Month: July 2004

FEELING REMARKABLY BETTER! YAY! FINALLY! THANK YOU ALL FOR YOUR WELL-WISHES AND SUGGESTED REMEDIES.

Still Swooning

Gary is the best nurse I could possibly wish for. He lugged the TV into the bedroom so I could watch DVDs (I watched FIVE movies Friday while he was at work — what else could I do?), picked up scrips and vitamins, cleaned stuff, came with me to the doctor’s yesterday, made Mexican chicken soup according to my exacting (and delicious) instructions, and sponged me off with a cool washcloth when I was just too uncomfortable. I guess nursing comes under the rubric of “to husband”, if you think about it.

So much gratitude…

Sick now for over a week. Coughing. Fever. Headache.

For many days, a rollercoaster fever that would go up to 102.5 then roll down a bit. It’s been more or less normal for a couple of days although at the moment it’s 99 point something.

It seems not to be a bacterial infection, my CBC count is normal, other symptoms and lacks of symptoms and doctor checks tell me it’s not pneumonia.

But still, two days ago, my doctor gave me an antibiotic. After I took it two things happened: 1) My fever went down (but I suspect that is a coincidence), and 2) I started having intense hallucinations and dreams while sleeping or falling to sleep.

Just the worse kinds of frenetic cartoons: four rotating columns composed of coyote heads braiding upwards in groups of three. a giant egghead (resembling an Indonesian mask) with huge bugeyes and mustachios, fire coming out of his ears, something my mind decided was “landfill” pouring out of his mouth. and these images endless. I tried to write some down but couldn’t keep it up as it’s tiring and I’m still weak, having tossed and turned and fretted and sweated so much…

Of course I went online and looked at side effects for “Avelox” and found that yes indeed, such hallucinations are listed as a rare side effect. I’m going to stop taking the antibiotic as there are really no signs that this is a bacterial infection — one doctor assures me it isn’t even bronchitis. But in the meantime, my head is pounding and I’m still hypnogogically & hypnopompically delusional. And I can’t take an Advil because guess what? The doctor didn’t mention it to me, but to do so while on this antibiotic increases the risk of seizures!

Any advice on how best to get the antibiotic out of my system besides the obvious water-drinking? I really have to go to work tomorrow in some state of normality (no, I won’t say “normal*y).

Maybe they should put something on the label about how this drug is not suggested for imaginative types.

How to write a poem that would make someone very sensitive feel like Proust did when he heard or even thought of the Vinteuil Sonata?

How to write a poem that is even as fractionally compelling as the worst song by Najwa Karam?

Just finished Haruki Murakami’s The Windup Bird Chronicle. I read it in a little more than a day, I was so possessed by it. The first half of the book a series of losses, absurd seductions, and weird new elements, the second a gradual ravelling up again but only after a total descent into total strangeness. The ending sad — actually, the whole book is sad; one of the qualities that makes it so compelling. I said to Gary it reminded me of a cross between Kafka and Stephen King. The metaphors Kafka, the crystalline suspenseful structure King.

I’ve been also trying to read Elaine Scarry’s The Body in Pain, but when I do I notice two things happening: 1) I realize I don’t necessarily agree with all the constructs and analogies she’s setting up, so I have a hard time getting to the end of her arguments intact, and 2) my body starts to hurt! I think it’s probably a great book, but these two things are stumbling points.

Read Drew G. on Alli W.

FYI

It’s KAH RAH OH KEH.

Karaoke. Just thought you might like to know.

How many of you saw The Corporation? I loved that CEO of the carpet company (Interface?) who had an environmental epiphany about the damage his company was doing. He is aiming to make his products more and more earth-friendly. I think his last name was Anderson. He was highly articulate, like an old-fashioned southern preacher — words chosen carefully but almost Victorian-ly, with furbelows attached.

I keep thinking… I want to tell him… that if he’s looking for the perfect renewable carpet material… what about TATAMI?

It’s the perfect renewable resource. It’s completely non-toxic (except for those with hay and dust allergies) if grown organically. It smells divine and looks soooo lovely.

It entails a few cultural changes, like not wearing shoes, but they are well worth its multitude of virtues. Tatami. It could be The New Foundation. Think about it.

Not only do I VERY STRONGLY disagree that “song is a very different discipline” from poetry, but I think such a statement disregards the fact that in some cultures and histories poetry by definition is (or was) sung. I am reluctant to refer to Pound as any kind of expert on anything, but when he wrote that “Poetry atrophies when it gets too far from music,” when I first read those words as a teenager (someone gave me The ABC of Reading on my 14th birthday), I instantly, emphatically, and intuitively agreed.

Poetry needs to be grasped by its very horns and wrenched back into the arena of song.

The more I hear poetry in its current fashion of oral presentation, the more I am convinced of this.

The more carefully I listen to singers, the more I am convinced of this.

Trying to do my part…

If — no, when — Bush is ousted, we are all going to be dancing, really literally out there dancing in the streets. I keep holding this in my mind’s eye.

It won’t be like when the US media toppled the statue of Saddam. This time they won’t have to pay anybody. And there will be more than a dozen people. There will be some seriously primal Breughelesque rejoicing.