How I’m Surviving Self-Care Being Forced Into My Life

Or, A Treatise On Building a House Next To A Hut On Fowl’s Legs

I had a conversation this morning that put it all together for me, and made the stress of my life of late more light as a feather and less stiff like a board battering me about my withering, yet still gamely battling forth body after 41 years of an oftentimes frustrating existence.

What are you thinking about today?

I feel like I carry a hut on fowl’s legs. Like the Mussorgsky piece. With the Baba Yagas and everything inside there, too.

I think we all do though, right?

I think that’s part of it, yes. But we’re never self-aware of the weight of the situation.

We don’t choose to carry huts.

This is a great perspective on it.

You die, and that’s it. Put the fucking hut down. No one cares.

I was introduced to Russian composer Modest Mussorgsky’s 1874-composed ten-piece piano suite “Pictures at an Exhibition” in the sixth grade. It was as part of a larger musical series about the great all-time compositions, and it was then that the idea of a “Hut on Fowl’s Legs” — the ninth of ten suites related to exhibited works of the then-deceased artist…