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The hip, it works! Went on my first bike ride of the season this afternoon and it was glorious. It didn’t hurt (well, it hurt my barely-used muscles) and I didn’t forget how everything works. And I bought myself a shiny new red helmet to celebrate.

Ah, spring!

I’ve just spent the past hour listening to poets read their work. The power of the internet to bring the voice of Yeats, Williams, Thomas, Eliot, Walcott, Plath and Ginsberg to my ears long after even the possibility existed for me to hear them read in person.

In particular, I was moved by Anna Akmatova’s “In Memory of M.B.” and Ginsberg’s “A Supermarket in California.” Not to mention actually hearing Dylan Thomas read one of my favourite poems, “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night,” a poem I copied to write my own poem, “Johnny Cash II.”

But I think the poem I loved the most was Langston Hughes’s “The Negro Speaks of Rivers.”

It’s so wonderful to hear the words in the voice that was meant to speak them, the voice that created them, the voice that must have come alive in their heads. Such a reminder that poetry is such a vocal art, that so much gets lost sometimes in the translation to the page — that so much is gained when it’s alive and in the world, echoing just beside you. Ah, the wonders of the modern world.

The meds are taking quite the toll on me these days. That’s the strange thing about the disease, how I don’t necessarily feel its presence, other than being a bit rundown, but I am utterly at the mercy of its treatment. The doctor doubled my dose of CellCept, which means my stomach is having a really hard time, seeing as the main side effect is nausea, upset and, ahem, loose bowels. I can’t even begin to describe how ill I feel, like a mixture of extreme seasickness and that awful hangover you get from drinking too much cheap wine. Mix in the loaded fatigue from the disease and I’m barely functioning, let alone enjoying my life.

And the shame is that there’s lots to enjoy right now. The weather’s finally picked up. My tragic hip is functioning well, so I can walk again, which is quite a blessing considering the last two years of hellish pain. Oh, and it means I’ll be able to get on my bike soon too. The Rock and Roll Boyfriend has steady work for the first time in many, many years, so I’m not worried about getting the bills paid or losing the house. I’m writing a lot more and taking a class I enjoy, and reading voraciously, but I’m doing it all under a haze of extreme nausea clinging to the hope that this miracle drug will kick the disease on its ass and I won’t lose my kidneys or drown in my own blood when my lungs start hemorrhaging.

There’s a cause and effect to everything in life, and that’s something that you’re never more acutely aware of than when you’re taking any kind of medication. There’s irony in the fact that what’s supposed to make you well makes you just as sick as what it’s supposedly fighting.

The Rock and Roll Boyfriend played a good show last Thursday night. Of course, that was the tail end of my week from hell in terms of not sleeping at all, so I wasn’t all that thrilled to be in a crowded club listening to loud music, but I’m glad I went.

They opened for Greg MacPherson, who I love, who had his record release party for his lastest album, Night Flares. Instead of his usual one-man-with-guitar-all-alone-on-stage deal, Greg had a whole band, and I kind of liked it, all loud and raunchy like drunk sex.

The Boyfriend and the band played most of the new songs from their upcoming album, and it was a nice change to see him playing his own stuff again. Not that I don’t like it when he plays with The Weakerthans, but I do like to see him in his element as well.

Book your calendars now — they’re playing with The Deadly Snakes at North by Northeast on June 9th. But don’t ask me about the guest list, because they never have them at those damn festival shows. I think even I have to pay. Where’s the fun in being a Rock and Roll Girlfriend if I have to pay?

I saw the specialist today about the disease. Because the symptoms of the disease are flu-like, he thinks that I haven’t been getting sick because of an infection, but because the disease is grumbling. Which is strange because that’s not the usual way the disease attacks, sort of slowly and over long periods of time; no, it’s usually swift and sure like a snowstorm in January. He’s decided to double my meds to see if that’ll kick it back into submission, which means yet another adjustment period to the new dosage.

“Fun with Meds!” That’ll be my version of Pee-Wee’s Playhouse. Instead of honking a horn on a cool bike, I’ll be examining the myriad different types of nausea and explaining complex medical terms to kids. Anyone want to call TVO for a development deal?

