Day232 - Junky

I awoke in a fine frame, a smile on my face. Within minutes of rising I noticed an ache across my body, wherever flesh met with bone - my corporeal early warning sign of fatigue and potential flu.

On holiday, with no time for illness, I shrugged it off and hit the beach. While NZ is beautiful, and especially so the Coromandel Peninsula, I feel somewhat spoiled by the amazing beaches of my current adopted home of Oz. Still, I had a chance to lay out and soak rays while exploring a book I am only 50 pages into but have fallen in love with already.

Upon returning from the beach I became weak, slightly dizzy. All I wanted to do was set myself in a perpetual full-body stretch, but never once was I in pain or discomfort - just in need of that stretch and a lie down, with no intention of ever again rising.

My hosts looked after me well, setting me up in my own room, rather than the living room airbed I had used the nights prior, feeding me tablets washed down with cool, sweet ginger ale, and laying damp cloths over my forehead.

I laid there in the afternoon, soaking in the rural air for several hours, over which time I listened to an author-narrated book Junky by William S. Burroughs.

The titular character, born into wealth and a constant flow of security from a trust fund, chose his addiction - in part to experience adversity of which his life had been devoid. I've seen this scenario before - in the non-fiction section that resides just outside my window - and while I understand the thinking behind, I still consider it such a selfish waste of self.

Nevertheless, it was an interesting read. During one of his kick withdrawals he talked about lying in bed, weak, spaced, body in need - in my ill state I felt his words acutely. It was quite possibly the best time for me to have read this particular story - a flu being the closest feeling to addiction withdrawals I hope to ever experience.

While not taken with his simplistic writing style, an occasional poetic gem gleamed through:

"A mild degree of junk sickness always brought me the magic of childhood. It never fails, like a shot", wherein he is transported back to laying on his mother's bed, watching streetlights move across the wall as the traffic passes; train whistles; faint piano drifting down the street; burning leaves. While never knowing - or wanting to know - heroin withdrawal, I know this feeling of revisited magic. I go there sometimes, and break from the beauty that is Now.

Also raised was the concept of relegating a thought or idea to a "mental blind spot" - in the novel the example given is that to here is where a junky will relegate his habit's progress. This is the root of self-denial, but moreso dangerous due to the difficulty of recovering a hidden thought once buried. One must rely on cross-indexing to trawl the archives, but if these indexes are too buried, what hope is there of remembering at all?

I love pondering while in a fever-ish or flu-ish state. Every thought an almost-Koan.

painting: Félicien Rops

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Placebo - Haemoglobin

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