funny. i always come up with something to say here on a
day i've had something surgical done to my face. granted,
i don't know if you can consider having a cavity excavated
to be "surgical", but i get shot up with stuff that prevents
me from sensing pain. therefore, i count it.
i've been on a medical leave of absence for a month because of
a nice synergy of sufferings. the lithium i've been on for 12
years has always given me a tremor in my hands. my hyperthyroidism
makes that tremor worse. i also tend to get fairly stressed
from all the pressure i put on myself. "you have a low tolerance
for imperfection," my shrink said as i discussed my desire to
stop teaching high school. recently, the tremor has been bad
enough to show up in my jaw and facial muscles. apparently, i've
been sending morse code with my teeth in my sleep. as a result of
all this, the nerves in my jaw are shot, and for a while this
year, i could look forward to a steady, disabling pain in my head
for a couple hours each day. i'm feeling generally better now,
but i still need to get some dental splints to prevent the morse
code. fortunately, i know some wonderful people who can make
these for me. *crosses fingers for relief*
i realized something when i was in that chair today, with the
dentist's latex covered fingers poking into my maw and the smell
of the friction of rapidly-spinning-metal-on-decayed-tooth wafting
into the air. i realized that i do not submit. granted, this was a somewhat
extreme situation, but isn't it the extreme that brings out these
types of realizations the clearest? i could feel the tension
increasing in the muscles in various areas of my body as he worked --
increasing to the point where it would give me pain to distract
my brain from what was going on. i know this isn't the only time
i do this, though. i realized my body is always taking up some
position to allow this tension to build up. or i can't submit to
stillness, and i will bounce my leg like a dog having its belly
rubbed as i'm sitting down to eat at a restaurant or while at work.
mentally, i know i can't submit to ideas that clash with my being.
my resistance becomes a stress that grows into an illness, often
physical. this is something that has happenned since my youth, and
i often left early, complaining of headaches, from the christian
concentration camp that was my "school" for three and a half years.
no... submission has always been a big problem for me.
there was an interesting
article
on the reuters science news on yahoo.com
today. apparently, they can analyze poetry
to make a prediction as to whether the poet will take his own life.
i think this offers a wonderful chance to fuck with people doing the
analysis. i mean, we can go through
my shit and see
whether i'm destined to kill myself. or, i can start
tailoring what i write to produce a certain response from anyone who
would analyze it this way. i'm your lyrical skinner box -- come get
your pellet. the main idea seems to center on isolation.
oh, but it makes me chuckle. and, yes, i resist this type of idea.
i contort my soul so i feel my own discomfort, rather than give in
to the weight of this type of analysis on my doomed pituitary gland.
(whining)
but what if nobody understands me?
