I have the plague. Or maybe it's SARS. Tuberculosis? Alright, how 'bout plain old bronchitis. At the very least, walking pneumonia. Whatever it is, I've had it about a week, and after the near-101 degree fever, its main symptom seems to be body-wracking whopping coughs that sound kind of like the death thralls of a goose trapped at the bottom of a well. Oh well.

So the way I've been coping with it is of course to chug bottles of cough syrup. Active ingredients, dextromethorphan (robotripping, anyone?), guaifenesin (an "expectorant" (what a beautiful word for spitting)), and good old pseudoephedrine. Ah, pseudo-ephedrine. Drink enough of it, and there's very little "pseudo" about it. It's speed, people, pure go-juice, and it's making me twitchy, itchy, and tingly. Not to mention kinda spastic. But maybe those are all the same ways of saying I can't hold still or concentrate.

And I can't hardly sleep at all, even though sleep would probably help me recover from this illness. But if I don't take the cough syrup, I cough all night long, and if I do, I lay in bed wound up for about an hour before I slip into a shallow sleep broken by erratic and unsettling dreams.

Then this morning, about 6 am, my phone rang, and I came to just as my machine was picking up. The caller didn't leave a message. I was wide awake in an instant. Ever since Maria disappeared, I fear calamity's around every corner, so a phone call at dawn was a little unsettling, in and of itself. I got out of bed and star 69'ed. The number was blocked.

Back to bed. Laying there I kind of felt like Maria was close and watching me, and I asked her to go away till morning. I wondered what her body looked like when they found her in the lake. I shivered. My throat felt raw and scratchy. My eyes were dry.

The phone rang again. This time I threw the covers back and walked blindly but deliberately as possible to the phone in the living room.

"Hello," I said kind of anxiously. What was I expecting? The police? A distraught friend caught at dawn in some kind of horrible cycle?

A man's voice I didn't recognize said "Holly?" in a low tone.

"Yes. Who is this?"

And then, like he was asking to borrow a cup of sugar, "I was wondering if I could cum inside you."

I hung up the phone. I was standing naked in the dark in the living room and suddenly I felt very vulnerable, cold, and painfully alone. I walked back to my bedroom, avoiding the windows, and put a nightgown on. Then I went over to the window, pulled the curtain back and peered out like some old suspicious woman. There was no one out there, but I still felt watched.

I turned on the light and sat down on the couch, lighting a cigarette and quivering. My nasal passages were dried out from the cough syrup abuse, so I could hear my breath whistling in and out of my sinuses.

The phone rang again in about 15 minutes. I let the machine pick up. Nothing. Then the same thing again, immediately after. Nothing again. I smoked some more and watched infomercials till the sun came up, then crawled back under my now-cold covers. I lay there curled in a ball, listening to the little shifts and tics of the building, imagining footsteps, trying to unclench my muscles.

Today I looked myself up in the phone book, running my twitching finger down then rows of first names under Johnson until I landed on my own first name, and address. I tried to imagine myself as a stranger would. What about those five black letters would make you want to call me in the middle of the night, sex crazed and persistent? Is it because my name seems young? Or pretty? Or maybe there isn't any reason at all, and phone stalkers are as arbitrary as everything else in the universe seems to be. How's that for a grand theory?

I wish I wasn't so twitchy and distracted by this. I wish I wasn't sick and could sleep as l
ong as I want in utter safety in clean flannel sheets with everyone I love beside me. I wish there was a way, some guaranteed way, to keep the outside out, and the inside in.

There is this great Carter family song from the Depression that pretty much sums it up:

No Depression In Heaven

For fear the hearts of men are failing,
For these are latter days we know
The Great Depression now is spreading,
God's word declared it would be so

   I'm going where there's no depression,
   To the lovely land that's free from care
   I'll leave this world of toil and trouble,
   My home's in Heaven, I'm going there

In that bright land, there'll be no hunger,
No orphan children crying for bread,
No weeping widows, toil or struggle,
No shrouds, no coffins, and no death

This dark hour of midnight nearing
And tribulation time will come
The storms will hurl in midnight fear
And sweep lost millions to their doom

I searched for a free mp3 of it, but no luck. There are some samples online that you should hear, it's such a beautiful song. I would love to spend some time doing research on Depression era music. To us the puns seem labored maybe, depression/Depression, but back then they really meant it. For example, we think "Pennies from Heaven" is a cute song today, but during the Dust Bowl Depression days, who knows... Rain and pennies were luxuries worth singing about then.

