How tragic that I titled this blog space with "Stories" and filled it with nothing. Now that I have acquired half a dozen food & interest blogs that I am actually interested in reading, and because it is a dark stormy morning in December, and because I am not able to go back to sleep... .
Because I am still not well, I can't do anything too active. That means no bustling about the kitchen making breakfast (I think I want French toast to go with those bananas) or actively starting errands, tasks, and chores. Heck, I was sitting here working up to the making of tea. Bag tea.
It is very important that I don't let myself get anxious about what I can't do yet. It makes breathing harder. What I am recovering from is a wicked case of bronchitis, or what fits the description of reactive airways disease. I have had breathing issues in the past. There was the time I got very sick at 18. Ever since then, I have had more sensitivity to things like household chemical smells (the Garden aisle in a hardware store could kill me), air conditioning, and even milk shakes that are too cold. Chocolate malt, in particular. Go figure on that one.
What I am most afraid of is suffocation. Bronchitis feels like drowning. If I am not sick (feverish) and am only wheezy, I can sit still and calm myself. I taught myself to do this because of how often it happens with seasonal allergies. Be still, be calm, and eventually come to a kind of equilibrium and restored breathing.
It's cold season. I was spinning the Wheel 'O Colds and thought I might have to go through all the variations from the bus riding student population. I think I was significantly impaired by fever by the time I realized that I was feverish. I lost the whole weekend and three days of work being sicker than I can ever remember being. Now, a full week later, I am still short of breath. I know I am mending.
To me, the interesting thing that is coming out of this sickness is how it seems that my physical self has used the illness to insist that I must change my life. My appetite came back, but the only things that taste good are fruit, peanut butter, and healthy foods. I can only eat 1/4 of what I would normally expect to want. I am absolutely sick of sitting and reclining. (Unfortunately, I still have to.) I have to take everything slow.
I can afford to eat good food, now. I can buy organic again. And there has not been a good reason for me not to buy the peppers and onions that I love to eat. I don't have to make meals large enough for leftovers, ever, so I don't have to eat chili or soup for days. I don't have to be always multi-tasking. I don't have to rush home. I do want to clock out for my lunch break and take a walk around the block for the fresh air.
I don't have to be 30 or 40 pounds overweight and irritated by it. It's not so much that I care about the mass as that to me it is a constant reminder of the way I've let things continue. During all the violent coughing, I got an abdominal cramp. It kind of felt good, because I haven't felt that muscle work that hard in a long time.
Food is such a big thing for me! I don't have to eat a lot to be happy, but I do like the things I eat to be made with care and thought.
People like Rilke's poem, "Archaic Torso of Apollo," for the final phrase in the last line, translated as "You must change your life." I think, in general, readers don't get the poem, but they latch on to the force of that final imperative. I first heard it read on a few weeks ago on a show. Another character talks over the whole first part of the poem, and only the last stands out, directed at a man who recently dumped the poem reader. But I think what it is is the sense you might get standing in a church, looking at the beautiful windows and architecture. Then all at once, you hear a voice, feel a voice push at you, and it is as if you've suddenly come awake. You are in the presence of God. You must change your life.
We have names for it because it is a common human experience: wake up call, call to action, satori.
tea.
