Last year was hard on this old body. I am learning that meningitis, like Lyme disease and long COVID and all the various herpes viruses, is another one of those things that never completely goes away. The inflammation can flare up whenever you are feeling run down, and it leaves you feeling run down and extra susceptible to other infections for months. It’s also quite common to recover and then have a reinfection within a year or so. And this can happen repeatedly.
Apparently, it is this repetition that kills.
I have not had the fever again, but I have had days with the headache, backache, stiff neck and dizziness, though much milder than last summer. So, I don’t think I’ve had a true reinfection. In all likelihood, I just haven’t fully recovered from the original one. Or, I should say, I haven’t recovered from last summer’s round. Because last summer was not my first rodeo… I have had this before.
Last summer could plausibly count as a reprise of the very bad infection that happened over a decade ago. That one was so severe, there was blood in my spinal fluids and it took over a year to recover. But I did recover, to the point that I had forgotten about it. (Lots of things have happened to my body in the intervening years… Unfortunately, “blood in the spinal fluids” was not among the most memorable… if you can imagine that…)
However, I did remember the headache when it struck again. And then I remembered the very long recovery time and I was determined not to repeat that. But it was difficult. For one thing, I no longer own my own business. I can’t just work from home on the rather odd sleep schedule that accompanied the headache. (I was most awake and feeling relatively good at 2am and pretty much dead in the middle of the day.) This time, I was off work for as long as I could afford it, which was not long enough, and I had to go back to a full 45-hour week at work still feeling miserable. (Driving to work dizzy was fun…)
Working while in recovery from an all-too-lethal disease — one that most people do not survive, mind you — made me reprioritize. I cut back on many things. And then I stopped worrying about cutting back on things. I also initiated something I’m calling the Dark Moon days. Originally, I intended to do this only for a few months, just until I felt as healed as I’m going to feel. But I realized that what I’m doing with these days is probably the only true embodied living I’m getting out of this culture. So, I’m not going to stop. And I think the idea is worth sharing with others. Because I think this is an excellent form of protest, a way to wrest back a little of my own life from this system that takes everything.
Dark Moon days are not catch-up days, not days to get in all the work that I have to do to meet my needs within the margins of time left after wage work eats up nearly every day. That’s what happens every weekend. It’s why I can’t recover. I can never rest. In fact, I am more physically active on the weekends, because most of the tasks I do for myself are on my feet and most of the time spent at the bank is spent on my backside. I also have more than twenty-four hours of work to cram into just two days. So… most weekends I am frantically rushing about trying to get everything done.
Or that used to be the case anyway…
But Dark Moon days are different. I’m taking one day a month for rest, for doing things that I want to do, that my body wants to do. I am fasting from this culture for one day a month, on or near the actual Dark Moon (the next one is next Monday) — and it feels great! So much so that Dark Moon days are starting to bleed into the rest of the month.
What happens on these days? Well, not much. I don’t go to work. I don’t clean, unless I really want to, and then I take my time and turn it into meditation. I don’t garden. Well, I don’t work in the garden. I will sit out there savoring the scents and colors, sometimes nibbling at the fruit and veg. I don’t shop at all, no spending money. I don’t go anywhere except for walks. No trips that involve the car. There’s little screen time, though I might watch a movie that I already own on DVD. I listen to music with my whole attention. I bake for fun (and usually take the output to work). I spent one afternoon making my holiday wreath, another making a new cover for a fraying pillow. I darn holes in socks, which I find incredibly relaxing. I get all the exercise I need. I eat rather lightly and hardly ever have a true meal. I graze and drink pots of tea. I sit zazen and daydream and write poetry and fill pages in my journal. Often I will do extra body-care things like putting cocoa butter on my hands and then wearing old gloves until it really soaks in. And I read. I read a lot!
I realize that many of you, if not most, do not have the kind of job that will allow you time off. And, truly, I’ve scheduled many of my Dark Moon days on the weekend closest to the Dark Moon — because I can’t take twelve days for myself either. I don’t have that much allowed time off, and what I do have I need to save for potential illness or emergencies… And this is where Dark Moon days started to bleed into the rest of the month. Because the way I was living, I wouldn’t have been able to do Dark Moon days. I couldn’t take the time off work and I couldn’t take a weekend day for myself. I had too many commitments and tasks. And it occurred to me that many of these tasks, even on the weekend, were not “for myself”. Though I was doing it all to meet “my needs”, it was not what my body wanted or needed. I don’t need to have a pristine garden and a spotless house. I just need to have a healthy home. I don’t need to eat meals every day. I’m quite happy eating a bowl of oatmeal in the morning and a bit of a snack in the evening. And I truly hate spending my time on screens, even including writing this blog.
I know I’ve said that I’m not screen-oriented. Was raised feral among the hippies. Don’t recall ever watching television as a child. Did not have cable or a computer until adulthood. Did not willingly acquire a cell phone until my family forced it on me… If you’ve lived like I have, you just don’t ever learn to like this odd passive viewing experience. I don’t like watching. I like doing. (Truly, I’m not overly fond of live performance either… I would rather be playing music…) But screens? Only engage your eyes. And my eyes aren’t that great. So trust me when I say that this screen-revulsion is not virtue signaling. I simply did not learn to tolerate it. And it seems that it asks of some bodies, like mine, quite a lot of toleration.
