"Once you’ve been dizzy for a while, it can be hard to tell when you’re feeling better."

"As I got used to going about daily activities, I sometimes asked myself: am I still dizzy, or not? What does a non-dizzy state even feel like? Lately, I have come to think of dizziness itself as an absence, not a presence. It is the opposite of balance—the foil to knowing where your body is in space. Many things have to be working properly for you to feel balanced; only one needs to malfunction to send your world spinning. This is why I had so much trouble talking about my dizziness. It’s like trying to describe a silence, or a shadow...."

Writes Shayla Love, in "Why Dizziness Is Still a Mystery/Balance disorders like vertigo can be devastating for patients—but they’re often invisible to the doctors who treat them" (The New Yorker).

"We unravel the Russian plot to subvert the 2016 election."

Teaser on the front page at nytimes.com for a big NYT article that I cannot bring myself to read. I've glanced at it, seen the diagrams that make it seem as though there are hundreds of data points and the NYT has arranged them to tell a story.

To "unravel" is "To cause to be no longer ravelled, tangled, or intertwined, to disentangle; to unweave or undo (a fabric, esp. a knitted one)" (OED).

To want to read that article, I would need to believe the NYT is going to unravel something that I already see as terribly important and horribly tangled, so that what looks like a long, complicated article seems to offer to helpfully simplify things for me.

But I don't feel that way, and I'm afraid their aim is to create the impression of hopeless entanglement, not to rescue me from a place where I'm currently struggling.

Can't I just wait for Mueller to lay it all out for me? If there really was "a horrible Russian plot to subvert the 2016 election," it's an emergency, but it's going on 2 years that Mueller's been mulling it over. If Mueller can be so leisurely, I can wait for Mueller. Sorry I'm not more concerned about "the Russian plot" — I would be if I thought Mueller were part of it.

ADDED: Look at the paranoia-inducing Putin pic they've got on the front page:



Putinoia.

Reminds me of the title sequence from "Vertigo":

"In this way, my brain tumor has emerged as a tiny Zen master."

"Everything about it — from the intermittent fear it engenders, to the M.R.I.s it requires, to my daily struggle for physical balance — has made achieving that other kind of balance, inner balance, more possible. I can no longer coast through my daily life multitasking as I go: reading headlines as I walk, looking both ways as I dash across the street, showing up for good-night kisses, but being absent all the same. Even my most mundane actions have to be performed with intention...."

From a NYT essay by Adrienne Brodeur about vertigo, caused, in her case, by a brain tumor disabling the vestibular system.

Aptly known as “the labyrinth,” it looks like a miniature “Star Trek” space station with two sacs and three looping semicircular canals arranged at roughly right angles to one another. Fluid moves through the labyrinth stimulating tiny hairs, which act as sensors that monitor the position and movement of your head, sending the brain information about gravity, motion and your body’s relationship to earth.

Without a functioning vestibular system, you have to concentrate on you vision and proprioception (described in the article) to keep your balance. I've experienced a malfunctioning vestibular system — not from a brain tumor, but from the detachment of the otoliths that normally weigh down those "tiny hairs" (that is, cilia). You might wake up one morning, move your head slightly, and find the whole room spinning insanely out of control. It's quite awful. Mine was worst the minute it started and eventually went away. But I empathize with the author's predicament.

"Don’t get me wrong: I love a nice bouncy rack. And if a show has something smart to say about sex, bring it on."

But Emily Nussbaum has "turned prickly, and tired of trying to be... the Cool Girl: a good sport when something smells like macho nonsense."

She's writing about "True Detective," in a New Yorker piece titled "Cool Story, Bro/The shallow deep talk of 'True Detective.'" That's from March 3rd, before the season finale, which she writes about a week later in "The Disappointing Finale of 'True Detective.'"

I was reading those 2 things this morning after getting halfway through the second episode last night. I'd watched episode 1 in it's entirety a few days before. I'd noticed the critical attention the show was getting, and Matthew McConaughey had just won the Oscar, so I gave it a chance. Why did I stop midway through episode 2? It wasn't the sex. It was the mumbling. Between McConaughey and the other guy who looks too much like him (Woody Harrelson), it was way too much 2 guys mumbling. This show could not fill the aching gap left by "Breaking Bad," which we watched, all 60 episodes in just about exactly 60 days. In "Breaking Bad," not only was it easy to tell Aaron Paul and Bryan Cranston apart, but the 2 actors frequently spoke quite clearly.

Songs that equate the feeling of love to the symptoms of illness.

Help me compile a list of songs that compare the effects of love (or sexual feeling) to illness. I've been struggling with a virus — it's making the rounds here in Madison — that begins with the symptom called vertigo (the sense of reeling and whirling). I'm interested in the way songs often describe love or the effect of a lover's embraces as if it were producing this effect — and as if it's were wonderfully delightful. It's not.

I'll start with this:



There's a related category: Songs that equate the absence of love to illness (and love to health). I was feelin'... so bad, I asked my family doctor just what I had...

Wish fulfilled.

Back here, I had this picture:



Bissage said:

That’s a nice, strong dominant leader your neighbor’s got going there.

I just consulted the Magic 8-Ball (arborist’s edition) and it said, “Split crotch unlikely.”

And that’s a fine prognosis!

I said:

Actually, it breaks up into three parts just above the top of what you see in the photo. I've often looked at that spot and thought: 1. You could sit there, 2. It would be scary. 3. Even if I wanted to sit there, it would be hard to get there. 4. No matter how long I live and how many times I look at that spot, I will never sit there.

Chip Ahoy responds: "Alternate reality. Ann in a tree."



IN THE COMMENTS: peter hoh said...

Maybe you can ask to have your ashes deposited in that spot.

Christopher Althouse Cohen said...

If you truly wanted to sit there that badly, you could find a way to sit there.

Hey, I said wish fulfilled. Yeah, maybe I could find a way to have myself hoisted up there -- about 4 stories high -- and maybe I can be overcome with vertigo and tumble out and you could have my lifeless body transmogrified into a pile of white grit which you get somebody to pile up there in the tree-crotch for the squirrels to rake their claws through. But as I said: wish fulfilled.

"I feel sick. I hope I don't vomit on this dress. I look so put together otherwise. Barf will ruin it."

"I will not look at you directly. Your shirt gives me vertigo. I told you that earlier. But I look sort of adorable, don't I?"