Issue 1: Women's Health

Muffled Musings

Issue 1: Women’s Health

This publication is truly my brain baby.

After working for a magazine company for a semester, I was inspired to create my own. What better way to kick it off than with a topic near and dear to my heart: Women’s Healthcare. This issue pulls from Audre Lorde’s narrative The Cancer Journals as inspiration for disrupting the negative stereotypes and mainstream norms that are perpetuated by commodifying Breast Cancer Culture and Women’s Healthcare

-­‐Carlie Gambino

Contents 1

A WORLD OF WRINKLED PAPER BALLS

3

WHO AM I AND WHO ARE YOU?

5

RECONCILIATION

7

THE CANCER JOURNAL QUOTES

9

AUDRE LORDE SENTIMENT

A World of Crinkled Paper Balls

written by Carlie Gambino

Spinning spiraling flailing flying extensive entities Two bodies twirling past each other in their own whirl winds The gusts brush our shoulders and dust from me flings onto the ever present but far you Just out of my reach for touch but the energy carries my particles to you Your passing carries pieces of me to you The extension of my limbs yields breath into your lungs We each dance our own starry solo waltz Two ever-changing worlds churn within separate galaxies My pieces swirl unsteadily about waiting for the next wind to join my broken parts Mend my grainy limbs of sand into solid stone Cement my wandering eyes on a path less turbulent Your separate world never pauses and nor does mine You toil about, collecting stars and rejecting the fragments that don’t belong Regardless of relentless construction— Ice and rock and metal and matter all mend and mush into a semblance of your soul Your mold is working, everything settles in its place and your indefinite orbit is steady Spinning separate and separately spinning our worlds are shaping But sometimes amidst the chaotic crumble within our creations We crash Deafening collision ensues But all the noise of change empties out until there is Stillness Every thing floats suspended in our combined gravity The air is drinkable The ground bears life, sprouting fruit to cover imperfect footprints Light happens from indistinguishable angles Energy is no longer a carrier, but a knot tying us ever so close But just when we touched—just for a moment— We have eternity in an instantaneous gossamer vision revealing the sweet Complete togetherness during unsustainable stillness Without spinning, gravity stops, and we fall Abruptly we part again and the tumultuous trek of creation travels our paths opposite My world recomposes from the settling dust thrown into the air during our convergence Your world reestablishes its route and rolls on-- collecting speed as it goes Energy is the wind traveling between and behind and within It circles through and around and between us Us is a way to name the communication through and between and around our worlds We endlessly spiral into ourselves One day maybe we will retain the stillness Our worlds will conjoin Everything will float easily And spiral into us

Pain. Chronic. Unending. Where does it begin and where does it end? It’s everywhere. Every crevice, every joint, every muscle, every movement.

Anatomically you’re fine. According to the tests you’re fine. You’re just faking it. There is no proof for your pain. Stop overreacting.

Go get tested for this and that and everything else that you haven’t already tried. We don’t have an answer for you. Your results are unusual. Everything is fine, but nothing is Normal.

Who am I and Who are You? By Carlie Gambino You wake up and it’s the first thing you notice, it’s all over.

But you don’t have time for that, so in your deeply compartmentalized mind you stow it away in a small box in a drawer inside your bedside table.

You put one leg through your pant leg, and it pops its head slightly out of the box, threatening to push the drawer open. One leg on. Two leg on. The drawer slams shut.

Coffee: the sweet bitter taste of wakefulness. You sit in your favorite chair crossing one leg over the other –your usual morning position. The dresser drawers fly open and your legs abruptly uncross. You readjust, as you struggle to lock the box securely away.

Work is the computer the phone the computer several sticky notes meetings calls the computer. Sitting sitting sitting sitting sitting. The occasional walk to the restroom or meeting room and creak, the box explodes. Take a few breaths and keep it shut. It needs to stay hidden.

Attend appointment after appointment racking up those parking garage tickets until your car’s cup holder is too full and you have to fill up the second. Questions cause questions, which bare little to no answers. Treat this first and then we can work on that. Treatment causes more problems? Yes, just more to solve, more to mystify doctors. New doctors to visit, new diets to try, new natural therapy, but all to ease the pain to make it just a little more endurable, to feel just a little bit more Normal. “Nothing about you is normal.”

The smile never drops from your face.

The kindness never ceases to brighten other peoples’ day.

The work effort never slows.

Your love is endless.

Only at home do you moan and complain.

Only at home do you let the drawer fly open.

Only at home do you open the box. Your mask of normal breaks, and pain consumes.

But you still smile, But you still work, But you still love, But you still are in pain.

You fight everyday to fight back, to push it deeper into its box into its drawer. Shut it away so that it cannot find you anymore. If only it were that easy. If only it were that Normal.

You win.

Because still you work, Still you smile, Still you love.

Quotes from The Cancer Journals

1

”...many patterns and networks are started for women after breast surgery that encourage us to deny the realities that our bodies which have just been driven homed to us so graphically, and these …stereotyped patterns of response pressure us to reject the adventure and exploration of our own experiences, difficult and painful as those experiences may be.”

2

”This regressive tie to the past is emphasized by the concentration upon breast cancer as purely a cosmetic problem, one which can be solved by wearing a prosthetic pretense.

3

”...having one breast did not mean that her life was over, nor that she was less of a woman, nor that she was condemned to the use of a placebo in order to feel good about herself and the way that she looked.” .

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Audre Lorde Sentiments

Magazine Name or url

21

“I want to illuminate the implications of breast cancer, and the threats to selfrevelation that are so quickly aligned against any woman who seeks to explore those questions, those answers. Even in the face of our own deaths and dignity, we are not allowed to define our needs nor our feelings nor our lives.”

Reconciliation Written by Carlie Gambino

Invisible Illness Invisible illness is the home renovation channel.

The shows they love to play in doctors’ offices.

Like the patient, the broken foundations are hidden by pretty smiles of decoration.

They are loved, cared for, clean, and tidy— Nothing less is expected of them.

But at some point the damaged foundation We Watch HGTV Makes walls crack I watch HGTV Bones break Read magazines, books, and newspapers.

Symptoms arise and– Hum the elevator music to my free coffee.

Magazine Name or url

27

Rennovation We watch people redo houses that look well taken care of.

The houses are clean and tidy— well loved.

The structures are rotting inside the paper-­‐thin walls, Somehow still sheltering the occupants.

The house isn’t old, but bugs, water, weather.

They settled in the walls permanently.

T.V.’s are turned on as a de-­‐stresser, But the shows share too much in common with the waiting room patients.

The bitterness grounds me into my wiry seat– And wait in lines.

Drop off lines Check in lines Restroom lines Pick up lines Testing lines Sometimes lines get crossed.

I write often and thoroughly I weep in only restrooms that are cold and clean.

I take phone calls and make them too.

I park in the garage—most times I must pay.

I sit in traffic.

I count my prayers.

Who should guess this secret identity of mine?

Who would know my secret commutes are to doctor offices, hospitals, an ER room or two?

We all share heavy smiles weighed down at the center.

We have worked up the muscles and techniques to pull the corners up always.

Always for them, For each other.

How many parking garage tickets do you have from this week?

Muffled Musings