So sick today, with a stomach flu that hasn't allowed me to retain food for three days. The first day, I felt just thin, the 2nd I felt malnutritive, the third I began to get headaches like the guy in "Thinner." Now I know how those motherscratchers on cruise ships feel after a doorknob full of the Norwalk virus.
Walking to get soup today, I went into a fever. The night air had a sharp coolness that reminded me of walking to my violin lesson when we lived in London. So hurt, so miserable that my mind vacated my legs, and for a second, why wouldn't I be walking in London in 1978? I kept saying, this is not your body, these are not your legs, because they keep moving even when you have nothing left to give them.
I feel the violin in my right hand and the smell of fish and chips, and white beams are lighting up Marble Arch and for a second there is no misery, only being young and on my own, in a dark, exciting city. I am there, I am ten, and my body only knows what I tell it.
Posted by at June 10, 2003 1:27 AM