Spare parts

I've taken quite a break from 2666, to break away from all the rotten death of part 4 (The Part About the Crimes), and just to be able to read something — finish something! — less than 1000 pages long. But I find myself starting in on the last volume (The Part About Archimboldi), and I'm wildly excited about this, I want to take notes as I go, things are gelling.

(Really, I shouldn't read more than one book, or maybe two, at a time. I'm no good at it, never have been. It makes me feel uncentred.)

(Especially when there's no time, there hasn't been any time, where does the time go?, my sister came to visit, and J-F went off for a camping weekend, and the kid and I play and play (she's off to day camp next week), and the weather's shitty rainy the whole time so we can't just go to the park where she'd play and I'd watch and read, we have to do indoor things, which takes a lot more ingenuity and patience, plus you have to clean up, meanwhile work is a little crazy, and there must be 83 loads of laundry to do, the closet shelving is falling down, and I think the bathroom is starting to smell, there's just no time.)

I am currently playing catch-up on the Infinite Summer project; I've re-read the first 80 odd pages of Infinite Jest, which I'd read a couple years ago, and some beyond, but I'm not quite up to schedule yet.

Also, for some reason I thought now would be a good time to finish up The Adventures of Amir Hamza, which I'm not even half-way through, and I can't begin to estimate just how many bathroom trips it might take.

So, between volumes of 2666 seemed like an excellent time to squeeze in some actual reading, of the kind where you actually get to close the book after a few days, maybe feel a faint sense of accomplishment in so doing.

Arturo Perez-Reverte's The Sun Over Breda, which, sadly, bored me, in the way that I'm just not into the minutiae of battle, no matter how glorious the language, but it was quick and it's over. (He's an interesting writer for being so visual. Very obviously he's knowledgeable about fine art and greatly inspired by it.)

And I closed Alberto Manguel's The Library at Night, which was nice — just in that kinship you feel with Manguel, that love for and comfort in books and libraries.

(I never did write about my brief encounter with him, my seeing him deliver one of the Massey Lectures. Apart from the lecture itself, which was fascinating and for which I still have notes lying around somewhere, he's a lovely man. He signed my book for me and I asked him what he was reading back then in November 2007: He smiled shyly and apologized before answering. "It sounds so pedantic." Locke's On Tolerance. Yes, for pleasure. But his face lit up in telling me he'd just finished the latest Reginald Hill, Death Comes for the Fat Man. Manguel highly recommends Dalziel and Pascoe: "You must start at the beginning. They're wonderful!" (I've never read them, but I might.))

And poetry! I'm making my way through a volume of Janusz Szuber, and while I can't say it gives me a sense of accomplishment exactly (poetry causes for me something more like befuddlement), my brain feels stretched in all the right places for it.

Things are gelling. I mean ideas are, in my head.

I whipped across the street to Indigo at lunch yesterday to hear Lewis Black, shilling for his latest book (Me of Little Faith). He didn't read from the book, but talked quite soberly (albeit entertainingly) about the craft of writing, his basic advice being, Just write. Don't think about it. If you start thinking, you realize it's crap, and so you don't bother to write it down cuz it's crap, you feel you have to think it through, and so you go have a think and before you know it you're napping, and you wake up and give up on the whole crap idea of writing. But if you write it down, at least you know where it might go, even if you have to rewrite everything to get there. Basically.

Also he noted that he thinks differently whether he's typing or writing longhand — a different process entirely. And then he answered questions for half an hour.

But about things gelling. I guess I mean associations are gelling. Cuz the whole time I'm listening to Lewis Black, I'm thinking about Infinite Jest. Particularly as Black rants about the fact that television and computers haven't been fully merged yet — it's the same screen!, the problem is money, they haven't figured out how to distribute the money they'd make yet — and I'm thinking teleputers! Wallace had the TP all figured out. And Black goes on about this human urge for entertainment, and really, whether you're flaked out on the couch watching Comedy Central or lolling away the afternoon reading Chekhov, it's really the same thing. And I'm thinking, yeah. And I think about asking Black for his thoughts on Wallace, but I realize I know next to nothing about either Black or Wallace to be able to gauge whether I might be on to something so I discard the impulse, but some kind of neuronal connection has already been made and I can't shake it.

