Minus Something

I’m finding it hard to cope now that Estelle Getty (from NY Times obituary: When Blanche complained that her life was an open book, Sophia witheringly replied: “Your life is an open blouse.”) is dead and with her a part of my youth, also I am currently high on anti-inflammatories, Portuguese Penicillian, and Paracetamol right now (cause it turns out I've got strep throat yet again). I think I just had it less than a year ago and it is awful. Strep throat seems like a misnomer because, although the throat is what hurts the most, there is not a single part on the body that doesn’t hurt when the bacteria build up enough. I guess I did it to myself. I allowed these little monsters multiply in my body because I didn’t want to deal with the bureaucracy involved in a visit to a Portuguese clinic. After several days of no sleep and night sweats alternating with shivers from some physically imagined freeze, I decided that as glamorous as Scarlett Fever sounded I would rather enjoy the rest of my time here instead of becoming the suffering non-artist locked away in reclusion. I spent most of my past two days in solitude listening to “Saturday Night Fry” a radio program hosted by Stephen Fry and Hugh Lorry that my friend Ryan gave me a couple of years ago and I never had the attention to follow completely. Today everywhere I went I saw Hugh Lorry’s face on all the billboards advertising Schweppe’s Tonic saying “Para mim, é claro”. I wasn’t sure if this was a hallucination or not, but I know none of this was here before. My entire diet for the last two days has been entirely composed of valerian tea with lemon ginger and honey with an occasional chocolate covered almond (I also tried my hand at making miso, but found making dashi was difficult when you can’t find dried sardines—Betty suggested I try making Dashi out of bacalhau which I found laughable). Anyway, I think I will get my appetite back when I can swallow. This process shouldn’t take long as I received a penicillin shot in the ass from some sadistic Hong Kongolesen (sp?) nurse before I left the Hospital Inglês in Campo de Orique. I went to this hospital because I assumed things would be a bit more efficient, and it was—I had a needle in me by the time it normally takes me to buy a loaf of bread at Pingo Doce. This was not the only difference I noticed. Not only were there no pigeons allowed in this hospital, it was also the most pristine, blindingly white and sterile environment I’ve ever been in. It was as if I was in some Howard Hughes dream set in the future (my future, not his). I’m so used to seeing dirt and decay everywhere; maybe I was starting to become a hypochondriac as well (I swear the pigeons intentionally cough in my face every chance they get). This is rather disconcerting as I’ve never been troubled by grime, anyone who has ever been to my apartment in Minneapolis can attest to this. The doctor didn’t give me one of those cue tip lab exams where they shove it as far down your throat as possible until you gag and then shove some more. He just put a tongue depressor in my mouth, looked into my ears with one of those ear canal-looking machines, then went to feel my glands and noticed they were bruised on the outside due to the swelling and decided I needed some meds fast. The nurse told me to take down my drawers and stabbed me with authority (and I believe some pent-up rage) and while massaging in the liquid and slowly pressing down the plunger she continuously asked “oooh, sid I hert you?”

So one of the worst weeks I’ve had in awile has followed the best show I’ve ever seen (Leonard Cohen), which I’ll try to upload some clips for your enjoyment. I can count on less than two hands the people who know about this blog and I know less than 10% care anything about Leonard Cohen so you can just skip this part, which will be brief. The genius Cohen at 76, who hasn’t been on tour for 15 years, was as agile as he was in his 20s and his voice has the same vitality and tonality as ever. He played every song I love, and a few I’d never heard of. Sadly though, he did not play my favorite, “Famous Blue Raincoat”. Maybe that was for the best though, it was a song I only heard him play a couple times and once I learned it on the guitar I no longer wanted to hear because I liked the way I did it and I thought if I heard his version again it would affect the way I played it. So its always remained somewhat of a simulacra of sorts.
I guess there is not much more to tell since, except for a wretched presentation I had to do half-dead in class on the chronology of Rap in Portugal, I really haven’t been outside my room very often. Just an interior experience of vague restlessness in a decomposing body without energy, an intellectual itch that was at times sublime, at times unbearable. Like a chicken pox of the soul. Like Pessoa’s desasossego, you know where to scratch, but you have no clue how to reach it.