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Richard

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My headache began a few days ago as a pair of too-wide yawns. The first flexed the right side of my jaw a little too far, and with the second there was a slightly audible crackle of bones being uncooperative. “Stop trying to unhinge your Jaw,” Elise said, “you don’t have to eat those rabbits all in one piece.”

Yes, my girlfriend is amusing.

The ache persisted for a few days, and by last night it was on the move – the pain slithered in to my mouth, up to my temple, and down the side of my neck. The ache became the headache, which in turn became one of the top three worst headaches of my life. (Another is here).

The headache is so persistent and distinct that I feel as though it is some separate entity – a symbiote – inflicting its will on me. It is like Spidey’s black suit, attached to me at the jaw, trying to envelop my entire head so that it can control my brain.

For sanity’s sake, I have named it. Meet my headache, Richard. You can call it Rick for short.

This is an important distinction for me: I am not my pain, and visa versa. I refuse to walk into work defined by a headache, or anything else, for that matter. On the outside I am committed to being my same vivid self, no matter the interior conditions.

(I would compare this to stepping onto the stage, but that analogy has the negative connotation attached to it from the time I tried to sublimate my 103 fever for a dress rehearsal but wound up with Bronchitis and Pneumonia. Because, you see, a fever is not just a symptom, it’s a condition, and you are your conditions.)

I’ve been surrounded by lots of headache sufferers in my life – a certain ex convinced it could be a brain tumor, and two former bosses whose headaches increased sensitivity to light and destroyed appetites.

My thinking on the matter is that pain is just a perception – just another sense. And, in the same way you can tune out a droning noise or adapt to a familiar smell, you can work your perception around pain. Certainly, some pain is of a source and magnitude much too high to ignore; after all, you can’t exactly tune out a jackhammer.

Richard will not be reaching jackhammer significance in my life. Because, unless some part of my is cracked or broken or abcessed, Rick is just an illusion of my perception. I can tune out Richard just like screening a call. He could just be an itch, or a tickle, or a gnat.

Richard has no magnitude because, there is no Richard. He’s just a yawn that got too wide. As easily as he interrupted my sleep and made me late for work he is banished back into the ether from whence he came.

What I’ve Been Doing for the Past 14 Hours

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A great, simple, javascript chess page that works in Firefox. Allows you to play either side w/three opponent settings. Also, fantastic chess resource Chessville. Taking up chess is one of the summer hobbies i currently have under consideration (as if i need more ways to spend my time).

Chess tends to make me think of X-Men, maybe because Magneto has a board in his plastic cell in the movies. Any mention of X-Men merits a link to the best X-Men site on the face of the internet, UncannyXmen.net. Note that they have issue summaries of the vast majority of a wide-range of X-Men-related comics, and an accompanying character archive for when you encounter someone unfamiliar. Great for detering me from filling in the ten years of X-Men that i’ve missed buying, and also for reading on lunchbreak.

In other superhero news, my co-worker just called to say he won’t be able to see Superman with me today. If you’ve already seen it, or if know the big plot-twist already, you may appreciate Larry Niven’s classic essay Man of Steel, Women of Kleenex.

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I feel like… i don’t know, Third Rock From the Sun? Do you remember at the very beginning of the show when the four of them didn’t understand anything at all? … Taking coats at parties, kissing, slapping, cheerleaders, and breasts? Lately when i go back and look at the archives i just feel like a visitor in the shape of me trying to emulate the behavior i’m supposed to be representing. Is that circular enough for you? The change happened somewhere around when co-op began, because you can tell the difference between the computer being a constant companion and just something to stare at in-between doing things. And then i started doing a few things and talking about them, instead of just talking about not doing anything. And now i do things all the time and have nothing to talk about afterwards.

What’s so interesting about my life, really? Obviously i do things… last night i went to the movies, i can talk about that. I walked to the movie theatre, which is three blocks from my house. In the lobby Laurel was waiting for me (along with her roommate and Jeff (as if i went on a date with Laurel and didn’t mention it (obviously i only mention Laurel because you know who she is at this point))). She asked if i had gotten my haircut and i responded “Not for almost a month.” We saw Monsters INC, which involved a lot of giggling. Afterwards i bought some sushi and talked about X-Men with Erika, who was reading Carrie.

