Read the Label
New podcast with Ron Rosenbaum, my itty-bitty-detox, a bunch of links, a stack of postcards, a little art & more
Intro
I’m in much better shape than last week, now that the wisdom-tooth/area infection has subsided. The only pain I seem to have is from the incision they made last Wednesday to drain it. I’ve even started eating solid food again, albeit carefully.
I did run into a bit of a funny circumstance around that pain management, though. See, when I first hit up my dentist last Monday about this infection-fever-pain, he gave me a prescription for antibiotics and a second one for what I thought was some special formulation of acetaminophen (the active ingredient in Tylenol). I was pretty delirious w/aforementioned infection-fever-pain and didn’t read the whole prescription label, or I would’ve known that it was acetaminophen + codeine.
So I went along taking 3 a day as prescribed for pain management, supplemented w/doses of OTC ibuprofen. Late in the week, I finally read over the materials more closely, then had to look up exactly what codeine does; it’s an opiate that metabolizes into morphine in the body.
Which explained the grooviness I was experiencing.
Since I was still experiencing some pain after the drain came out and the fever broke and everything else, I figured I’d keep taking it in the lead-up to this Friday’s oral surgery (removing the bottom wisdom teeth). On Sunday I thought I’d start staging down from 3 a day to 2, and that’s when I discovered that I’d developed a TEENSY dependency on the stuff.
About 9-10 hours after the morning dose, I felt the same headache that comes with caffeine withdrawal, combined with a soul-displacement that I refer to as “existential offsides.” I decided I’d take one that night before bed, and the symptoms dissipated within minutes, which was both comforting and alarming.
The next morning, I thought, “I could stage down the last few of these [the prescription was for 20 (!) pills], or maybe it’d be best to just stop cold, and watch Trainspotting and Naked Lunch back to back while I find out what this is like.”
I decided to flush the pills. My head hurt, my nose dripped, my soul was displaced throughout the day, but otherwise I was no worse/crabbier than usual, and the pain in my mouth was low enough that a little ibuprofen blunted it. By night-time I was fine, and seemingly done with a one-day detox. Still, the first few hours, while I was coming to that decision, were ... a little fraught.
I mean, in the grand scheme, My Whole Thing was all pretty minor, but it did give me a clear perspective on how pernicious this stuff can be. If I had real, chronic pain and was taking something stronger than 30mg of codeine, I could see how it’d become addictive in short order. And not just for the pain relief, but the aforementioned grooviness. I’m lucky that I can just sorta tie this experience in with the infection-fever-pain and treat the whole week like it was a vacation from myself.
Didn’t watch either of those movies, but maybe they’ll be my weekend fare as I recover from Friday’s surgery.
And now, on with The Virtual Memories Show!
Podcastery
This week, I posted Episode 550 of The Virtual Memories Show, feat. Ron Rosenbaum. With the release of IN DEFENSE OF LOVE: An Argument (Doubleday), Ron Rosenbaum offers up a series of essays to save love from scientizers & pseudoscientists, the extremists, the jaded, and anyone else who doubts whether Amor Vincit Omnia. We get into why love needs a defense and how it’s not reducible to chemical surges on an fMRI scan, the overwhelming emotion of Linda Ronstadt’s Long Long Time, the beauty of Philip Larkin’s poem An Arundel Tomb and why Larkin may have been embarrassed by the honesty of its last line (“What will survive of us is love.”), and the ways bullshit science can lead people ridiculously astray. We talk about the first and last times Ron fell in love, why he included a chapter on his own experiences of love & regret, whether dangerous passion outweighs a moderate marriage, and why Tolstoy adopted an anti-love extinction agenda in his later work. Plus, we talk about Ron’s arrival during the late days of magazines’ golden age, how he discovered his superpower of close reading, why America’s greatest love poems come from country music, and a lot more. Give it a listen! And go read IN DEFENSE OF LOVE (and go listen to our 2013 and 2014 conversations!)
Last week, I posted Episode 549: With MOTHER NATURE (Titan Comics), artist Karl Stevens adapts a graphic novel from an eco-horror screenplay by Oscar™-winner Jamie Lee Curtis & Russell Goldman. We get into how he wound up collaborating with JLC, the challenges in adapting a screenplay into comics, how he discovered his affinity for horror, and how nervous he was to show Jamie Lee his drawings of the character who’s modeled after her. We also discuss graphomania, the long-lost comic shops & record stores of Northampton, and why he’s used the same pen nib for the last 30 years. Plus, we talk about the challenges and moving parts in making a biography of his father and his dad’s Vietnam experience, how his family history goes back to the 1720s pre-America, why his favorite era of Jack Kirby was the ’70s, and more. Give it a listen! And go read MOTHER NATURE!
Other recent episodes: Howard Fishman • Christopher Brown • Rian Hughes • Eddie Campbell • Remembering Michael Denneny
Links & Such
RIP Brice Marden (w/an appreciation by Jerry Saltz) . . . RIP Rusty Shackleford (okay, Johnny Hardwick) . . . RIP/ACAB Joann Meyer . . .
Graydon Carter wrote a fun tribute to William Friedkin (and other LA friends he’s lost).
A lot of people enjoyed my conversation last year with W. David Marx about his book, Status and Culture. Here’s his latest newsletter, w/some more neat commentary on, um, status & culture.
New poem by Caleb Crain!
Popehat wrote about depression and how the language we use about suicide isn’t helpful.
Don’t just tell people to Get Happy!!!
We all come to making art in our own way: I started after the weekend double-whammy of In And Of Itself and the first ep. of Painting With John soon after I turned 50. Ahmed Rabbani? Art classes while he was an inmate at Gitmo.
When the infection in/around my wisdom tooth got BAD last Tuesday and I was feverish & walloped with pain, I put in an order at Bookshop.org for a couple of books, recent recommendations from trusted sources. It was like I was trying to ward off death by saying, “Not yet! There are more books coming!” I’m glad I can still revert in crisis to that totem/fetish behavior.
On Saturday morning, in the midst of that grooviness I mentioned in the intro, I decided I’d make up for a week’s worth of unwritten daily postcards with some increasingly unhinged missives. Sorry if you were on the receiving end of any of these. I’m back in the postcard-a-day routine now, so if you’re not on my list of recipients/victims and wanna be, just zap me your mailing address.
A bunch from Criterion's 2019 book of postcards
Current reading
Vineland - Thomas Pynchon
Art
No new sketches this week, but I did sketch the Paris statue of Montaigne while in the ER at 2 a.m. last week. On my flight home from St. Louis a few days earlier, I made this quick brush-pen sketch of a bird, but don’t remember whose reference photo I used. You should go to the Flickr album of most of the art I’ve made & find something you like.
Sound Body, Fractured Mind
Still no real exercise, but on Monday I was able to do my morning floor exercises for the first time in 10 days, so yay me. Did ‘em again this morning. Also went for a walk w/my pal Fran last Sunday morning for ~3.5 miles around my neighborhood, while I was still codeine-ing away, then another 1.5-mi. walk that afternoon. Did the same 3.5 miles w/him & Pete this morning.
Until Next Week
Thanks for reading this far! Barring surgery complications, I’ll be back next week with a new podcast, some great links, maybe some art, & who knows maybe a little profundity or something.
The things that bring you down / Only do harm to you / And so make your choice joy / For joy belongs to you,
—Gil Roth
Virtual Memories
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