Joho the Blog
An Entry from the Archives

You'd better stay well. I speak for all your readers when I write: We need you!

I hope you feel better soon. The commonplace prescriptives: Bed rest... Fluids... put me in mind of that famous speech by General Ripper:

"Do you realize that in addition to fluoridating water, why, there are studies underway to fluoridate salt, flour, fruit juices, soup, sugar, milk, ice cream? Ice cream, Mandrake? Children's ice cream!...You know when fluoridation began?...1946. 1946, Mandrake. How does that coincide with your post-war Commie conspiracy, huh? It's incredibly obvious, isn't it? A foreign substance is introduced into our precious bodily fluids without the knowledge of the individual, and certainly without any choice. That's the way your hard-core Commie works. I first became aware of it, Mandrake, during the physical act of love...Yes, a profound sense of fatigue, a feeling of emptiness followed. Luckily I was able to interpret these feelings correctly. Loss of essence. I can assure you it has not recurred, Mandrake. Women...women sense my power, and they seek the life essence. I do not avoid women, Mandrake...but I do deny them my essence."

Conserve those precious bodily fluids, David and get well soon.

Words Of Passage:

And openly I pledged my heart to the grave and suffering land, and often in the consecrated night, I promised to love her faithfully until death, unafraid, with her heavy burden of fatality, and never to despise a single one of her enigmas. Thus did I join myself to her with a mortal cord.

--Holderlin: The Death of Empedocles

You seek life, and a godly fire
Gushes and gleams for you out of the earth,
As, with shuddering long, you
Hurl yourself down to the flames of the Etna.
So by a queen's wanton whim
Peals were dissolved in wine- heed her not!
What folly, poet, to cast your riches
Into that bright and bubbling cup!
Yet still are you holy to me, as the might of the earth
That bore you away, audaciously perishing!
And I would follow the hero into the depths
Did you love hold me.
Friedrich Hölderlin: Empedokles

"I too am a star, wandering around together with you, shining out of the depths." --from the Graeco-Egyptian magical papyri.

"I am the son of Earth and starry Sky. I am parched with thirst and am dying; so quickly give me cold water flowing forth from the lake of Memory." --from ancient Hipponion gold burial plate.

I think my husband and I both had the same bug, exactly a week ago. Both of us had a dream, seemingly all night long, of working on the computer. Mine involved trying unsuccessfully to accomplish something on a spreadsheet -- I'm not sure I knew the topic then, and I certainly don't recall it. His was more likely a Math Cad problem, but tedious and endless.

But we had no chest pains -- just tummy symptoms, and we recovered completely in a couple of days.

Be well. I almost feel like not sending this, as just toooo mundane, after the poetry above. But I wanted to say that men are not the only whiners when sick. I'm almost never sick, and most of the time I try to pass as one of those mother earth indestructible type women. But when I am laid low, I reallly take it hard.