So, there’s two main theories of journaling that i can discern. The one is that obviously my night was pretty freakin’ boring when it comes to reading about it, so i should either talk about something else or learn to do more interesting things. The other is that it doesn’t matter what i’m doing, just so long as i put my own spin on it people will care about reading. I’m not sure which of the two i subscribe to, but my first journaling connection online was the ever-present Gus, who resides wholly in the second school of thought. Gus basically just writes one post a day, each and every single day, and he weaves it all together so that you’re not only interested in what he has to say, but you honestly want to know what he’s doing with himself. Frankly, Gus is one of the only people who employs this technique who i enjoy, the others being Alison and Meg, though they use their narrative voice a little more pervasively.



The way last year had been going for me, i just merrily trolled along with my own script of things to say and would talk about parties and things if and when i went to them because they were typically unusual and exciting. But, at this point, going to a party is like “wow, another party. i wonder who’ll hook up tonight?”, and afterwards i’m always tearing out my hair thinking “how can i tell an interesting story about that lapdance…?” So, now i have a daily existence and i suppose my big question is whether i’m supposed to talk about it, or me, or some other nebulous thing — because back in the day i was talking about my life, but it was a lack of a life, so it was just me talk about me.

Wow, now i’m dizzy. Tell you what… you sit and stare at the screen for an hour thinking about what i’ll write next, and i’ll go get some ice cream. Cool? Cool.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2001/11/6976582/

crossovers

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It occurs to me that while Rabi is getting to be quite analogous to a independent film star when it comes to her relation to the so-called A-List of bloggers, i am still largely in my own self-contained little universe, the upshot of which being that not nearly all of Rabi’s readers read me but a vast majority of my readers read her. As my artificially constructed midterm break with Rabi enters day three of coverage on four separate personal sites along with a myriad of group blogs and comment chains these two sorts of readers are having two different sorts of reactions. Rabi’s readers are probably just gleaning extra context on their beloved Rabi-verse via my perspective on it, but for my readers this goes a little beyond context: it’s really an all-out crossover.

For those of you who aren’t huge comic book fans, crossovers are when members of the cast of one comic book (say… Superman) are featured in the plot of a second comic (perhaps… Wonder Woman) and then the story continues in their own. This can be a one-shot deal, or it can go on and on for months at a time. The thing about crossovers is that you can’t just read one half of them; either (a) you need both halves (and in some cases, more than four or five different “halves” for each month of crossing) to have any hope of understanding the storyline or (b) you are so obsessed with your favourite characters that you cannot help but buy the crossover titles regardless of your chances of understanding the plot as a whole.

It seems to me that regular readers of mine who dabble in being a fans of Rabi must be participating in some of the above behavior right now, because god knows i’d do the same thing if any of my favourite loggers were hanging out with their peers. When i mentioned it to Rabi she understood what i meant, and we agreed that she would be Superman if i could be Wonder Woman.

That just about says it all, doesn’t it?

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Wow, that was a long day. I’m not sure where it all went… i ushered for two concerts and talked a little bit to her and wound up in the recording studio engineering someone’s Senior Project.


Have you ever seen the second Batman movie? You know how Bruce Wayne and Selina Kyle are dating each other and fighting each other as Batman and Catwoman at the same time? The scene that always stuck out for me is when they’re making out at Bruce’s place and as they grope each other they catch all of the scars that they’d left on each other in their battles. Of course, neither of them says anything since their identities are supposed to be secret.


I was thinking a lot about that scene today. I don’t know exactly why, but it just felt accurate… like each of us had our Superhero selves in public and only ever revealed our secret identities to each other when we were all alone – and now when we’re alone all we can do is poke and prod at each others wounds without the other ever being able to say a damn thing about it.

Does that metaphor work for you? For additional metaphorical material, see Ani DiFranco’s “Superhero” or “Pulse.”

https://crushingkrisis.com/2001/03/2737617/