So, my assignment this week is to write five lines in pentameter. Yes, hold your breath while I try and figure that one out. Okay, you might as well breath because there’s no way in hell I’ll be able to do it. I can’t write in pentameter. I can barely write a poem in free form half the time.

So far, I’ve come up with one line: “The cab came in along the FDR.” It’s been echoing around in my brain for the last three weeks. Fingers crossed that I actually come up with four more before tomorrow’s class.

There’s nothing I love more than a good South African piece of fiction. It’s a strange thing to say, I know, but Damon Galgut’s The Good Doctor, with its shades of Coetzee, reads like an exquisite piece of literary art. The parallels to Coetzee’s work are well documented. Almost every reviewer brings it up as a point from which to discuss Galgut’s work.

The story of an older, almost-divorced doctor who works at a nearly abandoned hospital in a former township, The Good Doctor examines the idea of moral ambiguity almost perfectly. Presenting us with a character we can neither love nor hate, we inevitably find ourselves deeply engaged by him anyway. As a young, upstart (…inky pup! I always think, damn you Shakespeare in Love) doctor wends his way both into the life of the protagonist, Frank, and into the routine of the hospital, his whole world changes.

While there is no outward conflict between the two men, there is a deep sense that things will never be the same; it’s a subtle change that time brings, one that comes with a strange subsection of events that have both a cause and an effect, but are so indicative of something post-colonial that it’s refreshingly disturbing to read. Highly recommend it on a rainy day where you were already feeling bad about reading the frightening stats in your newspaper (for example: one in four adults in Zimbabwe have HIV. The US uses 25% of the world’s oil resources, etc) and want a deep, interesting novel to keep you company for a while.

Remember that episode of Sex and the City where Stanford exclaims, as Carrie trips and falls on the runway, “Oh my God, she’s fashion road kill?” Yeah, well, as of Saturday I am officially Bowling Road Kill (tm ragdoll).

That’s right, you heard me, bowling. It was Glark’s birthday and, as was the custom last year, we all went bowling. And, well, I suck. I didn’t fall down flat on my face as Carrie did, but I sure came close. “How?” You ask. Well, first I bowled gutter ball after gutter ball. Then, I swung back my cute pink ball, promptly let go and watched it fly — in the wrong direction. I’m lucky I didn’t kill anyone. Oh, and then I managed to jump up and play in the wrong order, thus ruining Stee’s fabulous track record. But that part was okay because the dude that works the alley fixed it so the score ended up being correct. My friend Wing Chun kept saying, “You’re so pretty. You don’t need to be talented.” Ha!

So yeah, I’m officially Bowling Road Kill. They were all embarrassed to be seen with me. They were all embarrassed to go out with me.

Oh, and it didn’t help much that my Rock and Roll Boyfriend bowled perfect strikes and spares pretty much all afternoon. Sigh.

My short story class is a nightmare and I’m trying to get out of it. My joints ache like I’m having mid-life growing pains but I know it’s the disease and I’m tired of it. My head aches and my mouth is dry, totally dehydrated like I’m stuck in a snowbank with only ice to suck on and it’s just not the same as water in a plastic cup. I’ve run out of sleeping pills, which is why I’m over-tired and dehydrated, and finished my latest course of antibiotics which, when mixed with the not sleeping for the past three days, means I’ll be sick again within the week.

I’m tired of the disease this time around. I don’t know if I have the energy any more to cope.

/of feeling sorry for myself.

Jonathan Tropper’s The Book of Joe is one of the better books I’ve read this year, and it’s been a pretty good year so far. It’s a sweet novel that looks at the life of a successful novelist who wrote disparagingly about the town where he grew up only to return seventeen years later as his father falls into a coma. Tropper’s writing reminds me of Jonathan Franzen, that bittersweet recognition that life hasn’t turned out the way you expected, and that material success sometimes isn’t the answer.

And then, the whole visual image of the book was shattered when I looked up the movie version on the imdb and found out Joe Mantegna is to play “Joe.” Ew. He’s only supposed to be 34, so they must have it wrong.

Highly recommended. The Book of Joe gets the broken hip salute, which essentially means I’d give it a big booty bump if the book was a cute fellow at a rock and roll show.