all the news that print will fit.
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| notes from underground - societal whispers all the news that print will fit. |
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Friday, August 13, 2010 np: Liz Phair - "Strange Loop" I've had this cough for over a month. Which is not to say that I'm sick. Aside from the phlegm I've been dislodging and the near daily morning hoarseness, I haven't felt sick. I haven't felt weak or achey or anything of the sort. Just the distant, occasional coughing that brings up the discharge of my body's defense mechanisms. I learned from C.K. earlier this week that she, too, had a cough very similar to mine - a lingering, background sort of thing. As did another former co-worker of mine from whom C.K. assumes she got the bug. The other coworker was recently diagnosed with pneumonia. This raises concerns on my part. C.K. was cleared by a doctor yesterday of not having that, so then the concerns died down a bit. This evening I found myself in a familiar spot for when I'm sick - and indeed a familiar spot for the last month: at my closest Mexican restaurant eating sopa de pollo. Since L. introduced me to it over a year ago, it has been my go-to meal in times of illness. Very soothing and warm and filling. It contains probably my favorite fruit of the past few years, avocado. I can't eat enough of it at times, and having its savory, smooth texture in the broth with the chicken and rice scratches a deep, sensory itch. This restaurant is used to me coming in by myself, and I usually take a book or some sort of reading material with me. Tonight it was William Gibson's Neuromancer which I haven't read in some time. My 12th grade students read Brave New World for their summer reading assignment and it got me thinking about my favorite dystopian novels and works. I haven't read this particular book since K.'s dad gave it to me in my late high school/early college years. It's a totem in that sense - a physical piece of ephemera to touch and remember him now that he's no longer here. More on that another time. I thought about starting a hashtag on Twitter: #greatbookopeninglines. "The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel." It's funny to think about how children born in the last five years and onward will have a hard time understanding this line. I feel lucky to have been born when I was. I witnessed the great straddling line between the world before the omnipresence of the internet and afterward. I have used an actual, physical card catalogue to find physical books in a physical library. I have used encyclopedias to find information. Yet, I was young enough to be able to fully embrace the technology when it arrived rather than recoil from it in monocle-shattering horror. I've gone from elementary school computers that only seemed to operate when you inserted a 5 1/4" floppy disk of some variety - learning to fear the red light burning like a raging cyclops on the floppy drive; knowing it was absolutely essential to never, ever pull the disk out while the light was on - to using a computer the size of a thick candy bar that I carry in my pocket to send updates about what I'm doing out into the ether. These are lovely times. If only I'd stop coughing. posted by J. Neas | 8/13/2010 10:31:00 PM
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