I’m sorry for not updating this blog very often. I’m currently writing more than 4 texts about cool topics like Elliptic Curve Cryptography, irredutible polynomials in \(\mathbb{F}_2\), category theory and functional programming, but none of them seem to advance quickly, and since I’m looking for even more stuff to procrastinate, I decided to write this quick text about being sick.
I don’t really like to write about personal topics in a very explicit way, so the style of this text will pretty much reflect this (and will probably be a total disaster). Hope you understand.
It’s kind of difficult for me to think about being sick or even notice it, but some time ago I was reading The Reader by Bernhard Schlink and passed by this snippet that describes it in a very nice and cute way:
This passes as you get better. But if the illness has lasted long enough, the sickroom is impregnated with it and although you’re convalescing and the fever has gone, you are still trapped in the labyrinth.
I found this to be written in such a good way that I immediately got
up and drew SICK.JPG. “Why
in Bokmål?”, you may ask. Well, perhaps because my playlists basically
consisted of Marie Ulven back in the day. You can guess it did
have a little touch of yoñlu as well, but nevermind.
Some other snippets of The Reader also caught my eye at the time because of the fascinating “childish” way the character describes the world. In fact, it reminds me of that Abreu’s Indie Animation. It takes me back to when I was a kid and got a cold or something, and my perception of everything got kind of mixed and distorted.
(…) it sharpens your imagination turns the sickroom into someplace new, both familiar and strange; monsters come grinning out of the patterns on the curtains and the carpet, and chairs, tables, bookcases, and wardrobes burst out of their normal shapes and become mountains and buildings and ships you can almost touch although they’re far away.
About this, I did some stealing from Vinicius’ style again
and interpreted CITY.JPG (this
one is just for you), which captures some of that feeling.
In general, it is way easier to explain this in a more abstract, expositive and confused way (like I’m doing), than to describe it explicitly, so I’ll hand it over to my dear friend Valkyrja S., who did a nice job describing it:
It is like some big and exciting plan has gone terribly awry, or like losing someone important. It makes you wonder if it’s really worth keep going, it makes everything dry and bleak, and it makes you want to just curl up with the lights off. All of that but coming for no appearant reason, and refusing to go away for any reason either. So getting a nice and fancy new gift, having the presence of your significant person or laughing in a funny moment doesn’t make it much better. Indeed, sometimes it may feel even worse, because you can’t manage to feel the joy everyone else seem to have.
Damn, why such a thing have to exist? Val should’ve written ’bout that too. Or about how absurd it is for some modern magicians to invent something that can keep me away enough from it most of the day. Anyway, it still takes me so much energy away, that even if I don’t want to use it as an excuse, I can’t help thinking about how many more cool things I could do if I wasn’t sick. Kinda frustrating.
Nevertheless, I feel this is getting a bit too serious, so I’ll just end it here, ask you not to worry too much about this, and hope you forgive me for not doing more. I should also ask you to pay attention to signs of people that don’t ever talk about this. And it doesn’t have to be on the 10th of September.
If you want to comment this post, send me an e-mail
via
estrela (at) riseup (dot) net
Last edited on April 4, 2025
