Illness and Wikipedia - 11/10/2006 in 2005 - 2007: High School

I'm sick again. Sick enough to be rendered pretty immoble and useless. I was out of school yesterday, and today I didn't even make it through first block before I had to go home. I was too sick to go to the football game that's going on right now. This is my first missed marching band performance ever. I feel pretty bad about it. I only have one football game left now: the Thanksgiving game. After that, there's the Santa parade and the banquet, and then it's over.

Christ. That's it.

It has occoured to me that I am a pretty sickly person. I catch stuff all the time, and it always affects me badly. I'm sick every fall and every winter. Even when I'm not sick, I am extremely easily nauseated. I really don't hold up well against... anything. I can't help but see this as a personality trait - a mental weakness. I can't help but think that if my mind didn't give up so easily, I wouldn't be so physically weak. It's about what I learned last year in the fall: there are physical limits to what the mind can do because of its connection to the body. The mind and body are more connected than people think they are. You can want something very badly and try for it very hard, and sometimes you still just can't do it. Weakness is built in.

On the other hand, I have sort of been enjoying the complete halt this has brought to my daily routine and all the shit I worry about. I have been alone a lot. I have been lying around reading and thinking and listening to good music. I have been feeling on overdrive, and I am sort of happy. Things have been beautiful for the past few days. I have been thinking about the fact that I idealize the past. Or maybe that I don't enjoy the present. I'm not happy most of the time, but most of my memories are fond memories. So I've been trying to think about what it is that I like about things I remember, and look for those things in the present. It's sort of been working. I enjoy the highschool. I enjoy the band room. I enjoy talking to the Bari Kid and his friends every other day during my hour and a half lunch. He has a very genuine, infectious laugh and is the same kind of musician I am. When I walk to school, I enjoy the railroad tracks and woods and the old houses. I like walking. I think this weekend if I'm feeling better I might walk downtown to the library. Maybe get out some Dune sequels.

Dune is an excellent book. It is beautifully written and very obsession-worthy. Every part of it is my favorite part. You should all read it. If you already have, you should read it again.

Wikipedia amuses me. My favorite part is the "did you know?" on the main page, where they just list random facts in no particular order. I also think that the occasional hyperlinks make everything funnier.

Did you know...

...that Maria Yakunchikova was a Russian painter who lived in Paris and was active primarily in western Europe?

...that a record 7238 salmon made the trip up the 310 metre Pitlochry fish ladder in 2006?

...that, in the "Tower of the League" at the Ch‚teau de Tanlay in Burgundy, the agonists of the Wars of Religion are represented in the guise of Olympic deities?

No. No, I did not know any of those things.

Not that I mean Wikipedia any offense. Wikipedia is just about the greatest thing ever. It's like, I never have to wonder about random things for long periods of time ever again. As soon as a thought enters my head, I can instantly find any information I would ever need on that topic in an organized and concise format. Wikipedia is seriously one of the main things I do with my spare time. Jimbo Wales, you are going on my list of heroes.