On Having a Melt Down

A propros of an article projecting the the Iraqi fatalities near one hundred thousand I emailed my friend that I felt as if I were fencing a windmill with a papier-mache sword, and in my mind it's an apt metaphor for the rest of the junk as I become increasingly unhinged. Batting at my demons with my farce of a weapon, slicing through the air with my concoction of flour and aging newsprint, how desperately valiant I am. Windmill fencer, shadow boxer, God save me from an actual limbed opponent.

When one is planning to have a Melt Down, when one can feel it seeping through one's pores, one had best get oneself home poste haste, and resolve to undertake any petty chores before the eruption, Heaven forbid having to visit your friendly neighborhood tobaconnist with tears streaking your cheeks, desperate for one single drag off of a camel light. Thus, one must plan judiciously for a Melt Down, one must have stores and candles on hand, one must not dispense with the cucumber rounds to salvage our puffy eyes as we cry ourselves to sleep. One must prepare to don the requisite hair shirt, one must have sharpened the burrs on the whip for self-flagellation, one must steel oneself for the smiting, one must offer to the waning full moon so bright and munificent hanging in the sky with all of the benign silver rimmed clouds, one offers her heart, freshly plucked and beating still to the ravenous moon, and one must listen to the moon as she gobbles and squelches the heart between her icey, luminous teeth and the clouds crow and jeer. And one must hasten, chastened to the bath to sit in the warmth with crowing of the clouds ringing in one's ears and one's knees drawn against the chest that had once housed one's heart.

Where once there was flesh and bone, now there are I-beams and steel and plaster dust, and more dust.

And Don Quixote can tell you that fencing windmills is a fool's game, and yet for an unreasonable sort, such as myself, one might while aways days, nights, months, even before, point, contre-point, before, all of sudden time has passed and one has grown slightly gray and paunchy and the wings of the windmills have lain dormant for two centuries and the donkey is dead in the pasture, and the pungency of your imagination is naught but a fallow field, and all you knew are lost to spouses and graveyards. And still the battle rages, you with your swilling gut and the swaying windmill, it's foundations sinking in the mire and shingles riddled by termites. My poor don, what shall become of you when your nemesis finally succumbs to the elements, shall you declare a catagoric victory and retire to the South of France, shall you slink off in despair and let history forget you, or shall you continue your great battle with a the ghost of the great windmill, thrust, parry with your papier-mache sword, until your flesh has melted and your bones are as petrified as your old donkey, and they shall venerate you and build monuments and you shall become the metaphor for all of the Great Fools, this fool included.

And now you will kindly excuse us, our Melt Down beckons and what chewed morsels the moon spat out of our heart, we must endeavor to try and put the remains back into our chest.

Four Rows of Soldiers

Four rows of soldiers on the desert floor, four rows of soldiers with a last breath of sand.

How long have we been at war, now. It's easy for me to ask, all of those bodies are so distant, all of those corpses don't speak my language, there are no ululations here. And the military is circumspect, and I have a sneaking suspicion that they would like me to forget the limbless ones, the burned ones, the ones who would appear physically unharmed but fear hurting their children when the nightmares grip them in the brightest daylight.

Just how long have we been at war?

By my reckoning, it will have been four Christmases of Christiane Anampour (however you spell it) reporting from some godforsaken outpost in Afgahnistan and then Iraq. It means one boyfriend hence and the same job, and three birthdays, and being half way through my jesus year, and another election.

It's all so sadly 1984, and not the petticoated whimsy 1984 of "Valley Girl", but the other sinister 1984 of Winston, and double plus good, and not being able to remember how long the war has lasted and just who we are at war with.

and after a certain time, you become helplessly inured to the images of the desert worn woman in the black hajib (how she must sweat so!) clutching the photo of her husband, child, brother, nephew. She becomes an archetype, her pain and suffering irrelevant to what she represents. Yes, yes, poor woman, in the last three years I have seen three thousand of your kind and you bleed together, yes, you bleed together.

And I don't feel like I am at war, I have no enemy. If anything I am doing my best to keep my personal shit together. I have not had to suffer rations of chocolate and eggs, I have not drawn a seam down my stockingless legs, I have not kissed my father, lover, brother farewell to the front.

****

It is cold when we leave the base at Kirkush, night is settling on the desert and we are but fifty soldiers full of braggadocio, and fear, mostly fear.

