The Funk

Sometimes getting your funk on is good, like for example when you are cutting a rug to "She's a Brick House" (gag me) at your uncle's wedding. And sometimes getting your funk on is just downright funky, and I don't mean in a good way. It started innocently enough about a week ago. I had been in China 2 weeks and was rockin' it. I woke up Sunday with a case of "not quite right," but I went to Beijing to meet Sally anyways. Later that night, "not quite right" progressed to an achy fever and a case of "if I move I am going to puke my insides out." Not fun. But the next morning I was pretty much back to "normal." The next day I was still "mostly ok," and took my chances going on the day trip to the mountains. Well the next morning I woke up with a case of "I have a little sore throat, but nothing major." I wore my mask, got acupuncture, drank herbal concoctions that explain the extra hair which is now on my chest, etc. That ailment lasted 2 days, until this morning when it evolved into a full blown case of the "Chinese Funk."
What I am calling the Chinese Funk is nothing more than a head cold. But supposedly it is diagnosed as a "wind cold invasion " instead of the typical American "wind heat invasion." According to one of Sally's Chinese teachers in acupuncture school, a true "wind cold" really only occurs in China. It is true that anything anyone in my family has complained of the entire time we have been here, the response in the hospital 100% of the time has been "too cold." Stomach ache?- "too cold- wear more clothes." Head ache?- "too cold, wear more clothes" Hip pain?- "maybe you should wear more clothes." And on and on. Last night walking home from the hospital, Sally and I experience the epitomy of a "cold wind." It was nothing short of horrendous. It has snowed earlier and the sky was grey, but at about 5:00 huge winds blew in from god knows where, clearing the sky, lowering the temperature, and blowing all manners of dust, leaves, dirt and Chinese funk around the streets. 5:00 traffic was insane. Bike riders and walkers had dirt blowing in their eyes, things were falling and breaking. It truly felt crazy. And this morning I felt like crap.
Crap or not, we still have to eat. And with Sally being the only one of us healthy enough to accompany Jenna in the hospital (Mom and Dad are homeward bound), it was up to me to obtain some groceries today, as we ate nasty smelling and tasting leftovers last night because we missed seeing the restaurant we were going to eat in (the windstorm had dirt in our eyes.) I decided that an early morning trip to the supermarket wouldn't be so bad- maybe I would miss the crowds. Not so, dear readers, not so. That turned out to be the largest damn supermarket crowd I have ever been a part of. All manners of Chinese people (including one dwarf and one overweight man) playing bumper carts in the produce section, digging their way through bins of fruit to select only the best; stink from the fish department, where the meat is laying out in the open and there are also racks of all manners of fresh seaweed for sale and tanks of live fish available for slaughtering now or later; meat counter ladies yelling promotional information through microphones; long chaotic lines extending in every direction to have your produce weighed; a man yelling angrily at a check out girl; the man's friend dragging him away while he still yelled; long lines for check out and a lady tried to butt in front of me in line while I hold my own; bright bright florescent lights and so many people. I had to breath through it the whole time to keep from getting dizzy on myself. Supermarkets can be so weird when one is under the influence of the Chinese Funk.
But all is not lost here... This morning I thought maybe my next book will be called Through Viral Lenses: Seeing the World while Under the Influence of Foreign Pathogens (Alternative Title: Gettin' My Funk on: Making the most of Foreign Travel with a Fever). The book will open in the Chilean Altiplano: I am under 200 layers of woolen blankets in an unheated house in an abandoned village. It is midnight and mid winter. I am alternatively puking into some sort of vessel and crying out for my mommy. My companion, SJ-S is alternatively trying to snuggle with me and throwing my puke from the vessel out the front door. I would like to puke under the open sky, but because of "la puna," my severe altitude sickness, I do not have enough air to make the trip from the bed to the door.
Or maybe the first scene will be in a Mc Donald's in Krefeld, Germany with a near-crisis tampon situation.
Either way, the book will also cover hallucinating with food poisoning in Peru and Day of the Dead in Mexico while under the influence of the fever of a flu contracted from a Mayan lady who beat me with a bundle of herbs in a "temascali" (sweat lodge of sorts) ceremony. I might throw in a piece about a Guatemalan fever and maybe even some domestic tales, like having delirious food poisoning at my grandfather's funeral in Dayton from eating that last minute organic peanut butter sandwich on the way to the airport (damn that organic peanut butter...) Each anticdote will draw on highlights from the last to tie the stories together. I will end with shopping for produce with the Chinese Funk, which I most likely picked up from Dad or Mom or Jenna or maybe it was someone like that cook in the alley that our apartment overlooks. He walked out the back door of the kitchen the other day, blew his nose into his bare hand and then flicked gobs and gobs of visible snot off his hand and into the street. Then he wiped his nose many times with the backs of both hands, and then he stepped back into the kitchen for more cooking (minus the assumed handwashing.)
I knew there was a reason I like to live tucked back in the NC hills where the humans are few and far between and the supermarket is not crowded first thing in the morning (or ever). I love it back home. Where are my red shoes???