Originally Posted Friday, May 24, 2013
I am sick tonight beyond my willingness to deal with it. For a week now, I have had a throat that is sore at the very place the ear canal meets it, only on the left side. But the glands in my throat are swollen on both sides and now it feels as if the nodes under my arms are, too. My body has flu-like aches. Living alone and being mostly monastic, I have no one to complain to, and so it feels like cancer. It feels like death.
I went to a workshop today, a demonstration, really, on silk screen printing. I have done the process long ago, but I wanted to see it done again to remind me of the steps. I am thrilled with possibilities, of course, but I know that I will have minimal time to explore them with the factory and all. Oh to be a real artist with a warehouse and time to explore. But as I sat at the table watching the fellow work through the process, I felt sicker and sicker. I had that old familiar sinking feeling because I am off until Tuesday, a good long stretch, and it felt as if I would not be able to enjoy the time.
I bought at book at the art store and on the way home, I stopped at the liquor store. I wanted something fun. Rum. And at home, everything was good. The repairman has been doing a nice job of putting my old wooden house back into shape. The landscapers had come and mulched the driveways and beds (though they did not use cypress mulch as I had asked). The day was bright and blue. It was four. I made a Cuba Libra and sat down to read the book.
Within minutes, I was sleeping on the couch.
Two hours later, thunder woke me up. I think it was thunder, though I could swear there was someone at the door. No matter. I couldn't move. My throat had moved into my ears. It was torture to swallow. My body was a wet sandbag that was beginning to harden.
If I had some codeine, I know that I could beat this quickly. I would have taken some right away and gone to bed. When I woke up, I would have taken some more. And in the morning, I would be well. Rest is palliative and the best cure, but the illness will not let you rest. Doctors (of which I haven't any) never give me the drugs I want and know are best. They are cruel and evil sonsofbitches who power trip their ways to early retirement. Not all, but I never seem to get the Dr. Feelgoods that my friends all seem to have.
Whatever.
I am more determined than ever to grow poppies and cultivate my own opium. That is good enough. It is unrefined and not the strength of codeine which is not as strong as morphine which is a good long way from heroin. Opium is the most used drug in the world. It is the curative for poor people around the globe. When you are sick, you eat some and go to sleep. Let the body heal.
And when it doesn't?
Fuck, that is what I am afraid of tonight. This is cancer, I whisper to myself, the Long Goodbye, and there is nobody here to tell me otherwise.
I've switched from rum to whiskey. It seems more medicinal, somehow.
Rather, I know, what I need is an IV full of saline hydrating me. I don't think I've had a glass of water in days. I have become hydrophobic (which is a terrible problem in the aged and a common cause of death).
Tonight, sick, dehydrated, and alone, I begin to value companionship over art. The waning years, I tell myself. Perhaps that is why I have been getting my house in order. But I need someone to prepare my prints for exhibition. When I am dead, I know they will be shown.
But I am truly not ready to die yet and hope my hysteria will pass like some infection. If I am well tomorrow, I will be cavorting with some young girl. I will ply her with liquor and tell her tales, and we will laugh and sing. I have some ideas, art ideas, that I truly want to pursue. You have not seen anything but my digital jpegs, but I work in transfers and encaustic and other things, too. I want to print my images on fine silk and screen on top of that, then put the entire piece in encaustic and then, again, transfer onto that. There will be layer after marvelous layer until the work attains an incredibly unique and terribly ravaging density.
If I had time and a warehouse sized studio.
Fuck me. I will die tonight and not need to worry about any of it. And this is my complaint, the one I would issue to someone else if they were here to coddle me tonight. I am beginning to feel the thoroughness of my mortality. I once thought I'd be heroic forever like a figure in a book by Isak Dinessen, but I am neither art nor literature tonight, just a meek and humbly broken man whose promise was never attainted.
Get out the tiny fiddle. Put on the finger phonograph. "Waaaaa. . . poor you. . . " But it is not me. It is the human condition. And if we are any damn good at all, we will overcome it. Don't let it happen 'till it happens, right Ernie?
The night grows dark and silent. I would have that fucking opium/codeine. Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.
I'll append this in the morning.
* * * * *
After I wrote that, I watched "Moonrise Kingdom" on HBO. I had not seen it since it came out in theaters a year ago. It was what I needed, something to distract me from my achy illness. What balls Anderson has. I watched enraptured. Kara Hayward's awkward youth is captured in amber much like Scarlett Johansen in "Lost in Translation." They will never be that thing again. They are lucky. Those images and those movies are perfect Odes on a Grecian Urn.
Afterwards, I took what I had, a Tylenol P.M., and went to bed. I slept and woke up drowsy and hung over, but the swelling had lessened in my neck and it hurt less then to swallow. I sat down to read the news just as the repairman came. He sat down for an hour and a half's conversation. When he went to work, the yardman showed, so I walked him around the new yard telling him what I wanted, showing him what to be careful of. He nodded in irritation and paid little attention.
I am clearer headed now and know the illness has mostly passed, but I am weak still. The sky is blue and spotless. I will get some sun. I will have lunch somewhere interesting and take my little toy camera. Baby steps. But the reprieve is good. I am not quite done for yet.
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