Vow of Silence

Aaaaand, we’re back.



Late Saturday night found me utterly felled by a case of strep throat-- in the course of a half hour I went from having a lovely evening to having an iron-melting fever and awful chills. I had already been lamenting that I hadn’t written anything on here in far too long, a silence driven by the fact that I was preparing for a trip to give two colloquia this week. I had figured that another few passes through airport bars would provide a moment or two for reflection, beer at inappropriate hours and subsequent blog writing, but instead my week has been a continued silence of both the written and verbal variety.

It’s an odd thing that, if one lives alone, speaking to other living beings is a completely avoidable experience. At least this is true if one is sick and stays home-- in the past few days, I’ve spoken briefly to my friend Saranie (who angelically brought me soup, twice), eeked out a few descriptive words to my doctor (who responded by calling in a prescription for penicillin), and that’s it. Oh, and I did manage to croak an irritated “HEY LADY THE LINE IS BACK HERE” while waiting to be checked in at the doctor’s office, but the effort of verbalizing my pissy mood left me in a cold sweat.

The rest of my interactions have been completely virtual-- emails to my would-be hosts to cancel my talks, texts back and forth to a few friends, the occasional languid scroll through mostly boring Facebook updates. In a way I imagine it’s a little like being my cats-- I’m in the apartment all day, mostly sleeping, not saying anything. As I’ve often suspected, it’s not a bad life, and the cats seem to be under the impression that I’ve finally come to my senses and embraced their way of being. Strangely, I haven’t even really missed talking to people, although I suspect that’s somewhere in the symptoms of being sick, given that I also haven’t missed coffee all week, either. Like the herbal tea I’ve been downing instead, my laptop-as-window-onto-the-world is substitute enough (however insipid) to keep the part of my brain that’s actually functioning happy. Mostly. For now.