--Hey, you listening?
-- William Gaddis, JR.
Every leaf -- even the way a sodden bare tree seems to scrape at the wind -- contains a message. I just don't have the language yet. Or I don't have the ears.
A friend, struggling with sudden health issues, asked me yesterday: --How do people with chronic illness just, you know, get on?
I sighed a bit, as if I'm some weary expert, and muttered. --We learn patience. We have no choice. It's hard.
Various religions teach, or at least suggest, some purpose in pain, that physical suffering is an inescapable facet of being human. Ideas continue here, reaching like branches for a hidden sun: suffering strengthens one's compassion and capacity for empathy, draws one closer to what matters -- God, if you will, or better love --
I hear this. But do I understand it?
No.
So, last night and this morning: gut pain hard enough to make me cry out, make me cry; futile nausea; low fever and chills --
Do I understand it?
Not yet.
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