double and when there is a double there is a split. where there is a split there is a wound. when a split self guards both sides of a wound, the wound is both unbothered and untended. when a gemini is a creature of habit, he makes new wounds and keeps them in a familiar place. the well of wounds grows deeper and widens the space between two guards, who would rather not be so far from each other. when a gemini turns inward and tends to the wound, his split selves touch and support one another.'

i'm thankful to be able to understand my picking and biting by conceiving of it as the creation of little wounds for the sake of letting them heal over, only to reopen them again--a tiny melodrama i reenact for only myself, and a compulsion that i also realize manifests itself in other, less physical ways. i'm thankful for the feeling of shamanistic power that came, during my period of rare growth last year, with watching my fingertips heal and extend as though never afflicted. i suddenly realized i hadn't even wanted to bite or pick for some time, and wondered at the sheer exoticism of that notable absence--even trying to conjure the impulse from within and not being able to. i'm thankful for the careful way i had filed and polished my nails, absently running the pads of my fingers along their smooth, novel edges the way one would with perhaps a pocketknife they were gifted and doesn't know exactly what to do with or how to wield it. (i don't remember when exactly i relapsed but i know it happened quickly and has proven difficult to recover from.)

i'm thankful that now i will have to find and kill that dumb ache instead of losing it by accident. i'm thankful to wonder if maybe it's simply a matter of becoming good at concealment, suppression, and sublimation if i don't have the discipline to eliminate it completely. i recognize that maybe part of me never wants to be entirely rid of it, as it's been a part of my emotional makeup for so long now despite being so cumbersome and sometimes painful. i'm thankful that last night my friend j texted me a picture of her cat in a head cone, which comically cut off her puff of gray fur at the neck; she explained that the cat had come home with another cat's claw lodged in her eye (a horrific scene i'm thankful to have not witnessed). i'm thankful that her cat is going to be okay and her eye will heal before long, though i'm curious if she'll venture forth and continue getting into scrapes with other creatures even though there is a certain peril involved. i'm thankful that i couldn't help but imagine j's cat stumbling in through the back door with hash-mark style scratches on her face and little x's swirling above her head, saying 'you should see the other guy.'

- k (11/24/17).
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