Night is spooling on the darkening road, a road for gypsies and brigands, we are singing the songs of freedom that no one quite believes anymore, but we are young, we will be paid, and in a country where hunger is systemic, the promise of food on the table is a great equalizer.

That is all we are, you see. Our parents paid for our uniforms, we are nothing but a half trained Shia youth (courtesy of the United States military) on three ancient dusk blue busses with collective hope of home. We have no guns.

At the checkpoint, they herd us off the dusk blue busses with Kalishnakov's, by rights we should be countrymen, but we are tribal, and they are Sunni.

And I knew straight away that I did not wish to die in that swath between the indfiffernt stars and the ever shiftting biblical sands.

So I ran.

The first bullet shattered my spine, the second passed under my shoulder blade and exited through my chest, and meant that my poor heart would pump away as I witnessed the carnage, unable, or unwilling to avert my eyes.

And the good soldiers they lined up, in rows of four, and they lay down, and they took off their shoes, and I had seen this very same posture of defeat. I had seen it in the text books that they showed us as children. This is how the Nazi's undid a race, I saw it, I saw it with my dying breath as my fellow soldiers slunk into the sand and removed their shoes and lay down and awaited their bullet.

And the godless will say, it is as it is, and I will tell you as one who has died in the desert, even the most godless among you will quaiver at daylight breaking, and it is there that I died, not nobley but in earthshattering pain, and alone save the restive complaints of my ghostly fellow soldiers who never knew solidarity of batle and died defending a nation that they had no conception of.

*****

for the fifty soldiers dead, may your souls rest easy.

The Depression in my Bed

Was not due to a departed lover, I did not roll into a sleep warmed indentation in the sheets of a stealth encounter. There was no shroud.

After negotiating with the alarm I rolled over and looked into your beady eyes and your beetling brow and asked groggily what the hell you were doing there. You were propped on your stunted arms and looking into me closely, and you made no reply.

I rolled to my back and ignored you, fifteen minutes until the alarm sounds again, and I am hoping you were some fragment of a strange dream and when I throw back the duvet and bolt to the shower you will be startled into oblivion, of course you and I know that it doesn't work that way.

And I dozed off again, and dreamt of GW and when I awoke you were perched on my chest and I felt that you had fitted my heart with a kryptonite anchor, and it was sinking, sinking, sinking into the tar black of a pitch sea.

I ask, "Why have you come back?"
"I have missed you."
I, meekly, "go away, please, please go away"
"but my thankless friend, it's such a pleasure to see you struggle"

And so I threw off the duvet and bolted to the shower and indeed you were not startled, you didn't even flinch. You hovered as I stomped down the hallway, bleary eyed and fighting tears, and then you gallantly passed my a kleenex when a snorting sob erupted, and I declined to acknowledge you and wiped my nose on my forearm, and got in the shower.

And the hot water was a hot reprieve until you passed my my razor and snickered under your breath, and my spirit wilted like a hot house flower, and I hung my head.

And Depression towels me off, with a cursory swipe, leaving beads of water to glisten on my collarbone, and pool at the base of my spine, leaving me cold and vacant, leaving me to shiver in front of the treachorous mirror. And all the while Depression is whispering in my ear, a lullaby of insults, a litany of faults and as I turn to flee towards the bedroom Depression says offhandedly, and by the way, you're fat.

and to my horror, my cringing submission chants, it's right, it's right, Depression has a point!

And I dress in the half light with my back to the mirror and you sing to me, you sing the nobody loves me song in falsetto, and I hate you for it, your distorted warble and your furrowed brow are like so many lethal ice daggers needling through my defenses, I can feel my soul begin to shrivel as my thighs exponentially expand.

I drop to the floor and pray.

And you say, "this child is just the overture, you know it well, soon the timpani and tin drum will have reduced you to a quivering mass on the bathroom floor. I will throttle all of the joy from your life, I will suck you dry and spit you out, and the good misery junkie that you are you will come back with the promise of your jugular, and you will spend thousands of dollars on therapy and you will dry swallow the happy pills that they give you, and you might reduce me to a flicker of a shadow, but when there appears the slightest chink in your armor, I shall be there, the depression in your empty bed, hungering for you like a faithful friend. I am insipid, I am insidious, I am infinitely patient"

You dogged me all day, at my heels like a sycophant who knows the tables have turned. You made me snipe at unsuspecting colleagues, you made me grow angry with an employee because her hair is unmanageable (and it is like it's own sentient critter atop her head, and my god that girl is so sweet as to be suffocatingly cloying) thus securing that special place in hell reserved for people who loathe well intentioned russian girls and earnest lesbian choirs outfitted in green sparkly smocks.

