1. When I am ailing in any way, I do my best to be self-pampering and self-indulgent. I learned years ago that pretending like ailments don't exist only exacerbates them. When I'm ailing, I have to give myself pleasure, sleep, and try to eat and drink good things.
So, today, I stayed home. I iced my inflamed toe and foot. I finished drinking the jar of Knudsen's Organic Tart Just Cherry Juice, unsweetened. I applied the essential oil blend that Carol mixed for me to the offended areas. I soaked my foot in a bath of Epsom salt. I continued to follow the beguiling, sometimes nerve-wracking young life of Pip in Charles Dickens' Great Expectations. I drank coffee. I drank Bengal Spice tea. I listened to an Amazon classical music playlist created to be played while studying. I heard compositions by Brahms, Haydn, and Beethoven that were so stirring that they pulled me out of Dickens' 19th century London and into a state of wonder, a nearly ecstatic state.
On Thursday, my left big toe and the surrounding area was wrathful, spiteful, indignant. Today, it was riled up, a bit angry, but was no longer the Khan of my left foot.
2. This afternoon I was looking at the many pictures and videos friends posted on Facebook of people at March for Our Lives demonstrations in Portland, Eugene, and Washington, D. C. One Eugene friend, Tim Blood, posted that one of his videos featured a fragment of the talk given by a survivor of Kip Kinkel's rampage at Thurston High School in Springfield, OR on May 21, 1998. I listened to the part of Belinda Lynn's speech that Tim had recorded. Belinda was a student of mine at LCC a few years after the shooting. She came to my office more than once to talk about being shot and what she was suffering, both physically and mentally. These were confidential conversations and I'll keep them to myself. I'll just say that I know from the snippet I heard of Belinda's talk that now, as then, Belinda's suffering continues. She speaks openly about her experience, doing all she can to translate her pain into hope, possibly helping others understand the shattering impact of being shot at school.
3. I finished Chapter 39 of Great Expectations before going to sleep tonight. Pip is twenty-three years old and lives in a room in Temple, London, near the River Thames. In this chapter, a mysterious man pays Pip a late night visit during a tremendous wind and rain storm. I relished Dickens' detailed account of the storm, especially when he writes that the smoke from Pip's fireplace, thanks to a downdraft caused by the wind, can't escape through the chimney and Dickens tells us that it is as if even the smoke is too frightened of the storm to go out in it. The storm in this chapter is not only an external meteorological event. It is also correlates to the inward tumult of Pip's uncertainty and anxiety. The arrival of this mysterious man who is in need of shelter and who has startling news to tell Pip adds more force to the gale force winds of Pip's tempestuous soul. I'm eager to learn what comes next.
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