Recovery

Sunday morning. Is there anything more glorious? The flu is finally almost over, there is sunshine, and I just permitted myself two whole delicious hours over a bagel and the Sunday New York Times at a coffee shop. I felt as if I got a preview of heaven.

I am not a good sick person. I need a staff to rub my feet and heat chicken soup and pick up used tissue and feed the cat and plump my pillows and... I even got fussy with the TV. Over two hundred channels and at least that many films that can be summoned at the click of a button, and there still wasn't anything to watch. I didn't think it possible, but I just might have reached my fill of television. My televised news source of choice in the past as been CNN. Now, with a full-time job and school, I have not devoted enough time to keeping abreast of current events, and what knowledge I do have comes from Internet reading. Since I was barely able to open my eyes, let alone sit upright, I pointed my clicker at the television and commanded CNN.

I am not a Wolf Blitzer fan. I never have been. But, now that I'm nearing the completion of my masters degree in writing, I have a better understanding of why. There are three basic rhetorical structures an argument can take: ethos (ethics), logos (logical), or pathos (emotional). I think I've always assumed that news broadcasters were, if not neutral, at least logical in their presentation of the news. Not so. And while all of them that I reviewed while fighting my way through this viral nightmare were pretty bad, Wolf Blitzer was by far the worst; presenting each story in emotional, if not hyperbolic terms. If I watched the news on a regular basis, I think I'd either put a bullet in my brain or move to a cave in Wyoming. No more televised news for me.

Not that the New York Times is necessarily a neutral source of information. The front page picture is of a dewy-eyed ingenue telling her father good-bye as she heads off to Iraq. No unnecessary heart-string plucking there.

But I did find a wonderful article by Joan Didion in which she essays about the creation of a stage version of her essay collection The Year of Magical Thinking, which will open at the end of the month and star Vanessa Redgrave. This may be the first Broadway event that I would think about making a pilgrimage for.

I have not been an extensive Didion reader, only taking in what has been assigned in a couple of classes. She was held up as the gold standard for essay writing in a recent class and I've mentally put her on my post-graduation reading list. I haven't yet read anything from her that really speaks to me; there's a detachment in her writing that I find mildly frustrating. There are couple of photos of her with this essay, and the detachment seems to be there as well; a frail woman behind over-sized dark glasses, delicate pageboy and a straight, red line for a mouth. Still, I'm an enormous fan of her spirit. Magical Thinking is a collection of essays that she wrote the year following her husband's death. Shortly after the essays were published Didion's only daughter also died. While processing that grief as well, the Times essay tells us, Didion allowed herself to be persuaded into developing the stage piece -- a first for her. From the photos, Didion is at least in her seventies, if not a decade older. I admire -- no, revere -- that spirit.

I look forward to reading those essays, and because I'm going to have to put them off for at least another four months I'm afraid I'm going to be disappointed once I get to them. But I expect to learn how to deal with my first real glimpse into the abyss and how to process it in realistic terms. I'm at a point in my life where I want the remainder of it to be lived elegantly and purposefully, with no unnecessary muss. I guess that means that I'm going to have to get busy and write something significant so that I can afford that staff before my next bout with the flu.