And so Depression, I will not cower, not this time. I will fight you and I will gnash my teeth. I will be like Gandalf when he falls to fight the Balrog, except I will look like Cate Blanchett and be able to do the marvelous vocal sleight of hand, "YOU SHALL NOT PASS"

I will curse you with every breath of my being, you shall not throttle my joy, you shall not reduce me to a quivering lump of flesh on the bathroom floor, I shall not heed the nobody loves you song, and you beady eyed, beetle browed motherfucker, you will not say that I am fat, because I am personally going to shove my foot up your beetle browed ass, and then administer a waxing with hot candle wax, so how do you like them fighting words, ASSHOLE!!!!

Waisting, Waisting!

Though my fingers are tetchy and screaming, delete! delete! Delete previous rambling, quickly so that we may restore our digited dignity, we stand by our (jesus, Emma, spell check, darling) ranting.

Oddly, we forgot to set the alarm last night, and when we arose, seven minutes from bed to bus stop, we had to gather our wits about us, and parse the previous evening, as we assembled our attire and applied our face all slap-dash, so that when we left the house we suspect we looked something like Marcel Marceau, minus the white pancake.

Two fortifying cups of coffee later we cautiously logged in to see what we might have bared to the internets, and nearly fell out of our ergonomically correct chair when we read that we were "waisting" our life.

I think I might be an idiot savant, because truly, waisting, is brilliant - and spelled properly I might add. Consider Flaubert's Emma, all corseted up, waisting, waisting away... Leon, my Leon.

Aside our bouts of unintentional brilliance, I think it's safe to say that we are suffering from a recent condition I would like to call "Election Malaise". Can we not just get it over with allfuckingready? Salon had a scholarly article on how to piece together all of the various polls and as our eyes first crossed and then glazed over we remarked to our heedless monitor that we couldn't give two shits anymore and could someone please, please give us some fulfilling Cheeto eating Brittany gossip, so we could have a hearty laugh at the poor child's undoing. Because you know that the end is nigh when your girlfriends in France start sending you jokes about Florida, and you utter a stilted bahhh, bahh and hang your head in shame that our country has become the sorry, sagging, cottage cheese butt of a thousand jokes, and our sorry purience has made us an international laughing stock.

jeebus, if I had anything with greater girth than our extremely girly umbrella, I would be beating people in red states, rise, rise from your torpor, rise, rise from your mythology, our nation is dying, and you will go hungry, unable to scrape that extra cent to follow the further exploits of Paris Hilton in US magazine, renegade heiress, ever rich, n-bomb dropper, completely retarded whore-bag.

Sorry, Paris (your cooter smells like) Stilton, makes us come a little unhinged.

Also, we would like you to know that if we got sozzled last night it was purely by accident (conscious interjects, isn't it always) well yes, but the mitigating factors were that we only poked our pallid, crappy salad with a fork and lo, three drinks later on an empty stomach we were sozzled, at which point our logic weighed in and said, " well, you might as well finish the bottle, in the name of Industry" Which must be why we trailed off with an enigmatic "i" as if we had another thought before we toddled mindlessly off to bed, and forgot to set the alarm...

A post to me

and why not, we are the last Tuesday, nay Wednesday by my watch before the apocalypse, and as I have emptied my bladder and replenished my glass, why should I not continue to write.... Hold the phone, Concious is trying to get a word in edgewise whilst we bray - Concious says the vodka has made us nimble but prone to atrociosous spelling and grammatical errors (oooh, totally caught self in the act of writing nibble instead of nimble, have not smoked any pot, do not have requisite case of munchies)

Conscious is bleeting again, it's a plaintative yowl. She would like me to inform you that that she is WAISTING her time at her dead end job, she woulld like me to inform you that while she may or may not be having casual (CENSORED..... CENSORED) and while she thought she had the capacity to spill her guts for an hour or so, it turms out that Conscious, oblivious to the conspicuous amounts of vodka, or perhaps because of the vodka, is needling me to put my sorry ass to bed.

and I would like to say, two weeks out from the apocaplyse, vodak befuckingdamnned, if I am drunk, and I am, on a Tuesday night it is simply because I support Kerry, and I am waiting with bated breath for the Fuckwits to trot out their October suprise.. I was going to write would that I were Courtney Love, middle fingers blazing for the entire world to suckle. i

Oh Lordy do I love comments

MM teach well, and invest in snowboots....

