Suffering As Human Default
Nov. 10th, 2010 10:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
aseUsually I don't worry about reading affecting my mood, but usually I am reading something more cheerful than The Zanzibar Chest. It's exactly like the PTSD and narrative fragmentation in All the Fishes Come Home to Roost, now with more drugs, explicit post-colonial queasiness, dicey unexamined gender politics, and eye-searing descriptions of human suffering, wrapped in understated British PoV. Now, the part that jolted me into noticing the consequences of reading about famine, civil war, looting, friends' bodies retrieved from trash dumps, walking through streets after a firefight, etc, was not the hard-core atrocities. It was the narrator's relationship with a girl. They're getting serious - they take a vacation trip together! - when she became listless. She doubled up with stomach pains... back in the city, we visited a doctor. It was nothing serious but as we emerged from the surgery Lizzie told me she had decided to return to America without delay. Africa for her was too far away from home.
And all I can think - with zero evidence - is, "stomach pains. Stomach. Yeeeaaah." Cramps are lousy enough when painkillers are plentiful.
This parade of human suffering may be related to my horror at filing a "someone in the parking garage winged my mirror" incident report. Fortunately, the system is in place for much more severe issues ("police? Was I supposed to call the police? For an unattended scrape?") and the incident was resolved relatively quickly.
Speaking of disasters, here's something for the next time the House of Tea convenes for Disaster Hour*: chlorine trifluoride, a nasty chemical customer.
*Disaster Hour: innocuous conversation around the household water boiler mutates into ways to die. Did you know there are entire books devoted to explicit descriptions of airplane accidents? Before Disaster Hour, neither did I.
And all I can think - with zero evidence - is, "stomach pains. Stomach. Yeeeaaah." Cramps are lousy enough when painkillers are plentiful.
This parade of human suffering may be related to my horror at filing a "someone in the parking garage winged my mirror" incident report. Fortunately, the system is in place for much more severe issues ("police? Was I supposed to call the police? For an unattended scrape?") and the incident was resolved relatively quickly.
Speaking of disasters, here's something for the next time the House of Tea convenes for Disaster Hour*: chlorine trifluoride, a nasty chemical customer.
*Disaster Hour: innocuous conversation around the household water boiler mutates into ways to die. Did you know there are entire books devoted to explicit descriptions of airplane accidents? Before Disaster Hour, neither did I.
