Monday 27 September 1999
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Pic of the day: This flower in my window is blossoming with the last
of its strength. Most all of its leaves are brown and withered, the
stem itself is turning brown and losing its power to keep it upright.
Yet in some kind of desperate determination, it proceeds to open its
one and only blossom to the waning sun of the fall.
However moving its example may be, I have decided not to follow it.
I have noticed repeatedly that whenever I tell the world how happy I
am, I get sick. And if I continue to write about my happiness, I
just get sicker. So now I intend to put it in full reverse, whining
pathetically to any who will listen. Perhaps then the Power That Be
will also reverse my fortune so my body can re-align with my mind!
As nights go, this one was pretty bad. I could lie down and sleep only for about half an hour at a time, before I had to get up and cough to clear the green slime from my bronchies so I could breathe freely again. That bites. No wonder I got a headache at work, too. Luckily I had next to no fever. This thing is moving from Disgusting to the outskirts of Downright Scary. There is a historical reason for that. When I was a small kid, I got some kind of asthma. It meant that I would get attacks more or less at random, but more probably late at night or after hard physical activity, or after inhaling too much dust or smoke. These attacks were kind of scary for a kid like me. (As well they should be, as I just could have died from one.) In fact, I still find it scary to have trouble breathing. But I guess people can get used to it ... some adorable grown-ups have asthma too, and seem to handle it fairly well. As a child, I soon learned that activity was bad, inactivity was good. This knowledge instantly married my laziness genes (which are evident here and there in my extended family) and I turned into Sloth, the Incarnation of Laziness. When I started school, I was already small and weak and pale. The other boys were delighted to find someone they could safely bully. And so started a downward spiral. It shaped me, to a great extent, into the person I am.
There is a delightful irony in this. My weakness alienated me
from my classmates and largely from the human race at all, and
set me on the course that I would pursue for quite a while: To
discard my humanity, to try to become a minor deity. The neutral
observer will probably have concluded by now that I failed at least in
the second part of that quest. Still, I learned a lot, and I am
actually thankful for the direction my life took.
The asthma sort of dissipated after some years. I was symptom free
already when I was 12, but it would go five more years before I had
closed up the difference to others of my age in physical development.
I'm still no body-builder, but I guess neither am I as small and weak
as I feel. Or at least it is not as obvious as I tend to think.
(Then again, neither is my intellect...)
For maximum gross-out value, I'm not just coughing my lungs out, but my haemorrhoids too. I haven't heard much from these in the past. I understand that these features are common in overweigh middle-aged people, but I thought they were more commonly associated with constipation than the opposite. And I am definitely not the anal-retentive type any more. Oh well. I understand they're not considered all that lethal either, but they sure are a pain in the ass sometimes. After a night of very limited sleep, and not drinking coffe, it is not surprising that I got really really tired a while into the workday. Being alone in my office for a fleeting while, I put my head on my arms and gently lowered myself into a semi-conscious sleep. Almost immediately dreamlike pictures started to form inside my closed eyelids. Pictures of a dark grey stone corridor, and a guy in green, with indistinct face. A Daggerfall thief. I was dreaming in Daggergraphics! I continued watching the character for a while, but woke up without having started a fight.
I guess it could help if I played a little more Daggerfall. I mean,
this just mean that my brain has an unmet demand for Daggerfall, right?
Just like guys dream of sex if they (we, actually) haven't had any
for a while. Or women on a diet dream of food, and lots of it.
Yes, that sounds like a good explanation...
Well, this was certainly a yucky entry. Then again, it was a yucky night and day. Of course, as I came home to my home computer, all tiredness magically disappeared. It is sure to return, though. OK, that should be enough whining. Now let us see what happens. If I survive, as now I should, I will be sure to keep you updated. You know, I really wish I could be publicly happy all the time. But it ain't worth dying for, I think, unless you are a flower. |