Subtitle is a reference to the excellent novel “My Year of Rest and Relaxation” by
that I finished yesterday.This morning I had all the shutters lowered, hoping to sleep through my fifth bedridden sick day. Instead, the sound of revving engines ripped me awake—an antique car show happening behind my house, must be, because for hours it’s been vroom vroom, heavy old cars groaning like warning beasts.
Inside, the house is dimmed, a starlet’s hangover scene: shutters drawn with cracks of light, heat pressing in from the windows, the cool rooms dark and hushed.
I lay here prostrate in my sickbed, fluffed by clouds of used bunched Kleenexes, propped up by Ricolas and surrounded by books, devices, notebooks, blankets, and the three different sweaters I will need as my malfunctioning inner furnace shifts between bonfire blaze and arctic blast. A roller coaster of hot and cold, starting on the surface of my skin and then radiating out of my muscles.
For now, I call this thing the Variant FXG. Not COVID—I’ve never had COVID, I’m a magical fairy immune to such things—but some other human virus that’s toppled me into this bog. The word “variant” makes it feel mythic, a transition scene in a dramatic, life-changing narrative.
What’s the worst part? The rumbling, deep thunderstorms that come pounding up into these dry, intense, unsatisfying sneezes? The headache that extends into my neck and makes pulsing waves of pain, made worse by any movement that forces my heart to beat faster, sending woozy liquid surges through my body? The pressure that makes my ears hum and my teeth ache? I think the worst, though, is the scrambled thinking, the fog all around my head like smoke-machine haze trapped in a plastic bag.
I was supposed to spend this week preparing my year: emails to my students, a new writing workshop, the launch of SUM FLUX, beginnings. I was in full stride, getting systems in place, making my home an efficient machine… house cleaned, chores sorted with the kids, a good rhythm established.
Instead, the rhume descended right as I was standing in front of a hundred kids in the préau, blazing, blinding sun, the concrete patio where voices bounce back at you, screaming ricochets, chaos everywhere. I felt suddenly far away, a cloudy confusion setting in. Later with my students, the repetition drilled me down: having to go child to child to child, repeating the same thing. And there I was, having an out-of-body experience, looking down at all the children drawing shadows in pencils, my voice growing quieter and quieter, me moving in slow motion as they sped up.
Day two of being sick I was sitting in my recently deep-cleaned kitchen (where I rarely sit), steaming my sinuses over a pan with a towel over my head, when I noticed the faint sound of running water. When I opened the garage, there it was: the leak. That explained the magical surge in water pressure we’d all been noticing. So off went the water for the entire house, while I wait for a plumber (which in France, the clichés are true, they are epically hard to get a hold of here). My kids and I filled jars and bowls, rationing flushes, refilling reserves. The older son treated it like camping, an adventure. The younger sighed about our bad luck.
Still, there’s something humbling in the ritual. Jars catching the light, toilets flushed with buckets of water. I think of the woman I once wrote about who thanks Jesus each morning for the water in her toilet bowl (among other things).
It is important to appreciate the simple things. But truthfully, between the neti pots and the steaming and the endless coffee cups, the cooking and the dirty dishes and the jars cluttering the counters, the house is in shambles. And my sickbed is far from the water main. Today I think I’ll risk it: take a hot shower, clear out my nose, wash away the sweat pools of the last days.
The dog has joined the drama. Too weak to take him on real walks, he is neurosis-digging in the lawn.
Isn’t it interesting how the external mirrors the internal this week? Pressure in the pipes, pressure in my sinuses, ears humming, teeth aching. Even the car is having pressure issues.
Last week,
told me I was talking an awful lot about my car. (Fair enough, I was.) He said a friend of his believes our cars are extensions of our inner lives: because we spend so much time in them, when the car breaks down, it’s a kind of mirror—like the car is an extension of our bodies. And in the very moment I was listening to his message, my car wouldn’t start. The second time this month. Some kind of air bubble, blocking the fuel from reaching the engine. Eventually I pressed through—revving like that car in the lot this morning, and my car sputtered awake.So maybe Keith’s friend is right, and my world is Jung’s echo chamber. Because yes: the pipes clog, the car pressure blocks, the head is swollen with goo. And if that’s the case, then after this week of restless, sweaty rest, I might burst open like a fireman’s hose. Which is what writing often is anyway: depressurization. So watch out students, watch out readers—next week you might all get hosed.
