Yesterday I was fucking around on the rocks during basse-marée at Treuil and shredded my right foot with barnacles, some bits of which are now embedded in, by current count, four places along the sole.

I tried before bed to get them out myself using the one precious surgical needle I have smuggled along, with no luck. I’m not quite flexible enough and couldn’t quite see by the dusky dangling bulbs with which Sylvie Carole lights her home.

How romantic, this injury. And how when I can’t really pay for anything at all can I pay a doctor to do to me what I, uncredentialed, could easily do to someone else? I will soak it, and think, and wait, and watch for infection.