Massive stomach cramps that double you over in pain. Acidic excretia that burns as it’s released. It’s past midnight now, and so I’m in the fourth day of my bodily rebellion. The initial putsch subsided on Friday, but stray contingents believe their cause still has a chance of victory. They fight on. The front moves forward. The front moves back. And the body politic reverts to biochemical anarchy. That came from there?
Some people revel in illness, some people fight against it. I just get bored. You need a nearby spouse or mother to make the experience of illness worthwhile. Otherwise – without someone to be ill towards – you’re left with nothing whatsoever to do. Concentrating on anything swiftly becomes impractical. TV shows get repetitive and dreary. It’s like being at work with nothing to do and no one to talk to. That is – of course – if your job happens to be ‘Crapping for England’.
I’ve been out, it’s true. I went to meet some webloggers on Friday night. I had breakfast with Matt and Cal on Saturday morning. Because you work on the assumption that you’re probably getting better. Because you don’t think it’s still going to be going on later in the day…
The films are the good bit. The being in bed when you can’t sleep late at night, letting them flow over you. The gentle films with fields in them. The ones with quilt-making and home-cooked foods. The sweatless pornography of domestic wholesomeness that’s so desperately appealing when you’re feeling a bit sorry for yourself in your pigsty of a flat. I like the films.
They’re nice because they’re distracting and they make you think of nicer things – important things. Maybe just fragments of images – like kisses for dares in crappy pubs, like cool air in the night with a view over the city, like a body in the blue light of a cross-road streetlamp when the curtains aren’t quite closed properly. I suppose there’s a need for the mysterious when you’re reduced to belching piles of squirting pouches filled with lurid liquids…
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