|
|
|
giving in to mortality
Wednesday, November 16 2005
Clients have been giving me their old computers and bulky non-flatscreen monitors lately and I've been taking them even though I can't really justify the resulting clutter. Today, though, when Kathy from the Catskill Animal Sanctuary called with a "my monitor stopped working" crisis, I had a replacement 17 inch at the ready. (Does anyone use 15 inch CRTs anymore? Remember when they used to cost $300?)
I continued to feel ill at times today. These feelings would come and go in waves, sometimes they were so bad that I kept wondering if maybe there was something seriously wrong with me, which inevitably made me pay more attention to the my body and set up a feedback loop of ever-increasing hypochondria. I should mention at this point that my attitude towards sickness is extremely fatalistic. Whenever I take ill, there's a part of me that is convinced that I'm done for and that I should just give in to my mortality. There's never a voice of defiance vowing to live on, even with something as routine as the (non-avian) flu. But I rarely suffer from routine ailments. Most of my health problems are unusual: heart palpitations, anxiety attacks, and esophageal clenching (after a near two-year hiatus they're back; I'd been having bouts of them even before my gasoline drinking incident.) Of course, if I had a sensible health maintenance program I'd go to a doctor and get some advice, and I'd seek professional help after stupid shit like drinking gasoline. But at this point I'd rather save the several hundred dollars any such advice would cost me.
I was feeling so bad this evening, mostly from discomfort related to esophageal clenching, that I took a nap. When I woke up several hours later I felt perfectly fine, but the clenching came back an hour or so later while Gretchen and I were out with the photogenic Buddhists watching Good Night and Good Luck in Woodstock.
Both Gretchen and I found that movie very unsatisfying. Its chief defect was the absence of a soul. It provided absolutely no character development or background of any sort, which wouldn't have been so bad had something else been provided instead. But no, in fact, I can't really remember anything much even happening in the film. Its only attribute was atmosphere. I also have a question: How many years did the cast and crew lose from their collective lives after being exposed to the nimbi of cigarette smoke that formed a constant fog in absolutely every scene? Did Edward Murrow actually smoke as he hosted his programs? What a wacky and different time that was, not so terribly many years ago!
For linking purposes this article's URL is:
http://asecular.com/blog.php?051116 feedback
previous | next |