S, it is really a "C', but shhhh, don't tell anyone...

And back waxing "anonymous" you can't fool me bro, and I am proud that my brother should wax his back in fur loving p-town, because really, one never knows when a Frenchgirl might show up on your doorstep.

My Stole, my stole, Madame, it's not a mink, it's a sloth

O sweet sloth o' mine, so warm, so soft, so enamored of teenage chick flics. You drape yourself around my neck, and drugged by your warmth, bills go unpaid and voicemail remains unchecked. O sloth, O sloth, my favoritist sin, O sloth happy saint of naps, O great purveyor of such wisdoms as "why do today what you can put off til the morrow" , O sloth, I grow weary of your diet of leaves and you eat a lot. O sloth, lay off the leaves and the french fries, you are becoming a heavy burden, O sloth my neck balks at your weight. O sloth, I am totally going to bill you for my next massage.

O sloth, you who reach your great arms to hit the snooze button fourteen times until I have exactly fifteen minutes to get from bed to bus stop. O sweet, sweet sloth, have you seen the unanswered emails in your in box. And you, sage, and great sin that you are, coo in our ear, these my sleepy friend are not mortal sins, have a chocolate, have a nap. O sloth, O sloth, wrap me in your great hoary arms, guide me to Morpheus (not that one, you fucking matrix-heads) silvery dark down pillows and me and my sloth, falling through the mattress towards our dreamland nirvana, and so we shall dream of alligators and their snapping jaws. O sloth, my sloth, watch as we plunge, breathing underwater, shirking our duties in our waking hours, you looking towards your first leaf, me looking forward to my first drink. We are made for one another, you and I, no matter what the old ladies think, when they mistake you for a mink.

Or, my heavily furred friend, are you simply an albatross?

*******

and now we meander.

- had a surprise in my savings account today, thought it was manna from heaven. As it turns out, D., my ex-husband still share the savings account that I thought was mine. That account has lain largely dormant, as in it has never had more then, like, $50 bucks in it four six years. In September I moved my France cash into it, and then promptly spent it. Today as I was watching the descending balance of my checking account (kind of like the DowJones, but more extreme) I noticed that there had been a deposit to my savings that I most certainly did not make. Figuring that the karmic wrath I would incur if I transferred that gift to my checking and ran immediately to Kate Spade for a matching bag and shoes, would far outweigh any props I got for being properly stylie, I called my bank to report the error. They asked me do you know David _ _____ and I said yes... And then I realized, of all the bureaucratic steps I took to become legally disentangled from him, years later, when D is making his first and concerted effort to save some of his movie bling, he drops into our mutual account... (and D. I am totally proud of you) So I call him and explain, and we have kind of a great giggle because as I remind him that I had moved my vacation money to that account (so as not to spend it on liquor in SF) and he's all YEAH, I saw that money and I was totally going to spend it, if the bank didn't credit it in a month.... And we had a good laugh at how we could have spent each other's money.

I adore my ex-husband, and I am grateful that I married him and I am equally grateful that we got divorced, and above all else, when I think I truly can't deal anymore, he is my first response, and I am his.

I have tried explaining this, french people in particular don't get us. They say, gallantly, gallically, well why aren't you still married, bordel. And I say shove your bordel, right up your cul, we thought we following the right path, getting married, a family to follow, just like our parents. We were not ready, also I was really ravaged by depression. Not only did I want a divorce from myself, I wanted to strangle me and leave me on a river bank, after I had angrily disemboweled myself with a dull piece of driftwood.

That's not a get out of jail card for D. who exhibited some incredibly odious behavior, including, but not limited to to, taking nekkid pictures of his (whore master, big-eared nit wit poseur) lover on OUR COUCH. Sorry D, but you are never gonna live that one down.... and she did have huge ears, also she is a no talent hack, did I mention that...?