I guess we're all in a bit of a depression now. (e:soyeon), I'm gonna call you on the phone and find out what's going on with you! You sound so sad! [inlink]soyeon,141[/inlink]

So I'm off for the weekend to where there's no depression... and no I don't mean heaven. In fact, it is pretty depressed in my rural home town, the landscape dotted by tiny run down houses and dwindling farms, no jobs to be had, too many bars and even more churches. But it's where my momma is, so I'm running home to her for some country style momma love, to recover from my own depression. I'm bringing a video camera with me to document her and my back yard forest. Hopefully I'll catch up with everyone again when I get back, reinvigorated for the rest of the year. Hopefully.

Here is some important information following the election that concerned citizens may want to learn:

Official Lyrics of O Canada!

O Canada!
Our home and native land!
True patriot love in all thy sons command.

With glowing hearts we see thee rise,
The True North strong and free!

From far and wide,
O Canada, we stand on guard for thee.

God keep our land glorious and free!
O Canada, we stand on guard for thee.

O Canada, we stand on guard for thee.

Or you could read this editorial on Commondreams.org by Sarah Anderson called "Ten Reasons Not to Move to Canada"

On Tuesday night while watching the electoral results come in I got a phone call informing me that Maria is dead. They found her body in Lake Erie on Sunday and weren't able to identify it definitively until Tuesday. She drowned the same night she disappeared. We'll never know if it was an accident or a choice she made on her own. She was manic depressive, and I don't blame anyone, myself, her family, even Maria, I blame the disease that drove her from her home in the middle of the night.

I can't really say what I'm feeling about the whole thing. When I found out I sobbed in this really surprised gasping way, just fighting against the reality of it. From now on, for the rest of our lives, Maria will always be gone. I can picture her in my living room watching old movies, I still have messages from her jotted down on the notepad by my phone, and my travel mug is probably still in her car. The last time we talked she said she would drop it off at my place.

You know, as someone who is very melodramatic and prone to some pretty self-pitying fits of depression, I've often talked and thought about suicide. My friend last night was saying how mourning is the most selfish act, beacuse it's all about the loss of the living, and not the suffering of the dead. But now I see how selfish suicide is. Maria stole herself from us, stole herself from herself. I'm reading a book she gave me, Bergson's Time and Free Will, but it is a poor substitute for her conversations, her mind, the intonations of her voice. She may have been found, but I'll always keep asking, "Maria, where are you?"

So yesterday was my 29th birthday, and I didn't really tell anyone. I spent the day running around trying to get things done, worrying about Maria, and stressing about being overcommitted. I've signed up to do a short performance for the cabaret this weekend, just to keep busy, so of course I'm trying to get a million things together for it. I had to go to the craft store and the fabric store, and then at midnight last night I was with Brian, god bless him, in the Buffalo subway video taping trains. Then I went home and sewed the baby mole puppet for the Mole People Messiah act.

So basically, I'm planning to celebrate my mid-life mid-life in crises Saturday night after the cabaret, if anyone would care to join me ((e:soyeon), sorry I missed you last night! How's Saturday?) If you haven't seen the Real Dream Cabaret at Rust Belt Books yet, you really have to go. Although maybe not this weekend. The theme is the Underground, so it should be dark, and also, my skit is in very bad taste... But maybe you're in to that kind of thing.

But here are the real Real Dreamers, below. The last night they perform this year is Election Night. That's November 2 for all you abstainers or anyone who has just emerged from a cave. (Is that what the 5% undecideds are, cave dwellers who have just crept from the depths of the earth? Or is that the Mole People? Are they in search of a Mole People Messiah to lead them)?