Sick Leave/Breakfast "Broadway Boogie Woogie"

Suffer them once to begin the enumeration of their infirmities, and the sun will go down on the unfinished tale.
--Emerson

Since last Tuesday, I have been in a perpetual swoon of illness, which my most cheerful efforts at *being* well did not seem to negate (actually I think it's probably impossible to negate the negative-- one must concentrate on the positive to cause a fruitful shift in perception). However, I have been very productive here at home. I meditated with Megan three days in a row, with astounding results. Creative ideas began to saturate me explosively-- like bombs on Dresden. I had a wonderful idea for a novel (it's a secret), which I have started, and made drawings in my studio to my heart's content, focusing on flowers and creating my own personal/domestic iconography, since I am tired of buying/co-opting everyone else's:







Creative endeavors notwithstanding, I must go to the strip club today and see what fun, money and adventures I can manifest. I really am strapped for cash, yet I do wish I could skip work for just one more day to recover. The strip club is not the best place to take it easy.

PS I was so ill I couldn't even go to church on Easter :(

PS 2 The more visual art I make, the more I seem to unconsciously strive to assemble my environment in a more aesthetically pleasing way as a matter of course. Example, breakfast:



I decided I must paint all the picture frames in my living room white. I wonder if I will, eventually, end up like Mondrian, sick and crying in a white-walled ivory tower, watching reality reduce itself to abstract forms until I can no longer relate to anything objectively (which inevitably drives one insane...). All I know is when one's breakfast starts looking like "Broadway Boogie Woogie" and nothing seems sure in the material world, life is getting fucking strange,

I wouldn't be surprised if I do go insane. It's a tradition upheld by women in my family throughout many generations.

Why must I always take things to extremes?

Old Age/Narcolepsy/Owl

That the life of man is but a dream, many a man has surmised heretofore; and I, too, am everywhere pursued by this feeling.
--Goethe, "The Sorrows of Young Werther"

Whether it's because I have a fever (again), or because I am just lately conducting my life as a sort of waking lucid dream, I find formerly harsh and immutable things soft, filmy and agreeable this evening.

Example:





I looked at my favorite birthday cards from the other day and came to terms with being a year older in a fairly peaceful manner. I tried to be grateful for the love the cards represent at the total exclusion of fretting over the old age they herald and very nearly succeeded. This is a big milestone. I have often thrown my birthday cards away as soon as they were opened. Hopefully that phase of childish (not to be confused with childlike) behavior is over.

Today is one of those days I could not fully wake up, no matter how hard I tried, until after 2pm. I had been up since 8, doing little chores and then periodically tumbling back to bed face-down, trying not to resort to drinking caffeine, and ultimatelly decided to be very happy about having a day off no matter how I spent it.

I remember initially hearing the word "narcolepsy" from a doctor's lips with a lot less trepidation than I had initially heard"clinical depression". That's the difference between 25 and 17, I suppose. These things all seem to work out in the end, and both have become livable conditions for me, even if medicine hasn't done me much lasting good. I wonder what it would be like to intimately know someone else who has a sleeping disorder. I have depressed friends, but their sleep patterns are normal. Maybe some day...

Megan and I meditated at her apartment this evening. Afterward my fever came back.


I drew this owl today. Lately I find drawing enjoyable again for the first time in years. I can't wait to get the rust off my all my latent creative faculties and really get in gear.

PS I hope I'm well enough to go to work tomorrow. Strippers don't get sick pay.