Sweat

Sorry.

I haven't been feeling supercharged about finishing my dissertation. I’m making my veggie smoothies later and later in the day. Writing the blog posts later and later in the week. Wake-up times have slipped as well—1130 (am!) today. Sighs per hour—God knows, but on the rise. ‘What’s happening? Medication rebalancing? Post-temozolomide blues? The unbearable lightness of being? How does your brain feel? Still at 100%?’, my sister-in-law asked me earlier today. Yes, life has taken its hits, but all I could answer was:

 ‘Sorry. Brain impairment and pain is currently asymptotic to 0%. Laziness, to 100%.’

I’m not sure, but it’s all brought back memories of my brother and I haranguing our parents with questions about the purpose of chores like making the bed. If it’s going to be slept in again within a few hours; if bed-making costs the average human being about a work-month of their lives; if bed-making activity potentially accelerates the universe’s journey towards its extinction in the form of thermodynamic equilibrium; if in the long run we’re all dead, whether we have a few seconds or a few decades left, why make it? Questions, I guess, ultimately about the meaning of life…

Don’t worry, I’m not going to grab that ellipsis to embark upon a deep meditation. I’ll just say: there’s not a cloud in the sky here in London and it feels like summer. It’s April and it’s literally too hot to sit outside. According to the papers, we should brace ourselves for THREE more months of ‘hotter temperatures than Madrid, Rome and even Hawaii’. The kind of weather that at least in this kingdom reminds us not quite of why we’re here but that we should just be happy to be here:

I am sometimes taken aback by how people can have a miserable day or get angry because they feel cheated by a bad meal, cold coffee, a social rebuff, or a rude reception, [or a lousy brain tumour?]. … We are quick to forget that just being alive is an extraordinary piece of good luck, a remote event, a chance occurrence of monstrous proportions.

Imagine a speck of dust next to a planet a billion times the size of the earth. The speck of dust represents the odds in favor of your being born; the huge planet would be the odds against it. So stop sweating the small stuff. Don't be like the ingrate who got a castle as a present and worried about the mildew in the bathroom. Stop looking the gift horse in the mouth—remember that you are a Black Swan. (Taleb)

If that's too cheesy, dramatic, academic, or just long—here’s one from a friend that made me smile:

Hamlet is the greatest piece of literature. Like Bryan Adams, it gets better with age.

(I'm not sure if she's referring to the audience's or characters' respective ages, but no matter) If you’re procrastinating like Hamlet or chasing the summer of ‘69 like Adams, enjoy it or don’t enjoy it; but do remember how improbable a sunny day in London is (or comparing Hamlet to Bryan Adams, for that matter). On that note, I may slow my proliferous rate of writing—please take it as a sign that no news really is good news. It's time to go write a dissertation, extract some smoothies, wake up earlier, and sigh in wonder at the unbearable lightness of being. And to my dear parents, whom I'll be visiting next week: sorry. I’m still not seeing the point of making the bed.