Fever Dream

At the end of the fall semester, '05, I got sick. Real sick. I don't normally get sick, but this time I did. I guess the stress and lack of decent eating finally caught up with me, and I got sick. When I do succumb to disease, it's always hardcore. There ain't no sniffles or a slight headache when I get sick. I get man sick.

So I had a fever. And I was trying to sleep during the day, while Jeff (my roommate) was working on a final paper. Jeff was also sick, but his was like a "my-throat-is-congested-owie" type sick. Sadly, this drove me nuts as he constantly cleared his throat. I was lying in bed, during the day, with the lights on and Jeff typing six feet from my head, hacking and coughing. Making the exact same sound every 30 seconds.

Now, if you've ever had a fever, you know that a few things can become rather annoying. Light, of which there was plenty (Jeff didn't want to work with the lights off. Might strain his eyes), and sound, again, of which there was plenty (thanks Jeff!). So I wasn't in the best of moods. I was lying in bed, wearing my full day clothes (jeans and all), underneath two blankets, shivering and sweating. The sounds were driving me nuts, my eyes hurt from the light, and I was thirst. Always thirsty.

This is how my day went: I woke up with the fever, wrote an exam, went to bed while Jeff worked on his paper. Every two hours from noon until aprox. 10pm I would wake up out of my fever dream, drink 1 liter of water, pee, and go back to sleep, where the fever dream would resume. And when I say "sleep" I mean toss and turn, groan in pain, and generally hurt. I couldn't sleep because it was day, the lights were on, and Jeff made noise. I'm not bitter.

Anyways, I look back on this with a fond memory (except towards Jeff), especially regarding my fever dream. My fever dream was this: A pillow army. That's right. There was a pillow army, and I was making the army grow by my movements. A turn of the head, a shake of the dreads, a generally thrashing motion, that would increase the size of the pillow army. If I stopped moving, at any time, they would shrink. Probably because we were under attack, dontchaknow. They died, so I had to make more. And more. And more. So I kept moving, thrashing about in my bed, making my pillow army grow enough so it wouldn't run out. Thankfully, we never did.

I tell you this because it's a metaphore for my life right now. I am living the fever dream. Not the pillow army, technically (I can only hope...), but this (note to self: I just discovered, through a type, that the words "this" and "shit" have the same letters. go figure):

While the dream occurs, it's numbing. You don't feel the pain. You wake up every once in awhile and the pain comes back, but as soon as the dream is there, the pain dissapears temporarily. When you are awake, you're in a daze, groggy and disoriented. You feel like you have sweat crusted to every orifice of your body. You feel like gum dragged on pavement - sticky and worn thin. The dream prevents the pain from occuring for a time, allows your body time to heal.

I am in that dream. This summer is my fever.

One day, I'll look back fondly on most things and remember that summer I just spent working and living in Kelowna one last time. One day. For now, I'm just sweaty, thirsty, and generally quite cranky.