Meanwhile, I am hunkered down. The immersion in novels recharges me, while short stories demand too many resets. I finished “My Year of Rest and Relaxation” about a grieving woman who tries to sleep her pain away, drugging herself into a year of respite. It was the perfect book to read in a fever dream, harmonizing perfectly with my brief moments of lucidity. I have a new Kathy Acker novel waiting. But I can only read so long, my eyes beginning to water and burn. So I try shows. I’ve watched the first twenty minutes of a hundred things, discovered a new Swedish actress, gobbled up her light crime and quirky romance. But I chewed through those cables and now I need something new. Finally I settled on Below Deck. There’s nothing quite like watching other people work while laying in a puddle of your own sloth.
It was a bad week to lose water, a bad week to lose my brain. But next week, when normal life returns, I know I’ll appreciate it: running water, legs that work, thinking clearly: luxuries.
So I managed to even leave the house today, needing to walk the desperate dog and restock soups, limes, mint tea. But by the time I was ready—after getting dressed, and a neti potted—I was already exhausted. I drove my dog to a field, dizzy, disoriented by a horizon bigger than the four walls of my room. Standing there in the middle of the field, trying to find the strength to lift my arms to throw the ball, I thought: why didn’t anyone put a chair out here?
Plus I forgot to change out of my clogs which are great for indoors, cloppity-clopping between my room and the tea kettle, but terrible for driving stick and walking uneven ground. On the way to the grocery store, my blurry eyes snagged on shiny distractions: a woman balancing a tray of dazzling cakes, garbage bins with their lids blown off, twins in car seats beating each other with plush smilies. The grocery store itself felt hallucinatory, and I stumbled out with odd, inexplicable purchases. My sense of smell is usually sharp, but now it’s warped, invaded by strange notes of ozone, random perfumes, my head pounding with the extra blood forced up by my heart’s racing effort just to move. I catch myself, in this altered state, trying not to let myself fix on random ideas flashing like neon in the fog.
I was thinking about the word release, frustrated not finding the word in French and then deciding that it doesn’t exist in French, and then attempting to get philosophical about this as rude shoppers tried to make life more difficult for me, blocking the aisles with their carts and trying to look ghoulish and magnified-faced. At this point I was parked on an aisle side and leaning hard on my cart writing notes on my phone when I suddenly had one of those epic embarrassing old man, are-you-going-to-yack coughs, and straightened myself and said: NO WRITING AT THE GROCERY STORE, SYKES, PULL IT TOGETHER.
Turns out, the word for release in French is libérer, and so, safely at home now, libérée of my to-do list, in the liberating free flow of the rock-hard molten lava in my sinuses, freed of flowing tap water, I attempt to see the silver lining. Just think how much I am going to appreciate it when the nostril free-flow is finally drained, when the plumber fixes the pipes tomorrow. Think how glorious a simple glass of water will be. Think about how lovely it’ll be to climb stairs without even thinking about the pressure in my head. And all of this will be just a hazy fever dream, forgotten in my efficient, exciting week of new projects. And besides, I got material for a newsletter out of it. Plus, I taught my dog how to put tennis balls onto my palmed, joined feet so I could throw him balls without really having to move most of my body.
All in all, I recommend this variant. I also recommend getting your water shut off every once in a while—keeps you humble. Pouring buckets down toilets like you are in a backwoods outhouse and maybe even wondering why that works… something about pressure? So yeah, things clog then, finally, release. And in the interim, you get to feel it, remember that pipes exist, that the water doesn’t just arrive magically. You get to feel the insides of the sinuses like a weird sensory X-ray and be like, man, the body is weird and complex. And maybe that’s all a body is: a house of pipes, pressurized, leaky, miraculous when it flows. Pressure builds, pressure releases, and in the release you remember what a gift it is just to breathe easy, and turn a tap and watch water run.
I know essays go down easier than fiction, but if you’re feeling brave, I’d love for you to try my newest story. It’s about a woman who, as
wrote: “If you’re unseen, it’s natural that everything you write should be in invisible ink and that you want to inscribe your feelings on the raindrops.”Read it here:
