Today, I woke up to a nosebleed. I opened my eyes, rolled over in bed, raised a tissue to my nose and blew -- I knew as soon as I felt the tissue's sudden soddenness -- and pulled it away to see a bright crimson splash on the white paper. And the blood kept coming.

Now, where other people immediately plug their noses and tilt their heads back, my solution involves blowing my nose tirelessly and continuously until, finally, I blow out a few fat black blood clots -- and the nosebleed ceases. So I spent the next twenty minutes doing that. My nose drips bloods no more, though two small wastebaskets are filled with tissues and napkins red (now maroon) with the sticky stuff. Perhaps later I'll feel weak.

I've also been sleeping with my light on this week -- because when I am ill my mind seems to conjure fantastically strange images in the dark. Not terrifying things, but unsettling things, or things that strike me as being weird in an unenjoyable way -- strange and complex games involving the alignment of the pattern on the sheets and that if I cannot get the wrinkles to match the design just so I will not be able to free myself from the bed, or things requiring me to trace my surroundings with my fingertips in order to find a door to push through and escape from my sickbed. All having to do with escape and games -- all having to do with confinement -- all having to do with sight. All more or less doomed to fail because they must be played in the dark.

Ja ne.