Well, actually, The Black Death was probably just Medieval Ebola from space, so . . .
Title is a reference to the Great Courses lectures I’ve been watching to tend to my insomnia (both chronic and pandemic-induced). I learned all sorts of wild theories about The Black Death and have now made it to the level in the series where the lecturer is wearing a GREEN jacket:
There’s a little boy in one of my middle-school classes.
He’s eleven.
He has a big, friendly Mormon face beneath shiny Mormon-blonde hair.
(I have no idea if this child is Mormon, I just know I’ve lived in the Wild West long enough now that I associate certain physical features with the Mormons and if you are a fellow Westerner, you’ll know exactly what I mean when I say the child is Mormon-looking because Mormon children have this very dear lewk.)
Every morning Henry is on-time to class, lying on his belly with big headphones on his little-big head, his back legs up and kicking behind him and I have a confession —
The first time Henry appeared in my class I had to mute my camera
because his face
made me burst into tears.
The first time I saw Henry’s face I knew we were living through some deeply sick, protracted episode of Black Mirror
(a great show but one I have no desire to see again because — hey, living those surreal horrors, thanks!)
and Henry was just too pure to be subjected to a world that consisted of such terrible, scary things.
I have since learned how to look at Henry’s sweet face without sobbing,
though every morning the appearance of him is like a syringe of light
to my heart: it stings, but it doesn’t hurt.
The other week, while waiting on his classmates, Henry and I talked about Super Mario Brothers.
This has been around since I was a kid, I said.
Since you were a kid? Henry asks, his eyes wide with surprise, his little legs kicking.
Around your age, I told Henry. I was around your age when my brother got a Nintendo.
I thought of me and my brother then, a lump catching in my throat.
(Damnit, Henry! Stop making me cry!)
My brother is eighteen months my junior.
We were basically twins.
Felt that way growing up, anyway.
And I can’t remember the last time I’ve seen him.
We do talk on the phone sometimes, but not often.
He has two kids and a wife and a house far away in
part of Illinois I’d struggle to find on a blank map of the state.
But I remember being about Henry’s age, on the floor beside my brother (who come to think of it, looked a lot like Henry), chatting and playing round after round of Super Mario Brothers, Streetfighter, and Contra.
We had always been a team, but Nintendo made us a cartoon superhero team fighting off all the bad guys.
I think there are virtues in gaming.
When I stopped drinking, for all intents and purposes, last summer
I filled in the gap wine left with video games. More specifically
a handheld Nintendo Switch. At night, when sleep was hard to come by,
I would play Breath of the Wild or Stardew Valley until my thoughts began to unravel and slump in my head just enough that I could drift off.
Games don’t amp me up: they slow me down.
This is where Henry and I are different: games AMP him up.
Literature. Music. Politics. Art. Writing. Big Talks about
Big Subjects. Teaching. Socializing.
All that amps me up.
Basically, the life I live amps me up.
And this is a good thing. I would not want a life, particularly now,
that acted as a sedative.
I do not like being sedate though sometimes one must be still and sedate
like to sleep or to enjoy a television program with your wife or a friend or have your body run through a gigantic machine so people can see if you have cancer in your liver or for the removal of chest wall tumors.
Those times? Usually? I need help.
At forty-four after suffering for years with clinical anxiety and depression, I finally found doctors who helped me gain access to the medication needed to treat my brand of anxiety and depression.
Some days I get just the right amount of mental and physical stimulation (we’re all just weird dogs, aren’t we?) and rest and sleep comes easily
Some days I have to force the hand with a little clonazepam, cannabis, or if I absolutely cannot sleep no matter how many bullshit tabs of Melatonin I choke down
(seriously that shit doesn’t work, but once this cancer surgeon I really admire told me that there is maybe some evidence that it wards off estrogen positive breast cancer so I’ll choke those motherfuckers down)
If I absolutely can’t go down, I’ll have an Ambien.
The generic kind.
I don’t think it works on me.
I take one and my brain is still whirring, but my body is just
more tired and I learned today that generic Ambien,
without insurance,
is SEVENTY DOLLARS. Honestly,
I think I could score street propofol for less $$.
