I’ve been down for the count for more than a week with a superevolved head cold that pounded me with a new symptom each day, from a sore throat, congestion and copious snot, to sinus headaches and earaches, coughing fits, nausea, and, of course, fatigue.

By the fifth day I got wise to the beast and started the morning with a tall glass of water and a mound of pills: 2 Sudafed, 600mg of ibuprofin, and 1000mg of Vitamin C. By day eight, I had those and two sniffs of nasal spray, which a doctor presribed by phone, and an antibiotic, for which I had to actually visit the doctor.

This morning is no different, but my energy has returned. I went to yoga, and stretched it out. After, I felt good enough to run a few errands, driving in the car with good music on. I ate lunch at Blue Willow, now called Chazen.

(If you’re in Seattle, and want to drink good tea and eat very authentic-tasting and simple Asian food, give it a try. You’ll have to wade through the middle-aged SNAGs to find a seat, but I know of nowhere else in town, including Teahouse KuanYin, where the atmosphere, food, and the method of serving tea matches the East Asian tea varieties so well—that is, unless you come to my house.)

I had another reason to be out: the water had been turned off in the building.

This is the third week of the plumbing project that will replace all the pipe (from 1927) on the east side of the building. This involves cutting holes in the walls of the affected apartments and laying new copper pipes. When all the pipes are laid, the water is shut off and the connections transferred from the old pipes to the new ones. Today is changeover day. Keep your fingers crossed.

I have spent a lot of time reading. I finished My Name Is Red by Orhan Pamuk. Sussan recommended the story, but I can't remember why—only that if she liked it, the book must be good.

And it was. All parts of the setting were new to me: 16th-century Turkish and Islamic cultures and medieval art. It’s a murder mystery set in that moment in history when the Renaissance took hold and the rise of Europe began, signalling the decline of the Ottoman empire. It was intellectual, educational, and loaded with lust, and I loved it.

But the part I keep thinking about is the pedigree of conflict in Central Asia. How places like Istanbul and Baghdad and Hindustan and China have traded and fought for ages. Their relationships are so seasoned. I think about those ancient cultures repeating old cycles in a modern world and how our upstart culture joins the fray with the blithe confidence of a suicide bomber: young, impressionable, certain of immortality, and destined for utter disappearance.

I also read William Gibson’s Pattern Recognition. I think I read it in two days, his writing reads fast like that. I enjoyed the story. It reminded me of The Crying of Lot 49: that hope for a conspiracy that might liberate you from the society that imprisons you. In the end, it turns out that the organization you thought you saw, was just coincidence.

He mentions apophenia a lot, the tendency to see patterns where none exist. Contributors to his forum like to mention it, too, and make jokes about it. For my part, I just wondered if all that stuff about soul-lag was inspired by UFS.