calmer head prevail

I should just recognize that a certain bleakness of mood is a symptom, and take the requisite migraine medication.

I'm feeling SOME better, after a hot cup of tea and a couple of painkillers. I got the exams graded but still can't finish my piano practice (both because sound still kind of hurts my ears, and because I find that these types of headaches mess badly with my dexterity.

(It's weird, all that they effect. I also get kind of almost dyslexic...not that I can't read, but that I can't write words without misspelling them badly. And I also...I don't think "aphasia" is quite the right word, but it's like I "lose" certain words and can't think of what I want to say. And I don't think it's solely a function of pain; it happens to me even before the headache is full blown. It's actually kind of scary to stand there up in front of the class and know there's a word you want to say, but you CAN'T RETRIEVE IT. I am sure it's less of a gap of time than I imagine it to be, but I wonder what the students think. I have told classes on particularly bad days that I do get migraines and this is a symptom, and some of them understand - more, now, especially after that video of the poor newscaster having a major migraine episode where she could not speak coherently).

Anyway. I think what I was trying to express was my frustration with people who say things like, "Any things you are doing that you think even symbolically makes things "better," you are deluded...there is nothing you can do to make things "better.""

I mean, I can see their argument, intellectually: that everything I ever have done that is any good, any help I have ever rendered, could be wiped out in a moment by an action of an evil person. But I can't live my life thinking that...it's paralyzing, and in a way, it means the evil people win if you don't at least try. Or something. And there's relatively little I can do on a global scale...so I do what little things I can. And it frustrates me to see people who may be politically wiser or savvier than I am dismiss that. (I'm good a being as gentle as a dove; not so good at being as cunning as a serpent, I'm afraid.)

So whatever. I stand by my earlier comment that if I were alive during the Blitz in London, I'd be rolling bandages or brewing tea in the shelters. Yes, it's a darned little thing...but it's something. I need to do something, even if it's purely symbolic, even if the only person it really changes is me.

So that's what I was trying to say. I think. I don't know. I'm glad we can now go back to leading our daily lives - which is what we should have been doing all along...

(I often think of Israel at the height of the PLO bombings....or London during the periodic flareups of IRA violence. That's real civilian bravery there, to go out to the market or the movies or for a walk carrying the knowledge in the back of your head that you might be killed by someone who believes they are making a political point or voicing a grievance. Someday I hope no one in this world will have to walk around with that kind of knowledge)