Madame Sosostris, famous clairvoyante, Had a bad cold...

And I'm not thinking too clearly either. Brought in 2000 with a flu, bringing in 2010 with a bad head cold. So today's theme: flus and colds and related maladies. Here, to start the day (today's title comes from T.S. Eliot's "The Waste Land") is Charles Bukowski, on the transformations people go through as they get older:

"having the flu and with nothing else to do"

I read a book about John Dos Passos and according to
the book once radical-communist
John ended up in the Hollywood Hills living off investments
and reading the
Wall Street Journal

this seems to happen all too often.

what hardly ever happens is
a man going from being a young conservative to becoming an
old wild-ass radical

however:

young conservatives always seem to become old
conservatives.
it's a kind of lifelong mental vapor-lock.

but when a young radical ends up an
old radical
the critics
and the conservatives
treat him as if he escaped from a mental
institution.

such is our politics and you can have it
all.

keep it.

sail it up your
ass.

--Charles Bukowski

The poem reminds me of the old joke: Q: What's the definition of a conservative? A: A liberal who's been mugged. The challenge of being a liberal and remaining a liberal--or a "wild-ass radical"--is translating one's beliefs in the worth of mankind, other than man's monetary or pecuniary worth, into action despite the setbacks and travails we face, or even worse, acquiescing to the comforts of contentment. And the point Bukowski seems to make is this: who is sick? The man at home with the flu, or the man who has given up his idealism and now reads the stock reports in the Wall Street Journal?

In a completely different tone, here's Shel Silverstein:

"Sick"

'I cannot go to school today, '
Said little Peggy Ann McKay.
'I have the measles and the mumps,
A gash, a rash and purple bumps.
My mouth is wet, my throat is dry,
I'm going blind in my right eye.
My tonsils are as big as rocks,
I've counted sixteen chicken pox
And there's one more-that's seventeen,
And don't you think my face looks green?
My leg is cut-my eyes are blue-
It might be instamatic flu.
I cough and sneeze and gasp and choke,
I'm sure that my left leg is broke-
My hip hurts when I move my chin,
My belly button's caving in,
My back is wrenched, my ankle's sprained,
My 'pendix pains each time it rains.
My nose is cold, my toes are numb.
I have a sliver in my thumb.
My neck is stiff, my voice is weak,
I hardly whisper when I speak.
My tongue is filling up my mouth,
I think my hair is falling out.
My elbow's bent, my spine ain't straight,
My temperature is one-o-eight.
My brain is shrunk, I cannot hear,
There is a hole inside my ear.
I have a hangnail, and my heart is-what?
What's that? What's that you say?
You say today is...Saturday?
G'bye, I'm going out to play!'

--Shel Silverstein

There's a Calvin & Hobbes cartoon in which Calvin's mom checks on the imaginative terror one morning because he has not gotten out of bed yet, and it's getting late. He tells her that he doesn't feel well, and she reminds him that it's Saturday morning. "I know Mom, but I don't feel good." Last panel: She sprints to make a call for the doctor.