Our greatest pretenses are built up not to hide the evil and the ugly in us, but our emptiness. The hardest thing to hide is something that is not there.
~ Eric Hoffer ~
I know only a bit about him, but I have enormous admiration for people like Eric Hoffer. He embraced the only employment opportunities available to him (as a manual laborer, stevedore, farm worker, etc.) in his youth and middle age, while educating himself all the while, thinking deeply and writing about social order, power, and mass movements. Hoffer’s insights into the development and execution of social movements were highly regarded by both laymen and academics. The first of his ten books was published when he was about 53 years old. Subsequent books others wrote about him extolled the clarity of his understanding of social change; he was a brilliant social psychologist/sociologist whose intellect was especially surprising, given his lack of a formal education. If I had the mental energy, I might read his works. But I am not Eric Hoffer. I can only admire his exceptional intelligence; not replicate it.
People who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them.
~ Eric Hoffer ~
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Another 12 hours of regularly shattered sleep; every hour or two, my restlessness jarred me awake from troubling thoughts and dreams. Each time, I assumed I was awakened by the need to pee; sometimes, that’s what it was, but just as often it could have been a sense of terror borrowed from the dream from which I awoke.
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Borrowing terror reminds me of a related phrase I read within the past day or so: borrowing trouble. I think the phrase was presented something like, Never borrow trouble from the future; that is an admonition to avoid letting possible difficulties that have not yet occurred interfere with real circumstances in the present.
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My brain is scrambled, due in part to the damned mouth sores that began appearing around a week ago. They are not really painful, but they make themselves known. I have yet to receive the medication that should (I hope) relieve them. So I wait. And I wonder whether there’s any food I should avoid for fear of exacerbating them. My thought processes suggest I should avoid all food, just in case, but I have been told—in no uncertain terms—that I must eat, lest I get dangerously weak. That is better advice than the recommendation I give myself. Chemotherapy drugs have all manner of side effects, none of which I find appealing. Mouth sores are among the unappealing accompaniments to those damned intravenous poisons.
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I’ve eaten two tiny containers of tasty yoghurt this morning. I remain hungry, though leery of food. Perhaps I should thaw some cooked rice, flavor it with soy sauce and sambal oleek, and hope the sambal oleek does not cause the inside of my mouth to erupt in flames. Lately, even very slightly picante food burns my tongue, as if I were eating marbles of molten steel. Jalapeños, one of my favorite foods, have become my enemies—behaving as if they were treble fishhooks make of white-hot titanium. Fairness plays no part in my diet. Food is given to me to inflict pain, not to provide nutritional sustenance. The yoghurt was rather pleasant, though, but I wouldn’t be surprised to learn in short order that it had been laced with tiny razor blades and alcohol.
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Though I slept for 12 hours (more or less) last night, I feel like I could sleep for another six, at least. But I shall not. Not right now, anyway.