Status: normal

Head-y
A few weekends ago I went to the hospital. I thought my brain was going to explode. I get migraines quite regularly, and I've learned to cope — some ibuprofen at the first signs and a couple hours' sleep in a dark room as soon as the day-to-day allows will usually head it off. But they've been getting worse over the years.

I'd been battling a virus, even worked from home that Friday, as the effort of wearing something other than pyjamas just seemed a bit much that day. Was it a migraine I felt coming on? The pain of it woke me up; the pain of it had me throwing up for hours; the pain of it had me clutching my head and walking round in circles, scared that my eyeballs might squeeze out or that I'd start bleeding from the ears. This wasn't normal.

Of course, at the emergency room they couldn't simply shoot me up with drugs, much to my chagrin; they had to ascertain what was the matter with me.

Why do you say it's a migraine? Because, well, it's like a migraine, only it's so much worse I thought it might not be. Have you ever been diagnosed with migraine? No. Have you seen a doctor about these headaches? Uh, no. How long have you had these headaches? As long as I can remember. Just how bad are these headaches? I'm pretty much incapacitated for a couple hours — the light is screaming, I want to throw up, sometimes I throw up, I have to sleep it off. Your mother never took you to doctor for these headaches? Uh, no.

Various swabs and bloodwork, extracting a sample from inside my sinuses, some basic neurological tests. A CT scan — more frightening than ever I imagined it to be. I faced it alone, J-F having just then gone off to address the parking situation. Like some wierd ancient relic of technology with a Myst-like drone. I never felt my heart beat so hard. What happens if I move my head? if I twitch? I feel a twitch. My heart is going to leap out of my throat. Will I disintegrate or explode?

All negative.

The doctor can't tell me anything I don't already know: It's "just" a migraine. You obviously have some virus; that must be making it worse. She offers me an intravenous painkiller, but 8 hours on, that seems like overkill. (But oh, I would've killed for some earlier.) She gives me some antiinflammatories and sends me home. I want toast. And I'm unreasonably — it's completely backward! — afraid to sleep.

I've been referred to a migraine clinic.

Child-ish
An xbox 360 has recently been introduced into the household. I am unreasonably upset over the fact that I can't play Fable as a female character. I am unreasonably obsessed with the Ratatouille demo, which is unreasonably hard.

Last weekend, Helena started making valentines for all her classmates. Make a list, select a card, match an envelope, line them up, choose a chocolate, line them up. Write a name, cry, "Mommy, can you write "R" for me?," learn to write "R," select a new card, write "R" perfectly. Add a sticker, add matching stickers to the envelope, cry because they're not symmetrical, find another envelope, write the names all over again, stuff the envelope with a card, a candy, a chocolate, seal it with a sticker heart. We do this for hours. All day. And the next day too. Everything is pink and red.

I've spent every day since telling Helena, really, I think it's too early, we can't deliver them just yet, Valentine's Day isn't for more than another week, no one will even recognize what it's for, wait, didn't you forget someone on your list, you can't take them till they're all ready, you can't take some for some kids and leave one little girl out, that wouldn't be nice, it's still too early, if you take them now what will you have for your friends on Valentine's Day, maybe you should wait. I buy some time: one morning I suggest we take the leftover gummie hearts — we can leave one for everyone in their cubbyhole. She may have finally forgotten about the cards.

Book-ish
I've been reading faster than I can document it. No, not exactly — I'm managing to find time to read, at the expense of sleep, but can't find time or energy to write about it. Which is a shame, because The Painter of Battles, by Arturo Perez-Reverte was extraordinary, even though I don't think it exactly works as a novel; it's a powerful meditation on both art and war, and I recommend it highly.

Also read last week: A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines, by Janna Levin, of which I'd known absolutely nothing but to which I was committed it from the moment I read its title. Madman! Turing machines! Actually it's a fictional account of certain events in the lives of Kurt Goodel and Alan Turing. Geeky mathematicians!

(More on these books after I rein life in and dictate some terms on how my time gets allotted.)

"If the world were to end tomorrow what book would you read today?" is the question posed at Reading Matters. Answer: the book I've just passed the midway mark of: Zig Zag, by José Carlos Somoza, a real page turner! (What if you could, with complex camera arrangements based in string theory, see the past?) That is, the end of the world wouldn't change my reading habits at all, except that I'd probably have no time for reading, what with engaging in wierd and complex craft projects with a 5-year-old and trying to recpture some romance with my other half before it all goes up in smoke, but I'd really, really like to know how this book ends. I should go find out now.