blehh

[fflo]

I'm sick. Can't believe the fever hasn't broken; can't believe thre's no relief from the lung gunk. Feel like I'm breathing with a tenth of one lung (the right one, right now).

The only movie in the house I hadn't seen was Boomerang (Eddie Murphy) (c. 1998). It's the one that's famous for his explanation of which guys die in Star Trek. I imagine the poolroom scene in which Martin Lawrence explains the racism of 8-ball is well known as well. My favorite line, however, is when Eddie tells Halle Berry, "Aren't you listening to me? Cupid's got his foot up my ass." I really can think of no more apt way to put it.

Over in another lj blog I read---but not in public entries---is the unfolding story of the writer's love with new gf. Her first. It's got some of the elements of puppy love, but I don't scoff, won't scoff. I contain both. Glory be to the Cupid who isn't leaving fissures.

In more high-minded matters (wouldn't take much, I suppose), I did correct the lines from The Fallen Idol in my earlier post. "One another" is rather more ele-gant than "each other," isn't it.

Is it just me, or is it absolutely freezing in here?

Comments

[peteralway.livejournal.com]

Doctor, woman, doctor. No dyin' allowed.

[fflo.livejournal.com]

The patient, she will live. But thanks, Peter.

[peteralway.livejournal.com]

Good, good. Pardon my getting all mother-henny at you, but the last person I heard coughing up nasty lung gunk died at the end of the weekend. But I trust you're feeling better.

[fflo.livejournal.com]

yeeg! My gosh, was that your brother? I remember only that his death came on that suddenly.

I am indeed feeling better. I'd been assuming I had the same ailment scrawlspace had, which last her & her clan 2 days each and started with similar symptoms. Why it hit me so hard I dunno, but I suspect I could be taking better care of myself in general.

Down with nasty lung gunk! Er, up with nasty lung gunk! (Still working on that.)

[peteralway.livejournal.com]

Yeah--Dave had had a nagging cough for weeks--no clue it was congestive heart failure. The only clue he might have had was swelling of the ankles, except that his ankles were chronically swoollen already because of nasty infection several years earlier. As we approached Ann Arbor on the way home, it got really bad, and within an hour or two he was gone.

My doctor friend tells me that if you ever get a nasty lung cough, and your shoes stop fitting, it's time to call 911.

[fflo.livejournal.com]

[looks at feet] That's some info, alright. Until this afternoon, I put shoes on only once, for the marathon walk to the mailbox & back yesterday (took me half an hour to recover), and those were my Frankenstein shoes, which are generous, and slip on. Like my brother's old beloved Hush Puppies---no tying necessary; accommodate my one chronically swollen ankle (tumors as a teenager).

So rough, your losing Dave. They're pretty much all rough, of course, with the loved ones.

I went out to mail bills this afternoon at the Kroger's (closest late pick-up box) & a woman already up by the boxes asked me if she could mail those for me. It was a little strange, and it flashed through my (remnant East Coast or city girl?) mind that she might run off with my Netflix disc, but I thought I could probably take her, even with reduced lung capacity; she was probably 10 or 15 years my senior, and moving kinda slow herself, as if with a bum knee. Anyway I said sure and handed her my stack, even though I was only 2 yards from the boxes myself then; she seemed to want to do me this favor, and so she did, and I treated it like one. And thus we were in conversation just like that, poof.

With remarkable economy we went from commiserating about AT&T's late fees to discussing our dead mothers. Her husband died in May; her mother died last week. I imagine it was that last fact that brought about her bringing about our connection to begin with.

She kinda messed it up by bringing in the Lord and then, as we walked away, suggesting that God bless me, but you gotta let people have that stuff, I guess. Maybe even good for them that they do. And me, I was glad to have some human contact again. So one could easily say Maud sent her, if one were of a mind to.

[peteralway.livejournal.com]

How can I explain that it wasn't rough? Not that he wasn't important. But that what he had done in recent years that was so important didn't die with him--it only has grown in the last eight months.

I don't want to spout stuff about community for synthetic hobby communities like filk, but damnit, the truth is that when I go to a convention, or visit a housefilk, the people there were Dave's secret world, and they all greet me the way--well, if you imagine the ideal, perfect rural small town where the neighbors come together when someone loses someone close to them--like that.

Dave made these fun little buttons--2 1/4"-diameter badges with a combination of musical symbols that suggest a dandelion going to seed, as a symbol of filk. And they were the prop he used to make social connections. So everyone he knew had one or more of those buttons. People accepted them with amusement, as tokens of friendship or just to humor another eccentric filker. Anyway, every time I attend a filk event, there's one of those buttons. And every time I see one, I see a little bit of Dave, and I know I have a connection with that person. I'm never sure if they are wearing it because they are at a convention, and it's cool to wear personalized buttons at conventions, or because they are thinking about their lost friend, or because they were expecting to see me. It doesn't matter, because they all say "I miss your brother, too" in a quiet, inconspicuous way. It just reminds me that Dave gave me a whole circle of living, breathing friends.

[fflo.livejournal.com]

That's beautiful, Peter. And community is community, and at the moment I can think of none more touching than one built around a shared connection like that.