I tried to write a bit earlier this morning when I was feeling somewhat perky due to a sudden burst of adrenalin. All this deceived me from the fact that I still feel pretty terrible, something I found out only after I came into the study, plopped on the couch and realized that both thinking and reading hurt. Now a few hours, a peanut butter sandwich and two ibuprofen later, I will attempt it. Thinking hurts a little less. Typing hurts not at all. So I will write because writing is therapy. I can’t remember who said that but someone must have.
So here are the details: I contracted the swine flu within three days of returning back to full-time employment. I can not begin to express how deeply disappointed I am in my immune system right now but I am dealing with it. I’m not quite sure what I expected. Realistically I knew there was a chance, a good chance of getting sick once I started working in an elementary school but after three days? That is pathetic even by my standards.
The first day was rough. I lay on the couch with my little sick kit – chamomile tea with honey, thermometer, Kleenex, Tylenol – and watched a show about pirates on Hulu. I moaned a little, shivered under covers, and tried to breathe. I worked out the lyrics for a song, “The Swine Flu Blues” but stopped because nothing rhymes with Relenza except credenza and I just couldn’t make that work. Then I spent some time mentally designing the flag I should attach to the house to warn people to stay away, just like the sailors had to do once they discovered the black plague was aboard. I decided that mine would be black with a little white pig in the center.
On Friday, Seth joined me in my sickness. I was sad for him because I really wanted him to stay healthy but in way it was nice to have a little companionship. I hadn’t hugged him in a couple of days and all of the people I talked at the doctor’s office were wearing masks so I guess I was getting a little lonely. So we drove to Gainesville to see Seth’s doctor. I wore my mask when I got there. People stayed very far away from us because of it – good for them. The nurse asked why I was wearing it and out came the story and she laughed when I told her that I’d only been working for three days before I got it. That is good. I’m glad someone else has a sense of humor. People like that remind me that life is funny if you look at it the right way. I think I will begin to approach this perspective when my temperature returns to normal and also when I forget that my pay has been docked because I haven’t built up enough leave.
On Saturday, Seth woke up at 6:30 am as happy as ever. He is an early bird, God bless him, and a very good sick person for the most part unless we’re talking tonsillitis then he makes me spoon feed him and he sleeps in my arms for most of the day. So despite the fact that he still had a pretty good fever and cough, there he was, bouncing on the bed asking me if I can play a game. At that point I was coherent enough only to understand that I should never have encouraged Shaun to go out of town for the weekend because now I was really all alone and no one on Earth could come to help me what with the black piggy flag flying from the house and all. But somehow I managed to pull myself together and made it though the rest of the day on prayer and painkillers.
So now it’s Sunday. Shaun is home and abundantly healthy. He’s cooking us lunch and playing with Seth. The ibuprofen has definitely kicked in and I am looking forward to a long afternoon nap. And although it’s probably not been much to read, the writing has indeed been therapeutic, just like so-and-so said.
Sunday, September 27, 2009
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
life song
So I am currently discovering something that is kind of exciting - a quasi-revelation about life. I use the words “quasi” and “kind of” because this may be absolute garbage and produce no real revelation at all – that is my official disclaimer. But like most revelations, if this truly is one, time will bear it out.
It began when an idea for a song somehow found its way into my in to my head. This doesn’t happen often these days but when it does, I try to take a few seconds and write it down on a scrap of paper or the back of a napkin or some bubble gum paper whatever is handy. And though the likelihood that I will actually devote any time to these little wisps of inspiration is practically none, it makes me feel better to know that I am making some sort of an effort. And so it was with the words that popped into my head the other morning. I dutifully scribbled them on a blue post it, then placed them in the desk drawer designated for creative thought, AKA, the black hole.
The revelation came as my mind turned to the creative process as a whole - the excitement that comes with that first thought, those first lines, the first hint of a melody. The feeling you get when all those little neurons start firing in earnest and you stumble upon a beautiful mystery that is larger than yourself and compels you to just watch and listen for a while so it can reveal itself to you. It’s in that moment you feel unsinkable, as if you could conquer the world, or at least a small part of it with sheer creative genius alone. That’s how it feels to me.
I’d like to say it carries on like that but it’s never really worked out that way. Creating something takes time and effort and changing. Somewhere along the line you start to wonder whether it’s worth your time or effort because that is a real question after all. But then you decide to stay with it only you really must change this word or that one or make the chorus the bridge because it was never actually a chorus at all, it just seemed that way at first. And then ultimately you arrive at something that you can be proud of, something that is really meaningful to you. Only you look back and you find that the one line, the one that got you going in the first place, the springboard for all your efforts, has been replaced by something that you found along the way or perhaps forgotten altogether. And that seems odd at first because when you first began everything was so focused around it. Only now looking back, you see it was essential only in the sense that it served as a starting point.
Songs are like that, and sometimes so is life.
It began when an idea for a song somehow found its way into my in to my head. This doesn’t happen often these days but when it does, I try to take a few seconds and write it down on a scrap of paper or the back of a napkin or some bubble gum paper whatever is handy. And though the likelihood that I will actually devote any time to these little wisps of inspiration is practically none, it makes me feel better to know that I am making some sort of an effort. And so it was with the words that popped into my head the other morning. I dutifully scribbled them on a blue post it, then placed them in the desk drawer designated for creative thought, AKA, the black hole.
The revelation came as my mind turned to the creative process as a whole - the excitement that comes with that first thought, those first lines, the first hint of a melody. The feeling you get when all those little neurons start firing in earnest and you stumble upon a beautiful mystery that is larger than yourself and compels you to just watch and listen for a while so it can reveal itself to you. It’s in that moment you feel unsinkable, as if you could conquer the world, or at least a small part of it with sheer creative genius alone. That’s how it feels to me.
I’d like to say it carries on like that but it’s never really worked out that way. Creating something takes time and effort and changing. Somewhere along the line you start to wonder whether it’s worth your time or effort because that is a real question after all. But then you decide to stay with it only you really must change this word or that one or make the chorus the bridge because it was never actually a chorus at all, it just seemed that way at first. And then ultimately you arrive at something that you can be proud of, something that is really meaningful to you. Only you look back and you find that the one line, the one that got you going in the first place, the springboard for all your efforts, has been replaced by something that you found along the way or perhaps forgotten altogether. And that seems odd at first because when you first began everything was so focused around it. Only now looking back, you see it was essential only in the sense that it served as a starting point.
Songs are like that, and sometimes so is life.
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