isle of anhedonia
Josh and Heidi are married. We wish them well.
Yesterday a four-hour drive back to Iowa City from Chicago, along Interstate 80, continued the westward Candlemas funeral procession. After returning home I spent a long time lying on the carpet and waiting to vomit. It was nerves, I think, but the attacks haven't been this bad in some time. Eventually I was able to get up and eat some soup and crackers.
Should we envision entire worlds trapped and nearing annihilation by one of those spectacular cosmic blasts? Will the screen savers that blip with life then begin flatlining as our telescopes pick up the gamma ray burst that snuffed it all out? Will the screen savers still be cute then?
At a different time, with a different cocktail of neurotransmitters, I would be able to cry at that. I can't just now. I know: it has been so much worse than this. But there's nothing like a wedding to remind you that beneath the affected cynicism we are all such naked romantics, that the things we desire are so simple and small, so impossible—this world is compromised, mediated, ersatz—even to speak of absolutes is the sign of the idiot—I will never, never wash this rust from my hands—
