Reactionary

I’m sitting in a stinking swamp, it’s raining torrents, and I’ve been coughing for going on eight days straight now. And I’ve just heard one of the most exhilarating, intriguing things. Which one do I start with? The unlivable weather that’s forcing me to think of moving house seriously only to be stumped by how much of a pain and a cost it would be. This 100% humidity is making me crazy. It doesn’t matter that it isn’t that hot, it just feels worse. Disgusting. Everything stinks. The garbage, the streets, the laundry hamper. The city’s a swill.

And my cough. I know it’s sounds stupid, but I really think a person can be driven mad by just one symptom of a cold when it just won’t end. It started last Friday and has continued approximately every 2- 20 seconds 24 hours a DAY for the past week. I can’t talk, breathe, or eat. I’m starting to feel like it’ll never end and that it’ll be another thing I have to get used to, like a handicap. I can’t imagine life without it. Meds don’t work. Nothing works, not even for a moment to appease it. It’s made work hell. And yes, I’ve still been going to work because firstly, I haven’t really FELT bad enough to not go (honest fool) and because taking one day off won’t help and if I don’t go, they’ll take my time from my vacation days and if I ever heal, I’ll miss them later. Work really is the blackmail of survival.

And now the good stuff. I just invested two days and a lot of computing juice into downloading my first shn and flac files. I’ve learned more in the past two days about audio than I ever had in my whole life preceeding them. I resent whoever decided torrenting everything for the elitist audio snobs at the cost of direct server downloads of MP3s. But after all that time, all those web pages full of too-technical explanations, and GBs of hard disk space, I have just heard some of the most beautifully shocking things in my whole existence. “Amazing Grace”, beautifully sung, at the end of “Running to Stand Still” and a snippet of “Torna a Sorrento” at the end of “Sometimes You Can’t Make It On Your Own”. How un-rock and roll is that? How beyond words is THAT? This is genre-busting, wall-bursting, heart-pounding, world-spinning music. I can’t even get my head around it. If this is what it feels to be slowly driven mad, I’m enjoying it. Vastly.

And then there are things that defy even that kind of explanation: “…This is a family feud, this is a family fight. It must stop…” I’ll stop worshipping rock stars when someone who isn’t a rock star says something that exact (taken in context). That’s when I’ll stop. That’s when I’ll stop.

Posted on July 15th, 2005 under General, Life •  Print •  Email • RSS 2.0 feed • Both comments and pings are currently closed