As If It Matters

The cough is receding to a dull popping in the chest. I think that I might have narrowly avoided another bout with pneumonia. On the Dean campaign, I had pneumonia twice. The first time it really knocked me out something fierce; I’ve consequently developed a near-pathological fear of any vaguely pneumonia-esque symptoms.

So the other night I wrote this kind of sad post about being sick and lost, and sort of blamed it on television. The funny thing is that after I wrote that post, I picked up a book my friend Michael Hariton had given me on my departure from New York City two years ago (yes, it’s taken me two years to get around to reading it…). The book is If on a winter’s night a traveler by Italo Calvino. And the opening is wonderful, and exactly what I was looking for. I’d like to quote the whole thing here but I’ll just start with the first paragraph:

Of course, Hariton (who gave me the book) and I had a long argument about whether W. G. Sebald was any good or not; Michael loved Austerlitz and I hated it. (Why did I hate it? See the H.G. Wells quote at the end of this absurdly long post.) So I might end up hating Calvino, too — I’ve never read him, I don’t know.

Well, so after that little digression — Yes, my mood is definitely improving. In no small part thanks to the encouragement of friends like Anne Dickey (see her comments in the last post) and Dave Pentecost. Dave (whom I recently met through Dave Winer) wrote me an amazing email, just a stunning invitation to join him a trip to Mexico to seek out Mayan ruins. It filled me with such an appetite — it referenced all kinds of wonderfully thick memories of the Malaysian jungle and it whetted my appetite for exploration, especially since it’s a part of the world I’ve never visited. And ancient culture — be it Byzantine, Roman, or Chinese — has always been a bit of fascination for me. I know absolutely nothing about Mayan history and since meeting Dave I’ve tried to take up some reading on the subject in preparation for our upcoming trip.

And by the way Dave, you (or rather, Doc Searles) has got to be right — I’m not sure I can live any other way!

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