Shingles II

                                

                                

It is shingles

after all

better than tumour

I'm not sure.

It tingles

all the more

to know it's shingles

after all.

My pain 

has a name

it sounds like jingles,

Christmas came.

But is it enough

to balance my luck,

shingles for a book?

I doubt it.

Never mind

it could be worse

I could have something 

that really hurts!

Shingles

This picture has nothing directly to do with shingles, other than that I took the photo on the day I went to the doctor and found out I might have shingles -- of the head! Better than a brain tumour, I suppose, though that can't be ruled out without a CT scan, which will cost $450 dollars, which I don't want to spend.

She knows, my doctor, that I've been under a bit of STRESS of late and stress is one of the shingles triggers; can't say causes, because the shingles virus is dormant inside you for life once you've had chickenpox.

I don't have any lesions yet so that's what I'm to look forward to this weekend and call her the minute they show up, because shingles of the head can lead to blindness and baldness if not treated immediately.

At least worrying about going blind and/or bald is helping to take my mind off worrying about the book not being published.

That said, there is something shingly about this beautiful bud. Something ugly, even grotesque in its budding beauty. There's that balance in all things I was talking about yesterday (see 'Brain Pain' post). I'm probably doing a grave disservice to this Agapanthus bud, associating it with shingles. Sorry Agapanthus, but I'm not myself right now. It's the shingles talking..

Brain Pain

I have a pain in my brain like a spike. The scalp all around the spike is sensitive, even the hair, and there are two pressure points several inches away from the spike (I have a big head). It's at the top to the right side a bit and it's been hurting since Saturday; six days. I'm thinking brain tumour.


I shouldn't be blasé about it, I know, but I am because I don't want to play the victim or to really believe that I might have a brain tumour. That's Psychology 101, I think. Nor do I want to make a doctor's appointment. It's nearly Christmas and we're going to Australia and I don't want to find out I have a brain tumour before then.

I thought it was pre-menstrual. My PMT is such a temperamental bastard these days I wouldn't be surprised if a temporary brain tumour grew as part of it, out of sheer spite. A PMT tumour. But I got my period yesterday and the pain remained. Now I have blood and brain pain.

I have to teach dance tonight and I am in no fit state. But it's the second last class of the year and possibly my last class ever if... well, there are a few ifs. So I must take it.

There is an upside, though. I have always understood that bad comes with good. That's the deal. Nature abhors imbalance. So I'm thinking that this brain pain might mean good news on the publishing front. A brain tumour for a book deal. That seems fair.

I know. They don't publish idiots (or perhaps they do).

I have just made a doctor's appointment for tomorrow. Now I have to break the news to our first-born who will have to take the bus. The least he can do for my brain.

Success by suffocation

An analogy, if you will:

Talent-perseverance-luck, the formula for success, and
paper-scissors-rock, a game of chance. I think there's something to be gained by drawing an analogy between this game of chance and the recognised formula for success.

You want control of your life. You don't want the outcome of all your hard work to be the result of a paper-scissors-rock game of chance where you have only the slightest control over the outcome, if that. Yet a paper-scissors-rock game of chance is how life feels sometimes. Others are the measure of your talent and you don't make your own luck, whatever anyone says, because that's impossible. If success is a combination of talent, perseverance and luck, then the only thing you have control over is perseverance. So persevere! Sharpen those scissors and get cutting!

But, if perseverance is merely the scissors component in a paper-scissors-rock game of chance, as I am suggesting, it can defeat talent, or let's say, for the sake of this analogy, overcome a lack of talent, but just as easily be destroyed by bad luck. And as I submit my much persevered with book (intellectual baby) to publishers this week, I worry that no matter the talent/paper or perseverance/scissors in this intellectual baby of mine, a bloody great rock of bad luck could come along and crush its fragile scull to smithereens.

Except... paper smothers rock. Although this has always been the weak link in the paper-scissors-rock game in my view, as rock and scissors 'win' by more obvious means, with a bit of faith I can accept that paper beats rock by smothering it. In my analogy, this equates, with a little faith, to the belief that talent can defeat bad luck, or, in other words, with enough talent you can have success by suffocation. Let's hope this is true. Let's hear it for success by suffocation rather than chance, provided one has the talent of course.

Perhaps I'd be better off with the rock.

Unsolicited

The word of the moment is    
unsolicited, 
conjuring:

prostitution
desperation
aspiration above your station.

Who do you know,
what have you done,
why have you done it?

Be brief.

Two to three sentences,
three-hundred words,
one chance,
or less.