Dirty Peaches

So my birthday guests—Ted and Solon, bless their Hegeman-ic hearts—left a few hours ago. Still deadened by the diazepam, my goodbye was not as expressive as I would have liked. I wish I could have spent more time with them, wish I could see them more often. I wish I could have driven them around myself, rather than asking Josh, Ted and Jill to drive us around in my car. And I wish Arthur and Nathalie could have been here, too. It goes without saying that I flattened the smiles of all those who were around me last night, but I thank them for coming, their ulterior motives as of yet unestablished.

OK, kids, it's time to get back on the sedative-hypnotic express. Get your ticket stamped before we're all spasmed back to New Haven.

Like Jamie Lee Curtis in Trading Places, I suppose I'm getting used to this supine routine. My back pain has been constant since Monday; it's hard to say whether the Valium and Relafen are helping; and I'm worried that the "schmoogies" at the RI Hospital ER missed something. Or maybe this is a chiropractic thing. "The answer could be chiropractic," to quote my father, who is politely skeptical of back-crackers.

But then again, I've hardly been following the recommended course of treatment. Sufferers of lumbago or sciatic attacks are to told spend the day in bed, flat on their backs with pillows underneath their knees. I've been teaching four hours a day—and I teach on my feet.

Now, of course, the teaching is over. Until 6 July that is. I've yet to take Valium this morning, and that's why I'm typing in a fairly coherent fashion. Benzodiazepines (sedative hypnotics) like Valium approximate ingestible illiteracy. No typing, no reading, no parsing, no sweeping (?). And certainly no normal social interactions; I've been moving from mania to hysteria faster than I'd care to admit. You can ask Savior Erica Kenney for the details on that.

So now I take my Valium. And what a weekend to be this way. Which reminds me, to the tune of the Oompa Loompa song:

What do you do when you're stuck in a chair?
Finding it hard to go up and down stairs;
What do you think of the one you call God—
Isn't his absence slightly odd?
(Maybe he's forgotten you—)

Heresy of paraphrase my ass; credits to the Family Guy.

Valium can't get you love, get you into graduate school or get you assassinated by a bunch of hopped-up Beltway skanks. But it can make your back better. So yes: my back, while still painful, no longer feels like the victim of an ongoing episiotomy. God bless Rhode Island Hospital's Emergency Room, the fashion sense of its patients aside, and God take extra time to bless my savior Jill Pierce.

Dialogue of the day:

Nurse: Where is your pain?
Josh: My lower left back.
Nurse: Huh?
Josh: MY ASS.
Nurse: Uh, nuh uh. I am not typing AZZZ into my computer,nuh uhhhh.


Also: never take Valium with grapefruits. I looked it up, Jill; the sticker isn't a mistake. A pyrrhic victory for citrus farmers.

Bad day to be an anaphylact? Better than 25 million birds .

Speaking of birds, several birds and I came to understanding today—much like le comte de Gobineau and his undoubtedly ethnic bankers. I think I was speaking to pigeons, but when you're willing to talk to birds, reality's specifics seem to lose their sway. For Providence, I said, I would give them Philadelphia. They refused; they don't like Philadelphia either. But they said that they would only *feign* the urge to shit on me while my back was out.

At various points in the past few months, I've become a bit of a mailbox-baiter. Brown's mailroom punishes you by filling your mailbox twice a day; when I was waiting for graduate admissions letters, the final days of a process about as successful as Pepsi Blue, I was hitting the post office nearly every hour. Now, too, I'm waiting for a blue-suited and possibly disgruntled Santa.

Things I'm anticipating:

1 T-shirts with pseudo-swear words on them .
2 A prescription for Relafen , because my back is out.
3 A new mattress , because my back is, well, out.
4 A new back ?

"Alright, already, Peaches Malloy: we don't want anymore high school dispatches tonight." I'm hearing you, but I have one more. Please. I have nothing else these days.

Tonight, food and company. I spent three wry hours with Karl Decker, whose English class I took in 1996 and '97. I don't know why he still talks to me—but I can say that Karl, who now lets me call him Karl, was one of those folks that left an indelible mark. After teaching high school for forty years, he retired; he's now a professional photographer. His site doesn't reveal too much about his work, but it shows enough and it says where his work is displayed. The website of the man who taught me how to use both lenses .

Otherwise, I started teaching today. Like you care. Like you read this inscribed space for any reason other than feeling sorry for me. But you can help me with something else: I've taken an interest in what I can only describe as visual palimpsests. The Shroud of Turin ; various appearances of Mother Teresa in tree bark; I'm currently looking for images of Paul Lynde in baked goods, preferably in sticky buns. Your help: appreciated.

A teacher of mine once said that the easiest way to inspire abstinence was to make children ashamed of their bodies. I wonder now if her message was misdirected: Tainted love .

Nathalie has shown me how to create linking text. Duly, I defer to her: www.nchicha.com/cupofchicha . Cup of Chicha is the Parnassus of inscribable space, and I'm doing my best to climb.

For reference, I re-present yesterday's other link, brought to you by diphenhydramine HCl. Have a gander at it, Ms Kilgallen? www.jfkresearch.com/morningstar/killgallen.htm . Dotsy's plight was a curious one, to be sure. When the vitriolic gossip columnist died, few could believe that she wasn't murdered. The enclosed link argues that Kilgallen had become entangled in the conspiracy surrounding the Warren Report; just as dubiously, others have suggested that Kilgallen was killed by the most frequent objects of her gossip. But we should remember that Kilgallen was a barbiturate-dependent alcoholic, downing more phenobarbital than Oscar Levant could ever put to music.

NB: I'm not very good with technology; I don't know why my computer's clock is three hours slow. Under no circumstances did I take a sleeping pill at 8.50pm on a Sunday, so stop looking at me as if I were Dorothy Kilgallen. I thank Nathalie (www.nchicha.com/cupofchicha) for inspiring me to post links: www.jfkresearch.com/morningstar/killgallen.htm. PS NB: I'll add that I have no idea how to turn Roman text into linked text (help me, Nathalie).

Waiting for an over-the-counter sleeping pill to take effect, I created a "blog." But blog is a really ugly word—much uglier than "scrotal," "mooch," "moola" or "luscious." So we'll call this my diary? Journal? I'll settle for "inscribable space."