perspective

nothing has made me appreciate how good my life was going than having it reduced to this pale imitation of existence brought on by this stupid plague. I wake up at 2 am because my throat is burning because I couldn't breathe out of my nose so I snored and exacerbated my already sore throat.

Then I read more of Joseph Campbell's The Power of Myth which is simultaneously interesting and frustrating because poor Joe can't seem to stop himself from casually endorsing the patriarchy and western imperialism whenever he gets the chance. I won't go into detail but it's annoying for a guy who otherwise has some decent thoughts and life and the power of narrative. 

Other late night readings included the Wikipedia articles on the history of insurance and the history of race science. The history of insurance one was pretty dry. It's basically really old and dates back to mitigating the uncertainty of seafaring. I thought there would be more juicy nuggets but not so. 

The history of race science is CRAZY. There were sooooo many white dudes from like the 1600s to up to World War 2 who were so invested in establishing the myth of white supremacy in scientific basis. The really crazy thing is that all of these idiots were just copying each other and saying the same thing and they all get detailed little sections and even have their own articles and biographies. Anyway it's the Nazis that really pushed racial science out of the realm of acceptable discourse which must say something about the nature of change and progress I suppose. 

Anyway, I made some tea and that kind of helped. This is like 3am or 4am or whenever I stopped looking because I resigned myself to not sleeping. Then I made oatmeal and ate half of that. 

Then I flashed back to some of my earliest memories as a very small child being in the ER and not being able to breathe. I don't remember what they were doing to me but I have vague painful impressions of them doing things and me not cooperating because I was a small child in a lot of pain. And then I remember asking for taco bell at some point. 

It's crazy that I can remember very clearly waking up in the middle of the night and wheezing and being given a grape popsicle and then being taken to the hospital. 

Being sick always kind of reminds me of being a kid and these early somewhat traumatic memories of being helpless and occasionally on the brink of death. There's probably something fruitful in that, you know? I like to not take any medicine when I'm sick because I don't like the idea of masking how I'm feeling. If I'm sick I want to be all the way sick until I'm not. That's my right as a sick person. 

Anyway I woke up at 7 covered in sweat and immediately took a shower. When I'm sick I either do nothing at all or immediately get up and do a task right away. There's no inbetween. The other night I was feverish and at one point I woke up, stood up immediately and went to my living room where my AC unit is and kneeled before it like some sort of thrall in the presence of his demonic patron. And then I did that for like 5 minutes and went back to bed. This time I showered and went back to sleep until about 10am.

Right now it's raining and I'm still in bed. Hopefully tomorrow this will feel like it's on its way out.