I had the best cheeseburger of my life yesterday. As I mentioned in my last post, I have been sick with some kind of stomach flu. I thought I was almost over it, but it continued on all weekend, and I had a hard time eating anything because of this crippling nausea. And before you say “why didn’t you try some ______?”, go fuck yourself – I tried every single thing known to modern and ancient medicine, plus seven others. It was bad because, if you google stomach flu, you’ll see that there is basically nothing you can do but wait it out, which means if I did pay $800 to see a doctor, he would say “there’s nothing you can do but wait it out”. So it’s been a very rough week. And then yesterday, I felt good enough to actually leave the house, drive to Safeway for another 60 gallons of Gatorade, and stop at McDonald’s on the way home.
And I know you’re saying “why the fuck would you go to McDonald’s? [Insert knee-jerk screed on how evil fast food is]” Well, it’s funny that I can be so nauseous that an ounce of applesauce would make me retch, but a hamburger is fine, but it’s true. So after not eating anything more than bananas and jello for a week, I had two cheeseburgers, and they were absolutely THE. BEST. EVER. The ketchup tasted like an exotic spice ten times more expensive than plutonium, and I couldn’t believe meat and onions could taste so good. So I’m back on solids, albeit at much smaller capacities, and I’m ten pounds lighter, but I’m sure that will be back in a week.
Laying in bed or on the couch for a week has been strange, only in that there are times I don’t exactly know where I am. Andrea mentioned in her journal that she finds it odd that I am not in New York instead of Denver, and sometimes I feel the same way. I get these weird bits of locational nostalgia, because I haven’t settled in here yet. Like I was sitting in bed the other day with the windows open and a nice breeze blowing in (despite the fact that our floor to ceiling windows only open like four inches. REMEMBER THE CHILDREN!) Anyway, I just got this very distinct recollection of when I lived in Colonial Crest, after Andrew left, when I had the place to myself and used to sit in bed, listening to Brian Eno, looking out the window at the clone building across the parking lot, thinking about writing but never doing anything. I just remembered I published a story about this in issue 10 of the zine.
There are also these odd, surreal moments that happen when I’m sitting at the computer with this huge parking lot in the background. Yesterday it was sunny and beautiful, and then two minutes later, it was dark as night, and giant stormclouds were tearing across the sky. Because of the altitude, clouds that are at like 6,000 feet for those of you in the plains states are at about twelve feet here, and it gives this eerie landscape, like the sky is about to open up and alien ships will jump out. Instead, it poured rain like I hadn’t seen in ages. It rained in New York, but it always got diffused a bit by the buildings, and there was never a wide open area where you could see so much of it at once. (In Seattle it rained a lot, but you’re between two mountain ranges, so it’s very broken up, and there was like one thunderstorm there in the four years I lived there.) I tried to take a few pictures of this, but they probably look like shit.
Okay, I need to go work on other shit now.