(also D, if you could see me writing right now, you might recognize the smile on my face, and appreciate it, for you know as well as I do that I was no better, I was just more discreet)

Anyway, three years and then some after you kicked my chest in on my 30th birthday, when you announced over margaritas that you weren't coming back, not ever. I want you to know, and you do, that our path to friendship was long and arduous (by my unchecked fury and my unbridled bitterness, and the occasional spewing of invective, and your fucking indecsion, and your uncanny ability to meet fresh prey when I go years without a proper date), but I am so thankful that we adhered to our bottom line, which is, no matter what, I love you and you love me, and your are still my first response and I know that I am yours, and you remain my oldest, dearest friend.







and from here we meander.

Lost in Translation

Once upon a time, a month or so ago when I was convalescing in the South of France, before I made my vow to be a saintly goat herder (one that cares not for errant bodily hair) I made a rendezvous at the estheticien. For a waxing.

Between the beach, the pending wedding and the near certainty that I would be getting laid within the next two days, some grooming was in order.

On the fine morning of my appointment, the low, broad sun promised a poignant fin de l'ete scorcher, and I was naturally running late, hadn't yet consumed any of that fabulously potent brew they call cafe in those parts, as I recall, I was trying to banish a rose hang-over, which those of you who have an inkling of what a cross between a red wine hang-over and a white wine hang-over is, will certainly sympathize.

And so there is Emma, hot and flustered, and there is the nice lady estheticien with her charming Southern twang escorting me to the chamber of pain.

Now, I would like to claim that my French on any given day is fluent, I make the proscribed gaffes and still have difficulty with the whole masculine/feminine thing (why is a tampon masculine, fortunately Prince Charles and his avowal to Camilla has cleared that up for me...) and so when the nice lady told me that the AC was out I sympathized, it was after all hotter than a hooker's flanks in this tiny chamber. She asked me what I wanted and I said I wanted a "cirage" and she shot me one of those uncomprehending looks, I had apparently just told her that I wanted my car waxed... needless to say things went downhill from there.

Realizing the absurdity of my gaffe, I fought to back track (thinking if I had just risen fifteen minuted earlier I could have plied my sodden brain with some coffee and would have never asked to have my fucking car waxed) so she sweetly asked if I wanted une epilation integrale and I goggled at her whilst I was trying to figure that out and assuming it was just your regular run of the mill bikini was I gamely replied "oui".

Oh child, if I had only known.

Did I say that the AC was out, for as I was lying on the table berating myself over the "cirage" debacle and not really paying attention, what with the competing nausea, until I felt this hot substance spread across the entirety of my nether region.

Oh shit, thought I.

Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit.

Rip.... howl.

In my haste to not appear like a complete moron ( I was after all representing my beleaguered nation) I had apparently agreed to have her TAKE EVERYTHING OFF. And at that point what could I say, needless to say that I was the butt of many jokes over the course of the next week, I simply didn't want to insult the nice lady, and so I thought I would just grin and bear it, I mean, it was my fault for not comprehending, and how bad could it be.

Oh fuck, it was bad.

Worse for the fact that there was no AC, and I am fairly certain that I left claw marks on the wall. Also I was highly disconcerted when she was taking off all the parts that were closest to my tenderest parts that she would first blow on me and then place a reassuring palm on my denuded jungle. Had I not been in such agony I would have thought it forward, but hott, such as it was, I was grateful to be soothed.

Needless to say, when I was naked as a jay bird and rearing to hit the pastis, despite it being 9:30AM, I tipped her a bucket of Euros and fled to meet my girlfriends at place des precheurs. Bin Bin took one look at my stricken face and said "qu'est ce qu'il t'arrive" and I said "j'ai trois mots - Holy Fucking Shit, get me to a pharmacy tout de suite, I need a vat of Biafine to becalm my poor enflamed, et pas comme il faut, pudenda."

****

after dinner that evening, we all piled in Pierrot's car to pick up his brother Melou at the Gare St. Charles in Marseilles all the Pouffes in the back seat singing our heart's out to sorry french pop songs. later when we were home at their mother's, and CriCri with her phenomenal diplomatic skills had parlayed Melou and I into sharing a bed, which was essentially a foregone conclusion after New York. But as he kissed me hello, and we giggled like teenages that his mother was in the next room, and he started to undress me...

