10/4/98 00:50: after the merciful effects of the codeine wore away and all i was left with was the nastiness i most sensible slept, but probably with my mouth hanging open drawing in and pushing out dry air my raw throat. they explained that my throat is actually raw. that the pain came from exposed muscle. when i woke it felt made of stony pain. not searing but abrupt pain and swallowing felt a little like rubbing stone together. i went downstairs and looked for something to soothe and distract myself from the new state i had entered, back in from feeling so much better under the auspices of tylenol and codeine. what a trade! one pain now for another pain later... but i hadn't coughed which meant that i would probably be out of pain altogether soon. better to live through this on paper. sometimes in the state of pain it is all to important to cling to paper and not trust your head and your heart. that is; if you are looking to get out. for me it requires a great deal of paperwork to leave the state of pain. it's good to keep in mind that it is a jealous state and how to get out.
i has done anything at all to distract myself from really acknowledging i was in pain. i took up a jigsaw puzzle that was done earlier by my hostess and broke it up to put back together. i had cleared with my host this activity, playing on his computer (which i am doing now) and taking a shower in the downstairs bathroom, which i intend to do until the warm runs out or someone fetches me. it's pretty far until morning and i have complete faith in their water heating system. this house i am in is the soul of comfort. it is bordering on opulent but never crosses so that the occupants or guests won't feel allowed to enjoy it thoroughly. i have two local friends with such houses; when i want my guests to want to move to oregon i try to arrange visits with these friends. but i am staying in my old home as well. i was born in pain and lived there for a good many years. i fear and hate my old home though i grudgingly admit how much of my character was built here. and my brutal desire for effectiveness, something i am always happy to see transferred into my usage of language. if nothing else the empire of pain gave me something to talk about and to talk my way out of.
i am a resident elsewhere these days, sunnier regions. i can remember the day i moved to the more benevolent universe where i spend most of my time now. the new land is still a mystery to me, and i'm not sure it can be otherwise, at least for a long time. as i sit here i'm not even sure what to call my new home. my origins fit like a lens on my eye and they give me a particular view of my environment. do they twist it? i can't say; i don't believe i've ever head a voice speak of a place not seen through a lens much like mine. of my friends who built this wonderful house, if they were born in pain they are long removed from it, but when i wake and concentrate on swallowing deliberately he often touches me with compassion. compassion right to the center of a person often can be a sure sign of an emigrant from pain, in my experience.
i made a discovery for myself on this visit, after breaking up and putting back together my hostess' puzzle. it was a cute and trite message picture. i found myself largely neutral to it which was score above the abject hate i used to feel for such things. i didn't even in my silent moments want to find myself criticizing my caretakers. it showed a wandering girl proceeding down a path called "your life" rejecting a path that wound off in a different direction called "no longer an option" and above in large red letter it read: "don't look back". reminiscent of robert frost in a 4th grade and kittens sort of way. i looked at it and knew down all the way that like the slogans i love and depend on and the robert frost poem that i have alternatingly loved and hated and can still recite from memory it was really true. but i was annoyed to find that truth can be cute. i suspect for people born in pain it is a hateful thing to know that truth doesn discriminate. that it's not always discerning and not carried aloft and not always hard to get to. it seems so unfair that the trite and cute can in finger paints acquire what took me blood and years and chewing gravel to have. and truth doesn't care... and i think for years that's why i didn't care about truth. cause it was plain and easy or hard as hell, whatever. there are many things besides truth that are the rewards of living for a long time in the region of pain, some of them very fancy. but truth is as plain and as present as air. so i think i sneered at it for years not because it didn't come in the packaging of my choosing, actually it always comes in the packaging of my choosing. i chose to sneer at it because people that didn't live in pain could have it too. i chose to deny it plain and call something else by its name because for fucks sake there had to be some reason i was born to pain and raised in pain and if truth wasn't it than i wasn't interested in truth. i'm sure there is a reason, but in the end the pain got bad enough that i settled for truth. told by epics and shocking and moving novels or kitten posters, i didn't care, i just needed it. maybe i was born in this empire for no more reason than i was born in america, because my parents fucked there. if there is a greater reason to my pain than that it is not the quest for truth or the deep understanding of what is real. that is available to everyone in any language, it pervades all and can be read from any tea leaves in any kingdom by the willing eye. i'm signing off now. i think it's time to take a vacation from my vacation to sleep. right now this is a place for me where feel no pain, though waking up is often pretty treacherous.