Got my joie de vivre out of hock this week. And not a moment too soon. Six weeks of not walking, convalescing from surgery, was enough for me, thanks. I stand in awe of all those people who have adjusted to far worse. What can you expect from someone who titled her 8th-grade autobiography, ”The Kvetcher in the Rye”?
I tried to prepare for cabin fever. I bought a stack of books but made the mistake of reading Tom Wolfe`s ”The Bonfire of the Vanities” first. Nothing came close to that. There are many celebrated authors determined to use certain words like ”detritus” and ”feckless” as frequently as possible. I almost decomposed from Feckless Overload.
Next I held the first home video Dennis Quaid Film Festival and made the same mistake. After falling in love with Monsieur Quaid in ”The Big Easy,”
after having pain-pill-induced fantasies of smiling at him over huge plates of Crawfish Etouffee, I worked my way through the detritus of his oeuvre, from
”Suspect” to ”Innerspace” to ”DOA.”
When the Quaidlude wore off, I turned to my relaxation tapes. I lay there relaxing, letting all pain and tension leave my head . . . my chest . . . my solar plexus (that`s just above the lunar scapula) . . . my abdomen, my pelvis, my legs . . . .
That worked for about two weeks. I could make my eyelids grow very heavy on command. I could force my fingers to tingle. But I fell short of the one necessary component: a brain makeover.
It was just like the hypno-guru said: All my problems stemmed from negative thinking. For two weeks I was able to get myself into a trance and say positive things. I walked around singing ”Don`t Worry, Be Happy.” I ate a high-fiber diet and avoided caffeine, alcohol and anything from The Chip Group.
Then, what started to happen was I`d lie there in bed, I`d get relaxed, I`d let go from head to toe and my inner voice would say: ”You are feeling relaxed . . . you are feeling good about yourself . . . you jerk . . . you love yourself . . . you pathetic slob . . . you are in control of your life . . . you dumb bunny . . . .”
As my friends in New York say: Two weeks is as long as anyone should feel positive.
Now I`m back out in the world and feeling great. The days are getting shorter. But that`s okay.
Someone broke into my car last night and stole the knobs off my radio and my new Brian Wilson tapes. But he left three Billie Holiday tapes.
Don`t worry, be happy.