I blurted (as I am wont to do)

-Il faut que tu saches quelque choses.
-quoi
-Il y a eu un malentendu chez l'estheticienne

later, when we were sated he said with understatement as only the French can do, finalement ce n'est pas si mal, referring to my jaybird nakedness, and then, and then I did not regret being lost in translation, not for the pain, not for the itch I knew would come, that night and the week to come were perfect.

so nice lady with the southern twang and the cool palm, thank you for stripping me bear, wherever you are around Aix-en-Provence. Next time I am there you can take it all of again.

and as an aside, Melou and I were running late to the rehearsal dinner, we had finally parked and were dashing to the restaurant when we passed the nice lady in her going out clothes, we recognized one another and she chirped at me "comment ca va madame" and I chirped right back to her, and I said to Melou that is was her who had made me as supple as a baby, and he stopped and thanked her...

****

Siobahn, je te remercie... j'aurais peut-etre du laisser "tel quel" mais j'ai eu une honte, une honte inexplicable. en tout cas, j'apprecie ton soutien enormement.

Appointment in Samarra

The speaker is Death

There was a merchant in Bagdad who sent his servant to market to buy provisions and in a little while the servant came back, white and trembling, and said, Master, just now when I was in the marketplace I was jostled by a woman in the crowd and when I turned I saw it was Death that jostled me. She looked at me and made a threatening gesture, now, lend me your horse, and I will ride away from this city and avoid my fate. I will go to Samarra and there Death will not find me. The merchant lent him his horse, and the servant mounted it, and he dug his spurs in its flanks and as fast as the horse could gallop he went. Then the merchant went down to the marketplace and he saw me standing in the crowd and he came to me and said, Why did you make a threating getsture to my servant when you saw him this morning? That was not a threatening gesture, I said, it was only a start of surprise. I was astonished to see him in Bagdad, for I had an appointment with him tonight in Samarra.

~Sommerset Maugham


In light of all of the insanity, and the administration that spews inanity, the peculiar resonance of this quote is startling and eerie.

P. looked it up the other day as it is the opening quote for John O'Hara's novel "Appointment in Samarra" the tale of the pitched decent of a fortunate son... another curious parallel... I told her she should send it to every columnist, pundit she could think of. And then, reading W. Saffire in the NYT (which is not usual for me as generally I find his contentiousness irksome) I saw that he had referenced it - then again, he is a word junkie and a plausable O'Hara fan.

Can you just imagine if Johnny Cash were still around, if he somehow worked that quote into a song, with all of the gravel in his throat and the gravity of his voice, can't you hear him say "... for I had an appointment with him tonight in Samarra."

Note to Self

ummm, Emma?
yes, self?

next time you feel compelled to share your adventures in substances with the world, kindly save as a draft first, then when you are peering through your hang-over at the embarassment you have posted you can at least be assured that somebodie's granny in "Spokane" hasn't fainted from your amoral turpitude.

Just a thought.

For anyone who was subjected to the full onslaught of my screed, I apologize.

I heavily edited the previous post, and let stand what is left as a testament to Nancy Reagan. Just say no to drugs, kids. Or at least don't write while you are on them.

* * *

freezing in the park on Sunday for the Bluegrass festival. Polish dogs and orange julius, all access pass. Thousands of people, thousands of dogs. A surplus of facial hair, also coyboy hats, also really cute boys in shit kickers.

Emmylou Harris sings "Imagine" and we collectively choke up, she's got the voice of a weary angel, she calls it a secular hymn. It was amazing.

High In-Hair Net!


As I write, it is well past the witching hour, sipping the dregs of a bottle of plonk, smoking my last cigarettes, half wishing for the warm body of a particular Frenchman in between my freshly laundered sheets, half wishing for a neat, white pile of more drugs, or at the very least a very chilled bottle of vodka... helas, I depleted my supply. On both counts.


(we need a cigarette)

smoking, smoking, thinking, feeling how glad to be high after such a long time. For what it's worth, it makes me feel young and reckless, and since in reality I am neither young nor reckless, damn his eyes. And crying in the taxi last friday, after R, and taking the ferry the next day and remembering that anything is possible. Anything is possible.

then again, at three in the morning, when you have a slightly bitter sinus drip, due to the chemical happiness you have injested, the world, the whorled, is wide, wide open. Talk to me on the morrow, when my head is swollen and my jaw inexplicably aches