The Fall of the House of Eliott

I am sitting in my half-lit bedroom, massacring an overripe orange. It does not taste particularly good, and I have peeled it badly. I keep having to pry the segments apart and then they rip and get sticky old juice on my fingers. And I'm trying to use this computer at the same time, so now the keys and touchpad are getting all sticky too. I think I've got the flu, but it could just be a really bad head-cold. I've never had a head-cold before, but I'm pretty sure this is what goes on: It's kind of like my skull is overfull with glue or yogurt (viscosity thereabouts), but my brain is also in there with a tight rubber band around it. Something very unpleasant and disconcerting keeps happening with my eyeballs. I tell myself that they won't actually pop out of my face, though that's what it feels like. The ears, nose, and throat have gone into collaborative revolt. There is also a great deal of sneezing, which feels awesome for a nanonsecond before causing more ocular pressure and general seepage. From the shoulders down, everything's either freezing or roasting, and all of it is sore, stubborn, and totally disgusted with itself. Festering in bed like this, with the heaped covers and crumpled tissues and drawn shutters (not to mention the god awful lozenges), while outside everything is positively suffused with early Spring sunlight, makes me feel like something creepy and antique: a lunatic shut-in, a malarial Roderick Usher.

Today is also Friday the 13th, so there's that sinister feeling in the air. I've already made one outing today, to drive Chui to school. I will make another, to bring her home, and that's it. I don't like being behind the wheel in this condition, especially on Friday the 13th. My peripheral vision is on the fritz and I keep bumping my head on things (appliances, furniture, doorways). I bump my head and then I burst into tears. It's all a bit upsetting. My best friend once went to a homeopathic sinus specialist who inflated tiny balloons in her sinuses in order to cleanse them. The specialist warned my friend that this procedure often resulted in sudden, unexpected waves of emotion on the part of the cleansee. My friend said, "Fine, sure, do your worst." (Or something to that effect.) However, when the first balloon actually went up her nose and did its thing, she felt tremendous pain and then just started sobbing uncontrollably without knowing why. It was intense and suprising, she said, but not very helpful. She didn't go back for the recommended second visit. I am wondering if my own blubbering of late has something to do with the sinuses being out-of-whack. It's either that or pregnancy. Or homesickness. Or the ancestors tormenting me. Probably all of the above.

On another note, Hector just phoned from work to give me some news which seemed, at first, incontrovertibly good: "Cathy", the annoying comic strip that I've loved to hate for over twenty years, will come to an end on October 3rd of this year. There is something both thrilling and sad about this and I need some time to work through these complicated feelings before writing more about it.

They will say it's elementary

Today, while rereading "The Coincidence of the Arts", just one of Martin Amis's brilliant and amazing short stories, I was moved again to spit (not literally) on Simone de Beauvoir's grave. I was thinking about the idea of service and devotion and how these are the glue that binds and also the waves that churn true and right Buddhist behavior. For a while, I've considered sending an email to one of my old professors about Kazuo Ishiguro's "The Remains of the Day", because I think that it is an incredible and morally interesting example of absolute devotion. They should teach it at Naropa. Anyway, suddenly, in the midst of a Martin Amis word-reverie, a thought came over me, and I realized that, in marriage, you must be the best servant of your spouse that you can possibly be. Marriage is fundamentally an act of devotion on both sides and anyone that complains about women having the short end of the stick is probably missing something. Men are more gravely misunderstood than women much of the time. Women are traditionally expected to be the housekeepers and stay-at-homes. Okay. But that doesn't necessarily mean that men go off and have a high time of it every day bringing home the bacon and doing whatever they choose. Men are as much subject to the rules of society (written by the warty, gossipy aunts in the sky) as women. Only different things are expected of them. When we had to read "The Second Sex" in college, it really pissed me off. Here was this whole book about how women are mythologized and put-upon and worn down, over time, into their roles. They are the servants and Cinderellas of humanity. But men have just as many ideals to live up to and just as many stereotypes to overcome! Marriage is threatening to some people because they think that it is an antiquated legal agreement that has more to do with property than with absolute devotion from both parties. But, in my life, from both sides, it is mostly about being the best companion you can be to someone that you love enough to do right by at all times. To treat, completely, someone else as you should want to be treated yourself. Patiently, enthusiastically, lovingly. That, and once in a while putting up with a movie that takes place on a submarine.