Fever Breaks

When I left my apartment on Friday a man biked by with a Walkman and a handgun tucked into his pants. He was whizzing by, the Walkman clipped on, and the gun shoved in his waistband. This is no Kansas, I’ll tell you that.

I was told to go to the hospital on Friday. My face was swollen and my legs and upper body were coated in purple and red marks the size of dinosaur eggs. It was acute Uticaria, also known as “hives.” Cause: Unknown. I had left my apartment that time with my angel of a roommate who concurred that we could get antihistamines from a knowledgeable pharmacist instead of going to the hospital.

It is so nice to have a nice roommate. I bought the meds and some lip-gloss and watched the hives spread even further. Some say the hives and fevers and dizziness I have had since arrival are a sign I was not meant to travel, or a sign I was not meant to come to “the holy land.”

I am collapsing and purging heat from my body, inside out. This last year, heck, the month before departure alone, was so full and so complex and my relationship to me became as long distance as my day-to-day living. I am here, in the mothership, to sew myself back to myself. It is hard, involves, now, prednisone and high doses of cortisone and anti-allergy drugs, and even those, for all I know, are useless.

All I can say is that the fever is down thanks to a French cousin’s Austrian doctor and life without a fever is infinitely better than life with one. I can walk in the sun again, I can lift things around the house without wanting to fall asleep, I don’t wake up coated in my own sweat.

Today I asked a man about my upper back. It has a bump and it hurts. He said it is my upper hammer that is in trouble. I went to the neurosurgeon on Monday in the neurosurgery ward. He didn’t charge me, especially when he realized how much hospitals traumatize me. He said I was fine, maybe paranoid, and that I need a massage every week.

I am not totally fine and not totally paranoid. My upper hammer is in trouble. My lower legs are coated in purple and red dinosaur eggs, like a mushroom. I watched Avatar. I didn’t like it so much. I was not changed. I was, however, reminded of all I have been learning. And amused by the articles I read about how people were depressed after the movie because they wanted to return to that world, the world of blue or whatever.

That is why my upper hammer is out of whack. Because I learned, years ago, that that other world from the movie exists on earth. And then I returned to my body, after discovering it, and watched it wilt, like that man’s body, and I longed for that earth connection and that wildness and that full body existing.

Like I said. I am sewing here, as best and as fast as I can, so I can go back to blue-world Merissa living. People got depressed because our world kills that sanctuary, that spiritual world. But maybe individually we can choose it back. Take back the blue night. Whatever. My fever is broken, but the effects of two weeks with a high temperature remain.