Well I feel a little bit better than the last time I wrote for you nice people. Probably because I’ve gotten plenty of sleep since then.
In fact I’ll probably go right back to sleep when I finish this half of the day’s writing.
That’s how freaking drained I feel. Guess my body is really going all out against this infection. Good for it.
Beats the hell out of ending up with pneumonia again.
Speaking of which, it’s move into my nose and lungs now. Runny nose, scratchy feeling in throat and lungs. Lovely.
Even more annoying is the mental drain. I am finding it so very hard to concentrate right now. My mind wanders all over the place like a dog deciding where to poop.
Still have my ability to dream up gross imagery, though, it seems.
Well it all comes down to pooping in the end, anyway. When you think about it,.
Anyhow, as a result of this brain drain, the words are coming pretty slow right now. I’m having to play that fun game where I repeatedly have to drag my attention back to the screen after it wanders off on a series of tangents yet again.
I had to do it three times just while writing that last sentence.
I’ve started to cough, too. Dunno whether that’s due to fluid in my lungs or my post nasal drip reversing and dripping into my throat instead.
Gross, I know. But all too real.
I feel a little guilty because I would rather be writing about something more in-depth and interesting for y’all but talking about my symptoms is about the best I can do right now.
I promise to return to my usual brand of navel diving real soon now.
It’s a nice sunny day out. Reminds me of all those times as a kid when I would stay home sick from school only to feel better by the afternoon just in time for the weather to turn gloriously sunny and nice.
We could have been in the grips of a hurricane in the morning with me in a frigging coma but by afternoon it would be postcard perfect out and I would be ready to turn cartwheels on the front lawn.
But no dice, because we had a rule that said that there was no going outside on a day you stayed home sick from school.
Perfectly reasonable. If you were really sick, you shouldn’t go outside, because there’s extra germs out there. And if you were faking it, you would be punished for it by having to stay inside and see all that lovely child enticing sunshine out there. knowing you weren’t allowed to go enjoy it.
Reminds me about old fashioned references to kids “playing hooky” and having to dodge the truancy officer.
Because apparently back then, kids were so prone to not bothering to show up for school that the school district had to hire a full time employee to round them up.
Boggles the mind. I can’t imagine decided to just…. not go to school. I would have gotten into so much trouble!
It really seems to me like, despite what old people have always thought, kids were a hell of a lot more wild and badly behaved back in the old days.
And yet society was more conformist and oppressive back then.
Almost like there’s some kind of connection. Hmmm.
More after the break.
On knowing too much
We (Joe, Julian, and I) just finished watching the latest episode of Picard and it got me to thinking about what it means to be a smark.
That’s a portmanteau of “smart” and “mark” and in this sense, it means to be someone who consumes media with the knowledge of how it all works.
For example, in the episode we just watched, the ship and crew are in a seemingly no win scenario and it looks like the ship will be crushed by gravity and everyone will die.
But of course you know that’s not true because then the show would be over and the studio would lose a host of beloved characters and everyone would quite rightfully be extremely angry and possibly storm the studio.
We Star Trek fans are a passionate lot.
It’s not just a show to us.
Anyhow, what knowing that kind of thing means is that for me, there was no suspense. I knew they’d be fine. I never felt like there was any real danger.
But I know it’s not that way for everybody. Some people can fully suspend disbelief and let a show or a book or a comic completely become their reality temporarily and not have the sort of media savvy cynical Gen X snarky POV that I do.
And I envy those people. They must get so much more out of media than I do.
But I know I could never be like them. I was this cynical when I was still a child. I knew everything would be fine at the end of an episode of Scooby Doo or Spider-Man And His Amazing Friends or even Family Ties.
Even back then, if a character said, “We’ve only got one chance!”, I said “Well then it will work. ” to myself.
Because the truth is, analysis and looking for patterns is my mode of being. I can’t stop doing it any more than I can stop breathing. I analyze, therefore I am.
And while this does give me a very deep understanding of the world and how it works, I do sometimes wonder what it would be like to be ignorant and innocent for a while.
I’ve always known too much and seen too much for my own good. I saw through people and knew what they feeling via empathy and analysis and often knew more about them than they knew themselves from far too early an age.
Because this wide open mind of mine offers absolutely no shelter from the harsh realities of life. At some point, perhaps out of some deep seated paranoia, I chose crystal clarity over comfortable shadedness, and I have lived in the harsh light of such unguarded truth for my entire life.
I chose to pursue the truth with no regard for my own emotional well being.
And that’s a very harsh choice to have made from such a tender age.
I could honestly do with a healthy dose of self-sustaining delusion right now.
No wonder that when I imagine myself lost on that Midnight Tundra, I am always naked.
I’ve been naked before the truth my whole life.
And I am really fucking cold.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.