this past weekend i missed having dinner with some good friends on saturday night because i still wasn't feeling quite right. after seeing my dr last week my symptoms continued to dissipate but i was still very beat [up] by evening. my appetite was still shaky and tho i've not had a fever in close to a week i was pretty much in the words of etheridge knight 'feeling fucked up.'

then after watching last night's excellent installment of wire in the blood my energy level, which was feeling close to normal all day, shot up. and my appetite returned big time. which is a long way of saying that i'm feeling 98% percent of normal now.

funny how when you are feeling shitty the world becomes a grey, menacing, sinister depressing place. but tonight's walk home from work revealed a world irradiated in joy, love and goodwill. if you can believe that. whatever. my blood tests came back mostly clean tho my glucose fasting index was elevated. diabetes doesn't run in my family and i hadn't had most of the classic symptoms but i did have a few. it is something to watch out for.

my father's wife, one of the sweetest women i know, told me a story tonight about how a one of her relatives went into a diabetic coma one night and didn't know he had diabetes. he fought for his life and there were moments when he was nearly lost. then after recovering and getting his diabetes under control three years later he was getting a ride home from work when the car he was riding in was hit by a drunk driver. he was dead instantly. in short, nothing is guaranteed and we should in all humility take nothing for granted. tonight i reread a poem by james dickey called 'diabetes'. the first part, subtitled "sugar", ends with the line 'A livable death at last'. a bit of romantic posturing from big jim dickey. but i was thinking of the french poet rene char who says somewhere to die in life is ignoble but to die in death is to live. yes, i think that's it.

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if anyone asks tell them my favorite band was social distortion.

my favorite poet was thom gunn.