Another quick update—I’m on odd hours, and yet more painkillers. Hopefully these will wear off in a few days and everything will return to normal as August draws to an end.

The surgery went well—sent home yesterday, and have spent most of the past 36 hours sleeping. When I wasn’t sleeping, I read Siri Hustvedt’s The Sorrows of an American—finally. For some reason I hadn’t got to it earlier. Had started it, and then found it wasn’t the right time. In this slightly otherworldishness of post-surgery it seems to have been the right time. I felt very calm as I read it.

I have three punctures in my belly. When I get up I have to hold my belly with my hands. I can feel my navel, which upsets me, and when I got to sit up, I sometimes feel like my insides will tumble out. Obviously this is all the result of my strange head, but—. So I hold onto my stomach.

It feels a little unreal. My parents are here—wonderful! Unfortunately the holiday as it was planned has ruptured a little. Still, we should be out of DC for a day or two at least.

I’ve been lying low. There are people I want to talk to, people I want to see. Some of them I’ve spoken to, and some I haven’t quite called… I will get to it. But there are people I realise I haven’t seen for weeks, and getting in touch again after a gap—and it’s a strange gap, when there’s suddenly been this medical stuff—feels difficult. And, too, I get into that haze where I want to talk to the new people in my life. And, well, I’m somewhere in that tumble.

Class goes back very soon. I will probably be missing my first class still, but with any luck after that it should all be fine. Everything will suddenly be busy and word-filled.