In any case, Dark Moon days, days where I was focused on listening to what my body truly needs and what it truly does not want, have shown me how much toleration is necessary for me to engage with this medium. Before, I didn’t think much about it. I just did it. It was another arduous task that I set myself. Now, I’m noticing all the annoyances. The eye-strain headache, the stiff neck, the sitting. The general lack of true interaction. The frustrations of electronica and security (and being reminded of the reasons we need that security). The cost! (And thinking of all the things I could be spending that money on instead…) And, most of all, the great big bore of it all.
I am writing this on Sunday evening. In my country there is this football game… Most people are eating crap food and watching men in tights jump on each other in between nominally creative advertising for products nobody needs. Full disclosure: I don’t like football. Don’t like the violence. Don’t like its coziness with bigotry. Don’t like the sheer pointlessness of it. I mean, most of these guys aren’t even getting enough exercise to be in good shape. (Never mind that most of them also end up injured from all the jumping on each other…) And the Super Bowl? Is super pointless… But that’s not the main reason I’m boycotting the television.
Mostly, it’s down to the Dark Moon days philosophy. Why would my body want to do that? Any of it. From mindlessly consuming crap food to consenting to be psychologically bludgeoned by advertising for… how many hours exactly? My body does not want that. And I’m betting many of your bodies don’t much care for it either. How many people who watched this game feel tired and bloated and gross this morning? How many feel the compulsion to buy something they don’t actually want after the hours-long advertising assault? How many are secretly worrying that they just wasted another four or five hours of their short lives, doing nothing, being nothing, feeling nothing except discomfort…
I think most people watch the Super Bowl just for fear of missing out on the ads or the halftime performance. FOMO… Drives us to do ridiculous things. Like doom scrolling and buying the latest fad fashions. But this is also something that Dark Moon days have revealed to me in a new light.
I’ve never been much of a FOMO person. I don’t like much of what is being missed… I’ve always preferred missing out, if I thought much about it at all. But recently it’s a different sensation. Now, it’s more of a FOFO experience. Now that I’m really paying attention to how I feel, I’m finding that I don’t fear missing out, I fear finding out… I don’t want to know what appalling thing just happened. I don’t want to see the newest levels of inane depravity and blithe brutality. I don’t want to lose my faith in the world just that little bit more. (Or a lot more…) And what screens deliver, what we’re afraid of missing out on through screen media, is nearly all the worst of the world (and nearly all emanating from a very small and pathologically vile portion of the world…).
Unfortunately, the increasingly foul nature of what is happening does mean we have to pay attention to quite a lot of what we would rather not know about the world. But that just makes it all the more important to discriminate and to remain as grounded in your actual life as it is possible to be. Pay attention to what is real. Know the significant things that actually happened, brush off most of the analysis and blather. Do what you can to help, but don’t wear yourself out and don’t berate yourself if you can’t help much. Except… If you stop feeding this culture your time, your money, your attention, then you are doing a great deal to help those who are being abused. Think of it this way, nearly every dollar you spend in this culture today is supporting ICE and other projects of hate. If you drastically curtail your spending by cutting out things like Super Bowl crap food and all the other FOMO bullshit that is put upon us, then you are cutting the hate budget…
So…
I’m turning off. I am taking minutes and hours and days from this culture and giving them back to my old body. I am making a living with this time. And, just as importantly, I am denying any support to this culture while I am making that living. I think we all need this. It’s not just a matter of recovery from illness, it’s recovery from this culture — which causes most of the illness, it must be noted.
And look at what will fall away when it no longer has a passive audience…
Sunday Reading
I am not a big one for gathering to talk about the mysteries and wonder of the world. I prefer to experience those things for myself and decide for myself how I feel about them. I also tend to have very different opinions on many experiences. So I feel awkward in groups.
But I like the idea of taking time on Sunday morning to think about such things. I scribble what is happening in my journal, but I also read.
To me, reading is like having a conversation where you never have to worry about not saying the right thing or finding the right words. The best books are windows into other human minds, often more so than you can feel face-to-face. The best books show you things about the world that you never noticed. The best books are friends.
I’ve always had the habit of reading from a pile of what some people call “spirituality” books, though it’s a rather eclectic sample, some only tangentially spiritual. Most are collections of essays, since that is the form that pulls me. When the mood strikes, I gather up the pile and read a little from each for an hour or so.
Lately, under Dark Moon days influence, I’ve sort of formalized this reading time into a kind of church on Sunday mornings. But in bed. I do all the things to make my body comfortable and ready for the day except get dressed. Often I will go brew a cup of tea and tend to the cat’s needs (because she comes first…) Sometimes I put on quiet music. (This morning it was The Undivided Five by A Winged Victory for the Sullen.) Then I crawl back under the blankets where it is warm and read from the pile.
I suspect that warmer weather will sometimes draw me and my pile out to the garden to read. Maybe. Part of the point is to not rush the morning, to rest the body while the mind gets to wander. So being in bed is part of the point. (Plus, there are no bugs in my bedroom… can’t say that for my garden…)
Here is the pile as it is now. Some of these books are new to me. A couple I’ve read many times. All of them have interesting things to say on a Sunday morning.
I would encourage you to find a similar Dark Moon days reading pile. Or just one book, if that is more your style. But take an hour in the morning when you don’t have to go to work and stay in bed to read. And it’s probably best to read actual books, because that is far more relaxing for the body and far less prone to mind distraction than screens.
It’s the best way I know to start the week.
©Elizabeth Anker 2026
By My Solitary Hearth 
I find reading to be quite cathartic, only I prefer to do so in the late afternoon or early evening 🙂
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