Friday, January 28, 2011

This is ridiculous...

I've fetishized the writing of this blog for long enough. What can I talk about? What can't I talk about? Am I writing long enough? Too frequently (not hardly)? So let me give composing a short piece online a shot.
Looks like a cold, feels like a cold...even smells like a cold. I don't think I have the flu, but I have a fever that builds through the afternoon. Yesterday it broke in the evening and today it broke in the afternoon. But yesterday I lay in bed for three hours feeling too week (or was it lazy? or fearful?) to get up. I lay there groaning. It was so pathetic I had to giggle every half hour or so. The night before when I got out of bed I had chills that took a few cups of tea and a hot shower to tame. My friend Tomoe, from Cortez, who's spent a lot of time in Asia, is convinced that illnesses here strike more deeply than in the US. That may be true. When I had pink-eye in the fall, it was incapacitating. But illnesses also seem to be more self-limiting. They've ended more quickly--as even cuts heal more quickly--in my experience.
By this morning my nose wasn't running like a faucet. It actually had been running like a faucet--I couldn't go to get a new handkerchief without making a mess of my shirtfront and the floor. I had a slow, intermittent cough. And the fever was lower. So I went in to teach. I wore a sporty tartan face mask (available for 75 cents on most street corners--less if you bargain or you're a Vietnamese person or, ideally, both)that looks vaguely like the front pouch of designer underwear worn on the face. But, designed for Vietnamese people's heads, which are, like their size in general, smaller than mine, it pulled my ears forward at approximately right angles to my head, so I wore a stocking cap to keep my head warm and pin the ears back. I looked a little like a bank robber and the students were nonplussed at not being able to read my facial responses as I peered at them as they made smart claims about Marlowe and Kurtz and wilderness and whose heart of darkness.
By the time I got home I still felt like crap so I shuffled over to the pharmacy where my Vietnamese got me nowhere beyond seeming eccentrically polite. It wasn't the place where I could show off my bargaining skills or food knowledge. But I did say "Hello," "Please," "Thank you," and "Good bye," several times each (there were several attendants--it was very cordial). I couldn't even say "Turn left, right, or stop." So I pantomimed. Sneezing. Fever/hot. Fever/brrrr. Coughing. Head ache. Staying awake. Sleeping. You get the picture. So I checked the scientific names on what they gave me. No codeine (hope springs eternal), but acetaminophen, ibuprofen, and some -hydramine ingredients to ensure good rest.
Then I watched American Beauty and finally got inspired to write something, anything (as you see) for the first time in a month. Who knows? Maybe I'll actually write something about Southeast Asia before too long.

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