The Four Humours

While in the throes of something like a high fever, an attack of nausea, food poisoning or in labor, it's not a good idea to ask me questions. I don't understand the things I do when I am about to vomit, and no one should even try.
Just back away and let me crawl up the wall, and don't panic.
Rest assured, it's mostly the demons acting themselves out. Haitians are fortunate to have voodoo ceremonies, as few religions or cultures provide a comparable release. In my experience, becoming violently ill is sometimes all you've got. I don't look forward to these events, by any means. Like having a sebaceous cyst lanced, it's necessary and intense.
A vicious stomach bug which I recently contracted (just 2 days after the exciting Obama victory) got me thinking about the 4 humours: black bile, yellow bile, phlegm and blood. No, I'm not going to get that specific. Suffice it to say I spent several hours with my head in a garbage pail while seated on the can. Lots of humours...
Having known each other for close to 20 years, Bisq has stuck with me through a lot of grizzly events - not the least of which was watching our son being "sectioned" out of me while I flailed around on the operating table with a case of the DTs (Delirium Tremens) from the epidural. Puking into the wind on numerous occasions, making an emergency #2 on the side of the road, and howling next to his SUV after ingesting 'shrooms in the 100+ degree heat in Utah back in 1996 may fill the pages of his memoirs.
This particular bug kicked in on Thursday night around 6:30 PM, just after I had made myself a chicken burger with broccoli. The nausea was immediately relentless. My face was going numb, and my breathing became coarse. My complexion was turning from peach to lime sherbet. During this obeah transformation, I began to pace in order to regulate my breathing. Meanwhile, Zev was begging me to draw strawberries for him on his etch-a-sketch pad. I panted a cryptic message to my neighbor's voicemail, breathily urging her to come over and deal with Zev so that I could convulse in privacy. I just needed someone to give me permission to temporarily leave this world. Minutes later, Bisq called. He was about an hour away in Northridge. I must have sounded like Linda Blair in The Exorcist (if you need to refresh, have a quick look). I really wasn't in any shape to be giving a status report, but the 911 call was entirely unnecessary. Bisq didn't want to take any chances, so in about 8 minutes, the guys in uniform appeared. They saw that I was in distress and began running tests on me - blood pressure, blood sugar. I knew that puking was in my future, which would probably resolve the demonic episode. However, the cluster of people in my living room only served as an obstacle to me getting a hold of my garbage bucket. Wrath was released in the form of vomit everywhere and covered everyone involved. Sorry guys. I told y'all that I could do this on my own.
It got me thinking about my dear old family members in their finest hours. My mom always knew how to puke quietly...and for that matter, how to get back to whatever it was she was drinking. She puked a lot when I was growing up: as a means to keep her weight down and in keeping with her philosophy: "Better Out Than In." She managed to keep the toilet bowl clean of all residue and burned incense when necessary. It didn't really bother anyone.
My dad was/is an ugly sight when sick. I've only seen him "ralph" few times. But, like myself, he shouts while vomiting. I think we also have "nose vomiting" in common. He's rarely ill, but I vaguely remember a few periods of weakness/shame while recovering from 3 of his 5 significant surgeries: vasectomy, hemorrhoid, and gum surgery. After the hemorrhoidectomy, doctors had ordered him to stay in the prone position for a number of days post-surgery. Watching Tom and Jerry on the television in my parents' bed next to an ass is not something that's easily forgettable. Non-scalpel vasectomies had not yet become available in the late 1970s. My dad always had been on the cutting edge (no pun intended) of surgery. He got hair plugs right around the same time which left crusty bloody dots all over his scalp. He bled a lot, for a man. In his drawer, a reminder of his vasectomy remained for years and years: a pair of hospital-issued undies, fashioned from netting. But, live long enough and spend a night or two in the hospital, and ye shall have a pair of your own. The vasectomy worked, as far as I know.
One of my earliest memories from childhood was when my parents were trying to force an enema on my brother after they had mistakenly given him penicillin, to which they remembered he was deathly allergic. It was my medication that had accidentally been given to him. I wasn't allowed in the bathroom, but I kept my ear to the door. Out of habit, I suppose, my mom had the bathwater running. It sounded like they were in Niagara Falls and very stressed out. I'm not sure whatever resulted or which orifice the tube went up or down. But, Augie survived and has continued a penicillin-free life. Now he struggles with low-back pain and frequent colds. Nothing worth pressing your ear against a door.

The morning after I spent puking all night, it was the inevitable trip to the laundromat to throw the pukey rug into an industrial machine which brought me back into the real world (the world where oozing goes on behind closed doors). I'm lucky it didn't last long and I'm lucky enough to have shed 3 pounds the old fashioned way. Bonus! I was due for the exorcism, as it had been quite a few years since my last gastrointestinal emergency. How many more times will it get ugly? Who's to say?
You may or may not agree with my hypothesis here, but, in some weird way, it's a privilege to bear witness to healing crises.
Gross, yes. Still, it's reassuring to know that there's still a voodoo exorcism brimming in us all. How else are you going to release all that trauma? Just be prepared to clean up afterwards.
PS: those are really discarded Cheetos (uneaten) in the toilet.

Arizona--FireWorld

I've moved four times since I was 18. Big Deal.
I've had friends who have relocated three times as much in half the time, so I don't consider myself overly-nomadic.
Nevertheless, I still get the same question when I show up in a new place: "Why are you here?"
I never have a good answer. Twice the answer has been "school." That works. Once it was "for the money." Anyone who has ever lived in Atlanta should have the same answer, even if they're in denial.
This last move was "just because I wanted to." Admittedly, I do feel like a smart-ass if I give that response. So I usually say something like, "a lot of my family is here." Or, "a lot of my friends are here." Though these statements are true, they just don't seem to legitimize my presence. I was thinking about making my new answer 100% weather-related. That one seems to sit well with people; folks can relate.

