the common cold

It started as a little bit of sniffling. Maybe it is allergies, I hoped. Sometimes that turns into a raw sore throat, but this time it went from sniffling for a day or so to full-blown unstoppable congestion with a croup-like cough. Delightful. Soon there was pain behind my eyes. It began to hurt to look sideways; that was weird. Maybe that makes it the flu. Maybe I should have gotten that flu shot. I carefully dosed myself on ibuprofen, alternating it with acetaminophen and aspirin, together with a decongestant, and a cough suppressant, with little relief. After a couple of days at the maximum recommended dosages of those my lower back, where I imagine my kidneys and liver are, started to hurt. Hmm, maybe I should back off the over-the-counters. The ends of each day are the worst, in which my temperature is elevated and it becomes a major effort to move.

This morning feels a little better. I still have that awful cough, though; the kind that makes you think if you don’t take it easy and stay inside you’ll end up with bronchitis or pneumonia or something, and have it drag on for weeks. I’m probably being melodramatic and hypochondriacal.

One irony here is the great lengths I go to to avoid cold germs. Whereas you might say, “See, that silly hand washing doesn’t work,” I become more phobic and avoidant. Having succumbed to it this time, I’m more determined than ever to banish the plague-like rhinovirus. However, I recognize that most of the work in staying well is probably done by my normally well-functioning immune system. I was under stress, of course. Additionally, there were all those yucky out-of-town germs that I wasn’t used to. Several guests showed up at various stages of their foreign colds, including a baby that I decided to hold for an hour. I hope the baby’s experience of the cold was not as awful as mine has been. If so: poor baby.

My physician says that colds may serve some odd adaptive purpose; perhaps they “kick-start” the immune system. Mine’s been kicked pretty well. The psychologist in me wants to wax philosophical: There may be some good that has come out of my suffering. I ponder that for awhile, with little result. Perhaps it is indeed conferring some future immunity. It is causing me to scale back my overly ambitious agenda. It is instilling empathy for the sick. It is providing me with material to write about.

Water…bring water. Maybe I’m delirious. I remember a thread on a psychology listserv once about what our responsibilities are when people post suicide threats. Does one send the police? I don’t recall the consensus, but it is usually a moot point as there is no readily available address. In fact, it is hard to imagine a less effective plea for help. Publishing via the internet: A way to hide one’s writing in plain view.

Until recently I was neither a blog reader nor writer, which probably explains why I didn’t even know enough about the medium to make mine anonymous. My entire view of blogging was that it was this massively narcissistic form of navel-gazing. Only recently was I introduced by our university’s writing center director to the idea that it is a way to practice writing, and that the fact that others might read it changes the way we write. Having potential readers also can provide motivation to write.

I recently was asked by a resident adviser in one of the dorms to join her in a small workshop on stress with her residents. She had an interesting approach in which she asked them about their passions, and encouraged them to find time to do more of those things. I was pleasantly surprised when a couple of the students mentioned reading and writing as their passions. Recall the well-known findings of James Pennebaker that writing in a journal about trauma aids immunity. A blog post a day keeps the doctor away. I wonder if writing about daily hassles, which also factor into health, is equally adaptive. Maybe all the blogged analyses of mundane interpersonal interactions are keeping people from getting sick, not to mention going postal (though we can discuss the whole catharsis/anger-in/anger-out/flexible coping thing some other time).

However, seeing posts by relatives and childhood friends in response to the Facebook/Twitter question, “What are you doing right now?” seems embarrassing. That is, I feel embarrassed for them (and yes, I’m embarrassed about this blog too, if that’s your next question). It exposes the banality of our lives. It also seems perversely extroverted. Even as I was tempted to type in something significant, in response to one of those questions, almost in protest to posts by others about brushing their teeth, I found myself unwilling to do so. I’ll stick with writing silly blogs and email messages, but you guys go ahead and twitter. May it help you stay healthy.

a space to write

Francine Prose (Goldengrove and Reading Like a Writer) wrote a wonderful article for the March issue of Architectural Digest (p. 42), in which she described her “arranged marriages” with her writing spaces: “I wouldn’t have chosen those rooms, exactly, but they were mine, and I came to love them. My novels had been born there; those walls and floors and ceilings had witnessed the splendors and miseries of all those hours I’d spent at my desk.” When clutter and distractions accumulated in their Greenwich Village apartment, she created a “love match,” and now writes in a second-story office in their country home: ”I wanted space, simplicity, ceilings that would allow my thoughts to soar without bumping against the Sheetrock. I wanted light, light, light.” She now looks out through tall windows into the branches of a large apple tree, from a simple desk and chair in the middle of a room of pale clay-colored walls and light natural wood trim and floors.

I like to write in a similar space. My family room has high ceilings and is ringed with tall windows looking out onto the lawn and trees. I replaced the carpet with a pale laminate, and I have tables and chairs that actually came from a Barnes and Noble. It is quiet here in the early mornings. Sometimes (not usually), I am up early enough to see the sunrise. This morning the rain had mostly cleared the sky, but clouds hugged the tops of the mountains. Always, I have coffee, and maybe some oatmeal. I prefer to begin the day with the most pleasurable reading and writing that I’m in the middle of, and then find a segue into the day’s tasks.