The Migraine

Mary crashed. She was out of sorts after the apparition, but she recovered enough to do this on Saturday. She wrote:

07/24/21

I’m gonna remix the Shakespeare sonnet in today’s “Poem of the Day” email. I’m going to give it the cut-up, erasure, funk-o-rama dash and then continue on writing the draft of my novel. I feel good today!

on creatures we desire

creatures we desire

die,

as the y decease

t heir memory

contract s,

flame s – fuel

famine a nd lies,

foe s too cruel.

now the world’s a

spring

waste d .

Pity the world s

a grave .

Sonnet 1: From fairest creatures we desire increase by William Shakespeare

From fairest creatures we desire increase,
That thereby beauty’s rose might never die,
But as the riper should by time decease,
His tender heir might bear his memory;
But thou, contracted to thine own bright eyes,
Feed’st thy light’s flame with self-substantial fuel,
Making a famine where abundance lies,
Thyself thy foe, to thy sweet self too cruel.
Thou that art now the world’s fresh ornament
And only herald to the gaudy spring,
Within thine own bud buriest thy content,
And, tender churl, mak’st waste in niggarding.
Pity the world, or else this glutton be,
To eat the world’s due, by the grave and thee.

This was all she could manage as a migraine pierced her medulla oblongata, shot through her thalamus and corpus callosum, and shred through her limbic lobe, then reticulated and settled in her frontal lobe for the day. It would suffice.

“Don’t write out of anyone’s need except your own. Don’t try to cater to an audience you think may not be keeping up with you—find the audience who will.”

— Hilary Mantel / Mantel Pieces