SLOWLY RECOVERING
Emerging from the paroxysms of unstoppable coughing and entirely blocked throat, into a world still recovering from a snowstorm, I’m moving very slowly — trying to remember what I used to do and to actually do it without falling over (vertigo is part of this) or starting up the coughing again. Some things are new. I had bought a shower stool so I could sit down to scrub my feet, but I carried the stool around for so many other things, that I never put it in the shower. Today I did it — sat down in the shower.
When I changed out the old rusty shallow cold tub for this corner shower, I had no idea I was changing gender contexts. A shower is for sweaty athletes every day after exertions. I have no intention of doing that, but here I am in the shower with my Dove soap and scented body wash. It’s almost as good as a hot deep tub soak.
The just previous apartment I had in Portland was an old semi-ruined luxury apartment from the days when Holiday Park was a sunken horse race track and then an amphitheater where my family eagerly took blankets to sit on the grassy slopes and watch the opera based on “The Bridge of the Gods” about how warring gods used volcanoes into weapons to win — what else? — an “Indian princess.” https://www.jstor.org/stable/20612053 Like many of the Greek/Roman myths, it was an effort to account for geological features by reframing them in human terms. The actuality must have been pretty spectacular, worthy of Stravinsky.
In a bit I’ll go see whether the doc has remembered to send the results of the bloodpanel draw I performed two weeks ago and whether the pharmacist has sent my next dose of meds since I changed both docs and prescriptions. Much of what happens here is done via the mail. Luckily, no one I know needs to mail to Australia, which we are told the US can no longer to manage to do. It’s hard to imagine a more vivid sign of the collapse of civilization.
I made a rule for myself that I would write 1,000 words for this blog every day. But I’m in a bit of collapse myself. Maybe you don’t have that much time time to read anyway.
