What you have to do with so much choice is to choose. And having chosen, to stick with it.
this is a thing that i like!
The first episode of Cooking the Books, starring Bennett Madison and The Blonde of the Joke, is now live on the Awl — this, in spite of how Choire’s first reaction when I sent it to him was “Did you guys smoke a bowl before you shot this?” (A: No! We’re just like that! Which is sad.) Please get in touch (emilymagazine at gmail) if you would like to be a guest on this fabulous Internet tv show. Many thanks to Valerie Temple, who shot and edited and who promises to remind us to close the !@!@# window next time.
I start feeling achy on Saturday morning while I am helping Annie move, and I hope it is just my period. It is. But it is also the flu, which I realize when Annie texts me that night and says: I have the flu. I work on Sunday and come home and go to bed. I have a fever on Monday and stay home from work. Tuesday and Wednesday are my weekend: freedom to convalesce without the worry of losing funds or putting out coworkers. What a lucky little sick girl I am.
My mother is on the east coast, I am on the west. We talk everyday, and she was just here last week, but right now I would really very much enjoy it if she brought me soup and tea and ice cream and put a cold rag on my face and rubbed my back with a circular motion. Instead I will just call her and moan into the phone. She calls me baby and says that I sound a little bit better. I do not sound better, but I believe her anyway.
It is good weather for being sick, at least. Cool and grey and often raining, it is the kind of weather one might choose to stay in bed for. Maybe I can pretend I’m here on purpose. Read a book, no that hurts my head, listen to the radio, that works for a bit until it, too, hurts my head. The sun comes out for a moment and shines through the window and warms my face. It hurts my head, but also reminds me in some symbolic way that I won’t be in this bed forever.
Long naps are interspersed with the task of ingestion: elderberry syrup, vitamins, homeopathic supplements, wellness cocktails, probiotic juices, herbal teas. These pills, liquids, and tonics offer a sense of purpose, a feeling of doing something tangible to get myself back to well. Because while these three days in bed feel necessary, and each bought of feverish sleep surely brings me closer to health, no amount of rest feels so useful as a swig of syrup, a cup of tea, a handful of bitter-tasting pills.
People always say how you should be yourself. Like yourself is this definite thing, like a toaster or something. Like you know what it is, even. But every so often, I’ll have, like, a moment when just being myself, and my life, like, right where I am, is, like, enough.
the dying and the sardonic, comedians and cancer patients, have the gift of four-move thinking: bad things will happen that you can’t imagine, but some good things will surprise you, too. you don’t know what’s going to happen. could be worse - it often is. could be better - it often is, too. don’t think ahead of the game. compulsively imagining what might happen, instead of observing what does, is an insult to reality, and it takes you mental pieces right off the board.
