So: the news from the doctor – the medication doesn't seem to be doing much; a final decision in another month or so, but probably this was all useless. Which was kind of expected anyway.
Annoyingly, since early December, and more so since Christmas Day (which was, itself, fun, at Michael and Andrew's), I am more trivially but sourly, tiredly, ill; the chain of colds and flus that everyone seems to be having (but I seem to be having more, rather than less, than usual); the unpleasant aspect of food, the tiredness of getting up... the sensate world seems dull and tarnished, a smeared mirror that won't wipe clear. I've thrown out several meals when they were cooked, because they smelled suspicious – which may well be just my distorted senses: I know I ate one bad meal last week, but in general many food smells seem unattractive at the moment. I try to come up with something to eat each time I am supposed to take pills... such a lot of food in the house, you'd think it would be easy; but nothing seems quite right.
Yesterday, after I'd thrown out a pizza on the day after it was ordered, and some tired vegetables, Katya, the Bulgarian woman who cleans for me (and who has tended to become quite protective of me) brought some pieces of cheese pita – she didn't call it that of course (that's the Greek name for it) but I can't remember the Bulgarian name she used. (These foods cross a number of countries – the truth is, in the wake of thousands of years of Byzantine, Ottoman, and Muslim/Christian/Balkan/Slavic/Greek wrangling, it's impossible to disentangle the origins of foods, or of musics.) It was kind of her, and very well-timed – I heated it in the oven for a few minutes, and enjoyed it; it felt comforting and quite safe, compared to some of the weird and toxic auras that food around me seems to have developed.
Of course a part of all this is the fact that I've taken the medication without the usual required antidepressants – which actually kind of upset the HCV doctor, he looked surprisingly concerned when we informed him of that decision. But I've managed, and I prefer it – it's actually worse to have that wrapped-in-cotton feeling.
Apparently an unnecessary addition, after all the coughing and tiredness and weight loss, is some sort of bacterial infection – upper respiratory? – something opportune that popped up between viruses. This week it has given me even more, dryness, coughing, and a sour taste that won't go away no matter what tooth-brushing I do, no matter how much fresh water or juice I drink. Clearly an antibiotic is the answer – hopefully not one with yet more digestive side effects; or would I care? – but I missed going to the doctor today, and apparently they no longer hold weekend hours; and this certainly isn't worth an emergency room, so I'll go on Monday morning before class.
So: dull, the sensate world full of sour, metallic tastes and smells, and that oddly torn muscle in my right hand....
I have been re-reading, for the umpteenth time, Tanith Lee's Tales of the Flat Earth, the first two books of five – and I've moved from the malice, fairy-tale joys and tragedies of the first book to the more intricately grand tragicomedy of the second, where Death faces down those who have stolen the draught of immortality. The bitter ironies of this part of the tale suit my mood – once Simmu has valiantly made himself into a hero and stolen the dull, gray liquid of immortality, he drinks, and he and all the many grand and brilliant people he has gathered around him drink; but they are merely human, and ill-suited to immortality, so that their energy, their purpose, drains away. They become dull, bored in a gloriously silver city at the end of the world, where they can do anything... but care less and less about doing anything. They become dolls where the clockwork has stopped....
A cruel tragedy, and one that is brilliantly told, with satire and sensuality leading to a dark sense of what a 'dead end' feels like.
Although of course that battle between lives and Death has nothing (or little?) to do with these trivial illnesses, the tone resonates... the sense, in this strange winter of bad weather and dying birds and fishes, that misery is not grandiose: it is just, well –
a bit miserable.
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