The Ghost of Winter Present

Last week was my first week back at work after I had to take four days' holiday due to a flu. The flu was unusual for me in that it wasn't so much an ordinary sickness as it was like a strange journey into a Dali-esque universe that only resembled reality. Spending time with my mother and siblings was the one very nice aspect; the rest of it was mind-boggling and unpleasant.

Although the lower temperatures were helpful when I had a fever, the unending winter is also burdensome. Crocuses are out now, but a few of them already were weeks ago and that didn't prevent frost, sleet, snow and rain from returning; and even now the trees are absolutely bare. It's Easter weekend, but despite the beaming sunshine today it's not the kind of weather where I'd trust that spring is truly here.

I am also unhappy about some aspects at work; and small things like eating reheated instead of fresh food, an overstuffed office, feeling lonely and demoralized because colleagues I interact with often are absent, and the cramped and disagreeable transit to and from work in airless trains and buses are all sapping my enjoyment of the small things in life.

But I also noticed that being sick coincided with immense egocentricity, which probably makes me unhappy in itself — any kind of intellectual activity seems too much effort, and I've rarely been so uninterested in anyone's welfare except mine.

In the U-Bahn I've been reading We Were Eight Years in Power, mostly — the essay about whether the United States government should pay reparations to the African-American community to compensate not directly for slavery, but more for the century and a half of economic sabotage and deprivation that have impoverished African Americans since then.

And at home I've been reading excerpts of an anthology of English literature, and much to my surprise have found the essay about the Elizabethan age quite engrossing; normally it's not a time period I really feel I understand or feel very drawn to.