What a relief that I’m finally out of the cast. Putting my left foot on the floor felt so overwhelming that I cried. Looking forward to learning how to walk again.

Wouldn’t it be just the thing if my cast was allowed to come off once and for all today?

• After the swelling in my ankle postponing it with a week, I was finally able to have surgery on my left ankle on Wednesday! I’m surprised by how pleasant the whole experience was. Post-surgery, I’m in very little pain, and I’ve been able to leave the Oxycodone in its designated box. Four days later, aside from the anti blood cloth pill, I’m raw-dogging recovery.
• My pre-surgery phase lasted longer than expected, all …

I’m surprised we made it through Disclaimer, though that’s not entirely true, because both Anja and I would have a hard time quitting anything that involves the acting of Cate Blanchett. Looking back, I feel our experience was exactly as intended (even though author’s intent may well be the most boring of analytical categories in the study of media.)

The show’s disclaimers, both diegetic and non-diegetic, kept me thinking they’re such pedestrian vehicles for spoiling. “Sometimes, meaning can only be conveyed through the shock of the unexpected”, I thought. Still, throughout the show, the disclaimers made me interpret and reinterpret and misinterpret “depictions of sexual, physical, and emotional violence” in ways I thought I had somehow transcended by now.

The series has left me feeling uncomfortably unsophisticated.

Disclaimer is one of those beautiful examples of a terror that can only be rightly experienced once, upon the first viewing, much like Irréversible and Antichrist. I keep thinking “well, I could’ve done with a bit more foreshadowing and character development around the twist”. In all honestly, though, I say this to myself only to alleviate the discomfort I feel as I imagine myself Sacha Baron Cohen in a hospital chair, guilty and bewildered, hearing perhaps the saddest of realities about myself.

Tired as I, too, am of the American elections, the American friends half-joking about moving to Amsterdam, my mind keeps gravitating around various questions. How do the stock exchange and political elections compare? What would happen if polling and reporting on the election were not allowed? What political philosophy could I read about the life of voting imitating the art of polling? With headlines such as “the county that got every president right”, do Americans feel the discomfort I feel about the idea that a vote can be right or wrong, that it’s a national guessing game? Are we going to be okay after this?

I’m one week into my broken ankle recovery journey, and so far, things are quite alright. I’m not in a lot of pain, and I can manage my way around the house with a new set of crutches and a wheelchair (covered by insurance). There are a few questions that are on my mind:

• How does surgery feel?
• When I walk normally again for the first time, will my feeling of relief be as potent as I imagine it will be if I were to suddenly regain my ability to walk right now?
• When I have surgery on Thursday, how easily will it be for me to develop a dependence on opiates?

Mornin sun in the bedroom