In olden days, I would have just been “that crazy blind writer lady who never sleeps.”
Actually, in the olden days, I would have been dead at thirty-five of breast cancer.
And yet, somehow, my crazy ass is still on this dumbass planet.
Anyway, I’m glad I don’t live in olden days because for whatever idiot reason,
I do enjoy this “being alive” nonsense
and modern medicine and legalized cannabis have done a great deal to improve my quality of life.
Rest is healing.
Sleep is helpful, too.
Back to games.
Specifically, Stardew Valley.
This is an incredibly stupid game.
Depressingly, tediously stupid.
But I love it because it is the most pacifist video game I have ever known.
You can live as a hermit and make a shit ton of money (miss me with any games where I have to interact with other humans; I play games to GET AWAY from other humans) and you just farm and keep cows alive and nothing dies and if a green-blob-monster bites you too many times in the mine while you’re looking for some quartz to upgrade your hoe, you just fall instantly asleep and mysteriously wake up refreshed in your own bed and it’s morning and the sun is out “And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die”
— think Donne was predicting Stardew Valley?
This question surely complicates The Holy Sonnets which I must admit, despite their failure to really hold up in terms of cultural relevance/cache, I quite enjoy. They comfort me. Sometimes.
I mean “Death, be not proud” — that one really gets me.
But really is there a cancer patient on earth who doesn’t get down with “Death, be not proud”?
Honestly, is there one of you who can read “Death, be not proud”
after this fucking year and not say,
“Hell fucking yes John fucking Donne”?
Didn’t think so.
But games don’t always cut it for me.
That’s why I have Prozac and a therapist and lots of herbal tea in the house.
That’s also why I have become a bit of a cannabis aficionado.
Cannabis and I have a long and stormy history that begins back in the spring of 1993, in a little suburb northwest of the city of Chicago where I, a Local Teen, spent the entirety of a long holiday weekend smoking pot with my friends and feeling zero effects of said inebriant until the Monday before school when I got so high that I blacked out and begged my friends to take me to the hospital.
(The story is longer and better than that. Alas. Brevity.)
And ending circa 2001 after I smoked a bowl alone in my first apartment while watching the news which was all about 9/11 because that had just happened and convinced myself that I was suffering from cardiac arrest.
So cannabis and I went on a decades long hiatus. Our paths would again cross when, in January of 2020 I went to see a Witch Doctor who scared the hell out of me (more about that story in my forthcoming book — Nov. 2021 w/Tolsun Books) so I could get a medical marijuana card which I called a “medical weed” card because I was not yet fluent in the language of cannabis, had not become acquainted with terms like: flower, wax, dab, sativa, indica, terpenes . . .
Basically, reader, I read every. single. article. on the internet before I even set foot inside a dispensary. And even after reading the whole internet, I asked one of my cancer docs, “Can I use marijuana?” (2020–2021 such weird fuckin’ times) And she gave a quick affirming nod, then patted my shoulder and said, “Don’t smoke it.”
And with that it was permission to launch: GRANTED.
Sometimes cannabis makes me chatty with strangers. Like I drive Sarah crazy with my weekend cannabis journeys to Trader Joe’s (she drives) where I ask the cashiers random questions and rant about ALL THE PROBLEMS IN AMERICA in the frozen foods aisle. Sometimes cannabis makes me sleepy. A nice Grandaddy Purple can often rock me gently into sleep. Sometimes cannabis makes me want to do chores (and I never want to do chores) like reorganize cabinets and shit. But you know what really, really gets me high?
The classroom.
I’m not even kidding.
It looks like we may be able to go back in person after spring break.
Maybe.
A strong, highly possible, hope.
A hope in a year when hope has been scarce.
This morning, I talked with my high school creative writing class about things I want us to do when we can “Be together in room thirteen.”
I said we would have a dance party.
I said we would make food.
I said we will draw all over the whiteboard and pull books off the highest shelves. We’ll look at the peaks out the window, count sunflowers in the meadow, some of us on our tippy toes crowded there.
I will see your face, I said to one boy whose camera has been broken all year.
I will see your face.
What a fucking idea.
I will see your face.
Someday.
I will.