This entry is about how a little thing like weather prevented me from loving and living in Arizona back in July of 2000 when we found ourselves contemplating yet another move. I have a feeling that you readers will deduce that I have an aggravating need to question the obvious.
I had recently completed my graduate program and knew that remaining in Santa Fe and practicing acupuncture there was unacceptable. I felt that way based on the advice of former graduates from the program who had stayed and were working multiple jobs in order to make ends meet. The area was crawling with these acupuncturists and herbalists, and I needed to strike out on my own into a new territory.
Bisq and I had grown very comfortable in the desert Southwest. We liked the weather: dry, bright, cool in the mornings and evenings, heart-breaking sunsets, double-rainbows, good weed. It never got too hot up there at 7,000 feet in Santa Fe. Maybe Arizona would be a place we'd like... I had an old friend who loved living in Tuscon when she went to U. of Arizona. Another friend raved about Flagstaff. Plus, there were supposedly great business opportunities there in the alternative medicine field. Lots of rich old white people like John McCain!

Arizona was, in our minds, the next best thing to New Mexico, so we set out to spend a week there in July. "Might as well see it at it's worst" was our philosophy, so that we don't fall in love with it's abnormal season. Just to reiterate, I know that it gets hotter there than anywhere in the country, but I thought that 22 years in the Deep South would've prepared me. But, Arizona is a different type of place.
The drive was endless. We were in Bisq's 4Runner, "Heather," crossing the desert at a conservative pace. We stopped at the Cracker Barrel in order to check out a few books-on-tape. We scored with Jackie Collins' American Star. Our first night en route to AZ was spent in Silver City, NM, which is fairly funky. It's a desert college town that is surprisingly full of trees and shady areas. We were in good humor and still hadn't gotten overheated.
The next day, we headed towards Tucson. The landscape was something out of a Road-Runner cartoon - the combination of a blistering hot bright day, no trees and saguaro cactus along the I-10. The AC in Heather roared to keep up with the demand. It was quickly turning into a Peak Oil nightmare, as we realized that we had arrived in FireWorld.

Tuscon, when you get off of the busy traffic-filled boulevards, is a cute college town. It's just a shame that one couldn't casually step outside of one's air-conditioned car to experience it. Everything is done in haste when it is 120 degrees. We checked into a neat hotel, the Smuggler's Inn, which had a pirate/hacienda theme going on. It was kept nice and dark and, most importantly, cool. It really felt like a safe-haven from the colorless fire that loomed on the other side of the windows. We managed to make it outdoors once the sun went down and the cement cooled to about 100 degrees. We purchased sandwiches at a world class kosher deli called Feig's and sped back to the hotel. We ate the sandwiches (in haste) in our underwear, in the dark, next to the AC unit in our hotel room. With the absence of the sunlight, our heads cleared, the panic retreated and we concluded that the week in which we had intended on spending between Arizona's 2 major cities of Tuscon and Phoenix was going to be greatly abbreviated. Afterwards, we had plans to check out Prescott and Sedona in the north.
We didn't see the point in singeing the soles of our shoes, guzzling gas, and putting ourselves in danger of sizzling to death. How in the hell was I going to have an acupuncture practice in this town when I was afraid to get out of my car? We knew that Phoenix was supposedly hotter than Tuscon and way less charming, so we decided that we'd quickly drive there, not get out of the car and - mission accomplished! - we'd been to Phoenix. With Jackie Collins' help, we drove through FireWorld along the I-10. From the sky above, we must have looked like an ant crawling in the desert sand - like that cartoon strip B.C.
Phoenix, Tempe and Scottsdale turned out to be a three-headed, soul-less desert mega-city peppered with golf courses. We nearly tried to enjoy some of its culture by attending a tour of the Frank Lloyd Wright House (Taliesin West) in Scottsdale. However, when we arrived, we were told that the tour would begin in an hour, and we couldn't bear the idea of waiting in the car - or anywhere that wasn't a dark freezer - for 60 minutes. We'd have to check out Frank Lloyd Wright's places outside of FireWorld. What was Frank doing there, anyway?

And so, we steered Heather north and stopped in Prescott. The temperature became civilized, and we slowly regained our sanity. Prescott was a nice town to ride bikes and see other white people (many of whom are pleased to grow old in an R-V.) I think that Prescott might also be famous for it's candied apples.
Then, we headed to an old favorite spot of ours: Sedona. We had visited and camped there the previous year and had good memories of the crystal cool waters of the Oak Creek, which flows down from the Grand Canyon. As had become a tradition, we found ourselves at Sedona's Center For the New Age. The previous year, we had our astrological charts read there, as well as our auras photographed. In 1999, Bisq's aura was in big trouble: Note the black hole at 1:00. Several sessions of art therapy and playing bass in Santa Fe's most famous reggae band, I-Life, must have remedied the situation. How else can this Irie aura featured from trip #2 to Sedona be explained?
We arrived back in New Mexico realizing how scary life could be in Arizona. We never again took air conditioning for granted, though we still don't have it and lust after it during the summer months. "How did y'all like Arizona?" friends inquired after we arrived home several days earlier than projected. "Oh, it was too hot." That response never failed me. People would nod once in agreement and move on to the next topic. They were kind enough never to chide me for doing such an obviously stupid thing.
So, revisiting the old question as to why I am here - my answer is: the weather is usually pleasant.