ill

Sick today with what I call the Denise Illness--I come down with it once or twice a year, usually towards the end of a semester. My system more or less breaks down and I alternate between chills and fevers, while my head spins circles and my whole body aches.

I've stayed in bed all day, exchanging fitful snatches of sleep with hours of lying awake despondently. Today the distance from home seems more acute than it has been before.

The painting's Monet and it saved me when I was feeling particularly low. I was ravenous for poetry and art and such things by that point in the GP and all I had were my own feeble jots of poetry in my journal (not very nourishing, even to my usually self-affirming ego). But Ann sent me this card before I left for Kenya and it's been an invaluable source of comfort. Asante sana, Ann.