Struggles with Wesker

As spring has faded into early summer, we’ve gone through some struggles with balancing Wesker’s medication and getting her to eat. As the rain lets up, she definitely needs less pain relief, but still has some stiffer days so it becomes a debate of when she needs help and when she needs a walk and some extra attention. Overshooting in either direction leads her to eat less and that is something she can’t afford to do too often.

Then when I think we finally have it figured out, it turns out we don’t. It’s hard not to despair. It’s hard not to hold Wesker and cuddle her and beg her to just eat a little more, like she’ll understand me and not just grumpily remind me that she hates cuddles.

A Pride Month Selection

I hope you’ll forgive me for being a bit late to Pride month, but in my general defence I do write these posts in advance and sometimes the point where the month changes can slip away from me. I’m going to make up for lost time by highlighting one of my favourite writers David Wojnarowicz. Close to the Knives one of my favourite books and one that I’m still thinking about long after reading it. So I was glad to find Weight of the Earth, which is an edited transcription of the recorded journals Wojnarowicz made in the years 1981, 1982, 1988, and 1989. In these tapes, Wojnarowicz discusses a vast variety of topics but mostly settles on art, dreams, and death as he processes his HIV diagnosis and impending end of life.

Diary Versus Transcript

I have not read Wojnarowicz’s written diaries, which are extensive and notable, but I think it’s easy to intuit the differences between these diaries and the taped journals we’re currently discussing. The transcript here is not neat. It is rambling. It jumps between subjects. It rarely gets to a point that you can palpably feel. Instead, these are recordings of late-night thoughts and dreams. Neither of which are recounted in a way that begs the reader to make sense of them or Wojnarowicz himself to make sense of them. This is loose recollection. This is the comforting sound of one’s own voice in the small hours of the morning when life is scary and nothing is illuminated by the sober light of day.

Not About Structure

The reader should not be looking for structure in Weight of the Earth.  The lack of structure and consideration is what makes these tapes what they are. It doesn’t make for a simple read. It doesn’t make for a straight forward point. It doesn’t even make for a strong statement of a read. Instead what the reader gets from these tapes is a powerful encapsulation of a moment in time. A quiet, private moment where an artist is examining themselves, their life, their hopes and fears, in a way that they would not be able to if there were an audience in front of them. Or even one truly being considered. In Weight of the Earth, there is an intimacy that is rare.  We are invited in to witness, posthumously, several dark nights of the soul. A formal structure here would defeat the point.

Playing Pharmacy

Now that Bubastis is on a supplement and Wesker is on a couple of medications, the early morning hours can feel like playing pharmacy. And then there’s the extra hurdle of cats just being cats. Meaning I think we’ve had a good day at said pharmacy — then Wesker has disappeared behind my chair and started foaming up one of her pills when she was a perfectly fine puffy princess just a few short minutes ago.