in the hall of mirrors

The Wish

On television, an old – and favorite – episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, from 1998, called 'The Wish'.

Not 'favorite' as in 'fun': this is one of the frightening episodes where everything goes horribly wrong – in a moment of petty irritation, Cordelia wishes that Buffy had never come to Sunnydale.

Unfortunately, when she gets her wish, it means that vampires rule the town; deaths are frequent, everyone wears dark clothing and flees for home before sundown, classroom chairs are empty, there are monthly memorials in the school gym. Many favorite characters are dead, some are vampires, and Buffy herself, when she finally visits the town, is a grim, brutal killer who expects to live a short and hopeless life.

At the end, as a disastrous battle begins to kill off the remaining good and bad guys in a Grand Guignol climax, Giles faces down the demon who granted the wish in his apartment. After he grabs the amulet that has caused all the trouble, the demon shrieks: how do you know that world is any better? And Giles, after a split-second pause for thought, looks up and says bitterly: It has to be. And crushes the amulet; and everything vanishes.

A disturbing episode.

And sometimes I suspect that my reaction to the episode has to do with a vague feeling that I'm living in the wrong time line, as it were: AIDS, so many dead and gone, distant exile and isolation, a chain of illnesses and poisonous medications...

If I could find the amulet, I would crush it too.

Brief friends

I have a small black canister of Mariage Frères' Marco Polo tea – a secret blend by classy London tea-makers, one of their most famous, and one of the most delicious and curious blends of flavors... too complex and subtle for me to describe, though a skilled cook could probably identify many of its elements. It even smells astonishing, with flashes of cinnamon, orange, something dark and rich – not sure what the mixture is.

It was given to me a year or two ago by... well, that's the story I suppose.

About two streets over from me, on one of the parallel streets that run steeply down to the park, I saw a sign one evening while coming home – Moving Sale, Everything Must Go. It was a quiet, chilly evening, no rain, and I thought why not, and turned to walk down three apartments to the door.

A lively, open-faced, curly-haired brunette in her late 20s or early 30s opened the door, and immediately started friendlily chattering away. She was American, and warm and pleasant, if a little anxious that not enough people had come by to buy things; she seemed instantly enjoyable to talk to.

There was no one else looking at the things to buy – I was a bit thrown, however, when an intensely handsome young man with a beard came downstairs to see who had answered their sign.

She was from Boston, he was from Greece; they had married and tried to get jobs here in northern England, but it hadn't worked out. So they were going to live near part of her family in Florida, she was going to try to find a job in illustration, and he was going to finish an engineering degree.

Charming, excited, slightly anxious people – obviously very happy, and very happy with each other, but they were getting on a plane in a week; they had that look of people who are trying to remember whether they have asked for all the utilities to be turned off on the right days, and where did that box with all of the plates get to.

We talked for a while; I bought a few things – some of them were well worth it, handmade or pleasant kitchen goods. We basically made friends over the course of about half an hour; I pointed out that the coming week would be tricky and their kitchen would be probably pretty much out of order, and offered to make them dinner some night. They said they'd love that if they could organize it, and I left.

A week later I was thinking: oh, they must have gone, and didn't have time to call – and no, I didn't think that they didn't really want to call, as it was obvious that they both liked me as much as I liked them, and (despite the usual British criticism of fast American friendship) wanted to follow up if possible.

And on that last night, a bit after midnight, when I was thinking I really needed to get to bed, there was a ring at the door. She was there, looking a bit frantic but still cheerful, saying rapidly: we wanted to come to dinner, sorry we couldn't arrange it, we're on a plane tomorrow at 7 am – and here: some things you might want, especially this wonderful tea – it's amazing, see, just lift the lid and smell...

And thrust a box of things into my arms, gave me a quick hug, and rushed back to the home she was about to leave.

•••

It is a beautiful tea – drunk quickly of course, it lasts almost too little time; but it is real, nevertheless.

Symptoms

So: after having fussed and fussed (and fussed) about this treatment; and then latterly become conscious that I've been making it all a much more anxious activity than it needed to be...

I discover the next stage of my talent for making things more difficult than they need to be.

The first two injections – and let's not neglect the pills, I'd forgotten how hard these pills are on the digestion – were not particularly stressful; it was quite easy to keep working, symptoms were minor and passed almost without notice.

This weekend, however, a bit of chaos: for some reason the first day after the injection I didn't feel bad at all; then about twenty-four or thirty-six hours later, it hit. Scattered and changing problems: a mild fever for four days (ah, now I remember this – I think last time I did these shots I kept the thermometer beside the bed, in a sort of let's-see-how-I'm-feeling-via-numerical-data kind of way – my acupuncturist would laugh and laugh at me for that, he makes fun of me for having to figure out how I'm feeling); and sudden drops in energy, long sleeps, a general sense of being dazed.

Really not very awful: but it's a bit difficult to schedule it into work – my body doesn't seem to be following a timetable as neat as my computer's calendar program. Bummer.

Slightly tricky to give a Monday morning lecture, for instance: at the end of two hours of yammering away about deconstruction, I answer a slew of questions from the huge class, walk back to my office, and decide extremely rapidly that the next thing to do is: put my coat on and take a taxi home.

That night I called A. for advice, who has taken interferon herself (for MS; in a very different dosage pattern), and she, amused as always at my attitudes towards such things, just said, sanely: well, you just have to take it as it comes.

Sigh. I just want symptoms that will follow an Organized Working Schedule: is that so much to ask?...

Samhain

Today, the second of what I estimate to be three astoundingly difficult days of change: I would have said before, of disaster and loss, but now I'm not so sure.

A great crisis at work that has been held at bay for eight years. And crashing into the new medications, which has all gone – well, I was about to say unexpectedly wrong, but – actually: at top speed and amidst a host of unexpected added tests, appointments and decisions, the medical front may be actually going more as it should after having been somewhat skewed for some months.

A strange sense of entering battlefields and being forced into decisions I would have backed away from as recently as a few days ago: and simultaneously discovering there are plenty of people ready to help, there are ways forward rather than down, and that these may be changes that were actually needed.

That, in fact, change is not the same as death....