SPRING FESTIVAL 2013

ON BEING SICK

So I took ill just a bit ago, and after a couple of days spent not getting any better I went to the emergency room of a hospital conveniently located clear across the town I currently inhabit, and there, being told that I was indeed doing poorly by any of several measures, I was admitted (which is a polite way of saying incarcerated) to said hospital for an undetermined length of time.
Eventually sprung from this rather expensive hoosegow, and with the passage of sufficient time feeling more like a person than a rank heap of putrid garbage, I started to put what would have been in bygone days pen to paper but which is now, what, black pixels to white, leading off with the claim that in more than six years spent in this happy land I had enjoyed nothing of the country’s medical hospitality until now.
Which, upon reflection, I realized was completely incorrect. Cataloguing the health-related visits to local hospitals I recalled damaged and contused limbs, infected digits, many hours spent enjoying the Chinese pastime of IV drip (the Chinese are very partial to IV administered antibiotics), visits from a doctor whose practice of medical massage would land him in jail in any civilized nation, a spell in a local clinic where I was told to take the six golf ball sized pills and dissolve them in a kettle of boiling water and drink the ensuing liquor over the course of three days (talk about putrid, after boiling the first ball it was discarded along with the unboiled Hell-balls.), and having a potion made from onion roots, brown sugar and ginger poured down my throat to cure a fever.  In other words, over the years spent on the Middle Kingdom, I have been, now and then, one sick puppy.
But that wasn’t the surprising part. The surprising part was my initial belief that I had, in fact, never been sick in China until the present (exceedingly nasty) illness. How, I wondered, could I be operating under the impression that I had enjoyed six years of good health until the moment a couple of weeks ago when I was laid low by yon very aggressive infection? The short answer is I have no idea whatsoever. But if that was my first impression, when it came time to write a bit about the whole experience, that impression was really, really wrong. I find it curious, and I have no explanation for it. But it makes me wonder how much else that I know to be true is actually not quite so true.  It’s not as though the contrary information was hidden away and I had no access thereto. No, the realization that my initial belief was wrong was contradicted by nothing more than some reflection as I sat staring at the computer screen thinking, “No, wait....”. 
I am hoping that this odd phenomenon is limited to the Issue Of My Health In China, but I am leery of making that claim until I have had time and occasion to check and double check some other things that I, you know, *know*.  I’m not worried that I’ll find that the specific gravity of lead is not 11.4, or that the submersible Alvin was resident at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute. No, those are facts, and I tend to be pretty good about the few facts (useless as they might be) that I know. But it’s the other stuff about me that I know, that’s what I’m worried that I might be wrong about. I’ll let you know if I turn up any evidence one way or the other. Meanwhile, here’s hoping that I am actually me.

THE NEW NEW WHATEVER

If this were January first I might say, I firmly resolve with the help of Thy grace to update this blog on a more regular basis. But it's not, it's March 21st, it's my birthday yet again, and it's been a year since I wrote here. That's okay, because there are only about seven people who even know this blog exists. I started it because Thommy made me-- it was after a nasty spot of surgery several years ago, and he thought it would help me to heal, or something. Maybe it did. As with so much of life, there is no control. Maybe that's why scientists choose to be scientists, because it gives them an opportunity to see how things might work out differently, they get to use a control. For most of us, though, there is no control. We just go on, linearly, and see what happens next.
In this case, what happened next is we went to China, and at a fairly inopportune time, I got sick, and had to spend several days in a semi-Chinese hospital. In one regard, it's pretty much like spending time in an American hospital: lousy. One feels like garbage and one wishes one didn't have any reason to be there. But as lousy experiences go, it was fine. Not how I'd planned to end my 56th year. But, there you go-- who would ever make such a plan?
Meanwhile, looking forward-- bunches of travel await, and tasks and writing and building... It should be a good year. I'll let you know in twelve months or so.