My body does not care for me

The feeling is mutual

Sleeping, Philip Guston (1977)

I spent most of this past week bedridden, sick. Testing proved it wasn’t covid, wasn’t flu, wasn’t strep - just one of those anonymous respiratory viruses that fly under the medical radar, impossible to treat, leaving no recourse but to be endured. 

I’m terrible at being sick. It makes me angry, and I turn that anger against myself, which certainly doesn’t improve my health. I see it as the rankest betrayal - how could my body DO this to me? Doesn’t it understand that I’m already so far behind in life? Can’t it recognize that physical suffering has no salutary benefits? 

Of course, I know my body doesn’t WANT me to be sick. And yet, it feels too much of the time like sickness is inevitable. Once or twice a year, for a couple of decades now, I undergo what feels like a complete physical breakdown as my body fights off one of these vague, microscopic interlopers. This used to work on a schedule with my artistic output - right after we closed a play production. I’d collapse. It was like adrenaline was the glue holding my health together, and the moment it faded, the stress of mounting a public performance, combined with the strain it took on Hope’s and my relationship - not to mention whatever job I was working to actually put food on the table - added to the goddamn late nights and drinking - opened up my body to whatever lowlife germ was skulking around in the alley. 

That kind of ailment, at least, I could wear as a badge of pride - it felt like I had something to show for it. But nowadays, my body seems more tuned to the needs of capitalism. This is the second major illness in a row that has taken place during scheduled time off from work, after finally catching Covid last fall while vacationing in London with my family. This time, we took a week off to enjoy an extended visit from out-of-town friends. But exactly a week ago, I woke up with that feeling of dread - it’s coming. It just got worse over the weekend, and crested right before their arrival on Tuesday. Yesterday was the first day I felt well enough to leave the house. 

What’s galling about this is that I currently work as an hourly consultant - unlike my years at a salaried job, I have no paid sick time. So it’s like my body sits there thinking, okay, since we’re not getting paid anyway, let’s cram it all in at once. This infuriates me, both because A) I loathe feeling financially penalized for being sick, and B) it implies, on my body’s part, a resigned acceptance of the fact that this is going to happen no matter what. This resignation is appalling. As an alternative, how about, you know, NOT GETTING SICK IN THE FIRST PLACE??? 

For what it’s worth - and part of what makes the whole thing all the more isolating - is that Hope and Dash never seem to catch whatever I have. We’re not especially careful - sure, we try not to drink from the same cups and stuff, but I still cook our meals for the most part, and Hope lies next to me all night breathing in my exhalations. Nope, this is my problem, and mine alone. My body’s revenge, perhaps, for hating it so much. I guess the feeling is mutual. 

In any event, if physical suffering can be said to have a silver lining, I was able to spend a tremendous amount of time reading. Here’s what I can report: 

Books finished (which includes several started as well): 

• Bluets, by Maggie Nelson - I wrote last week about starting this, and I liked it! A tough, sad, evocative little book about obsession, depression, and the color blue. 

• The New World, by Aleš Kot and Trad Moore - I ran into Moore’s artwork in an anthology and tracked this down at the library - the sci-fi R&J story was fine, but Moore’s precise-yet-goopy drawing style hit a cartoony sweet spot for me

• Walt Disney’s Uncle Scrooge: Cave of Ali Baba, by Carl Barks - Barks remains one of my very favorite comic creators, and I’ve been collecting the Fantagraphics reprints of his work as they’ve been coming out; this isn’t the strongest of the bunch (much later work, as Barks was readying to retire), but still highly enjoyable 

• Beanworld, Book 2, by Larry Marder - what a wonderfully weird little comic series! Almost glyphlike in its abstraction, it renders an imaginary ecosystem with surprising character and humor; I promise you’ve read nothing like this

• I Love You Broom-Hilda, by Russell Myers - pure old-school comics-page nostalgia; the gags are corny and often dated, but I never gave the artwork enough credit - the backgrounds especially are delightful, even in a low-quality reprint

• Suzuki Beane, by Sandra Scopettone and Louise Fitzhugh - I’m gonna have to write about this one in more depth at some point - suffice to say it’s a Beatnik Eloise co-created by the author of Harriet the Spy, very difficult to come by

• Nocilla Lab, by Agustín Fernández Mallo - the final volume of an experimental fiction trilogy by a Spanish theoretical physicist-turned-poet - it was okay

• The Prince with Many Castles and Other Stories, by Sarah Churchill - I picked this one up at a used place in London last year because I was drawn to the illustrations, and it turns out to have been written by Winston Churchill’s daughter, who was also a dancer and actress (who played opposite Fred Astaire in Royal Wedding); I did love the painted ce’60s-era illustrations (by one Eric Critchley, about whom I can’t find much), but the stories were surprisingly resonant, ambiguous, and melancholic

• Nightmare in Pink, by John D. MacDonald - bananas mid-’60s quasi-private eye nonsense with unexpected James Bond overtones - utterly, embarrassingly delightful

Books I started: 

• Essayism: On Form, Feeling, and Nonfiction, by Brian Dillon

• Krazy and Ignatz, 1943-1944: He Nods in Quiescent Siesta, by George Herriman

• The Big Book of the '70s: True Tales from 10 Years of Tackiness and Tumult, by Jonathan Vankin and about 50 different comics artists

• To Your Scattered Bodies Go, by Philip Jose Farmer

• The Honjin Murders, by Seishi Yokomizo

I’m glad that I can still take pleasure in reading even when I’m feeling crummy, but I’m glad to be getting back out into the world again. Yesterday, we joined our friends on a visit to the Met. I stumbled upon a new(?) room of Philip Guston paintings, and was struck by the one at the top of this post, which I’d never seen before. It is very large - 84” × 69” - and the tension of the red on black is tempered by its softer grays and pinks. The most striking detail, to me, is the protruding eyelash, which bespeaks a bit of hard-won serenity after a grotesque ordeal.