July 17, 2003

• MALAISE

  
  

  This, from Merriam-Webster Online:

  
  

  Main Entry: mal·aise
  Pronunciation: m&-’lAz, ma-, -’lez
  Function: noun
  Etymology: French malaise, from Old French, from mal- + aise comfort — more at EASE
  Date: circa 1768
  1 : an indefinite feeling of debility or lack of health often indicative of or accompanying the onset of an illness
  2 : a vague sense of mental or moral ill-being malaise of cynicism and despair — Malcolm Boyd>

  
  

  I thought I understood what roadrunner meant when he left this comment to my blog of a few days ago:  ”Ah, but Roadrunners are less sensitive to the words people use to describe things and feelings, knowing that we all only THINK we understand each other EXACTLY.”

  
  

  Semantic traps are the bane of my existence.  I don’t like being misconstrued.  Likewise, when someone is talking to me I want to know what they mean, the thoughts behind the words.  To that end, I tend to keep my antennae out, sensing emotions, sensitive to any cognitive dissonance.  I’ve been told that I sometimes make a nuisance of myself with my searching feedback:  “When you said that, is this what you meant?”

  
  

  I have also been criticized for talking over people’s heads, showing off my vocabulary, using “big” words when little ones would do.  I don’t agree with any of that.  I express myself, generally, as well as I know how to do.  When I can do that in words of one syllable, I do.  Some of my best words have no more than four letters.

  
  

  I do have a preference for single words when one word will take the place of a paragraph of explanation.  That’s where the vocabulary comes in.  And it’s one of the reasons I put a dictionary search box on my blog site–it’s right over there in the left module for anyone who doesn’t know what the hell I mean by what I say. 

  
  

  Another reason it’s there is for my own use.  I’m a dictionary-reader.  In eighth grade, I read two books cover-to-cover, in my bed before sleep at night:  the King James Bible and Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary.  I found a few interesting stories and many internal contradictions in the former.  The latter, I found fascinating, as I would leaf back and forth, tracking down definitions for words contained within other definitions.

  
  

  But, I digress… I meant to write about malaise, really I did.

  
  

  Doug and I are ill.  We have been feeling malaise, living in malaise for days.  For me, it started with a sore throat on Monday, after a little warning last Friday that my immune system was on alert.  The pierces in my earlobes healed shut years ago, and the one on the left apparently enclosed a colony of something.  The first warning I usually get of any new infection is swelling, redness, and itch in my left earlobe.  …I just digressed again, didn’t I?

  
  

  By Tuesday, my voice was wavering between a croak and a squeak and I felt miserable.  Greyfox was home for his usual Monday-Tuesday “weekend”.  I described the way I felt as, “malaise”, and he responded that it sounded wonderful to him.  I got a little more specific, said my head spun every time I’d open my eyes, and I had an uncoordinated “floaty” feeling.  He reiterated the ”wonderful” judgment.  The more we talked about it, the less sure I was that either of us knew what the other one was talking about.

  
  

  He claims to be the Will Rogers of CNS depressants.  He never met a down he didn’t like.  When he had his buttoned-down, 3-piece-suit job for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, he used to be glad when he got sick because then he could legitimately stay home and get drunk on the state’s money, as opposed to just faking it.  To him, CNS impairment is good, and oblivion is better.

  
  

  When I was actively drugging, my drug of choice was amphetamines.  I first got hooked on speed after reading about the effects of methamphetamine in the PDR at work.  I learned that it relieved allergy symptoms, asthma, etc., imparted physical energy and clarity of thought.  Sounded wonderful to me!  When I started doing speed, for the first time in my life my life approached what other people think of as normal.  I could ride a bike or run without wheezing or passing out from lack of oxygen.  My sinuses cleared up, and I could use my nose for something besides wiping and holding up my glasses.  To put it briefly, speed made my malaise go away.

  
  

  I don’t understand anyone who likes feeling malaise.  Someone who would welcome being sick just to evade feeling guilty about faking being sick… well, that’s just SICK!  Greyfox is quick to cop to being a sick puppy.  He’s not in denial about that at all.  But I just sometimes wonder if what he feels when he feels that “malaise” is really the same thing I’m feeling when I’m in malaise. 

  
  

  Could it be that for him dizziness, uncoordinated stumbling, and eyes that won’t focus stimulate some different part of the brain than they do for me; or that the brain chemistry is different and he’s getting jolts of pleasure chemicals when I’m getting jolts of pain ones?  (and BTW, for those detractors of mine who criticize my “big” words, I deliberately rewrote that last sentence to leave out “neurotransmitters” and “cholecystokinin”, etc.) 

  
  

  Such speculations are nothing new for me.  This is the girl who used to wonder if everyone saw the same thing when they say they’re seeing “blue” as I see when I see blue.  I got some of those basic perceptual questions answered many years ago in an intense session of group telepathy, sitting around a big tank of nitrous oxide.  Frankly, even if I could do a Vulcan mind meld with Greyfox, I’d pass.   I’m curious about what goes on in that mind of his, but I would not want to go in there to find out.

  
  

  …aand, talkin’ about the weather:  I mentioned how hot it had been here, sweltering, ‘way above average, and then yesterday it was cloudy all day, then a chill in the air and then buckets of rainfall… by that I mean it sounded not like the usual drops hitting roof and windows, but gusty winds and big splashes of water hitting the house all night last night.  I woke up wondering if some of the local creeks might be over their banks.  I copied this off Weather.com:

  
  

  …SPECIAL WEATHER STATEMENTNATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE ANCHORAGE AK930 AM ADT THU JUL 17 2003

  
  

  … RARE JULY SNOW JUST SOUTH OF DENALI NATIONAL PARK…
  

  A UNUSUAL SUMMER STORM AFFECTED AREAS WITHIN AND SOUTH OF DENALINATIONAL PARK WEDNESDAY AND OVERNIGHT. HEAVY SNOW FELL AT ELEVATIONSAS LOW AS 1800 FEET WHILE HEAVY RAIN FELL FURTHER SOUTH AS FAR ASTALKEETNA.
  

  AT THE DENALI PARK ENTRANCE SNOWFALL WAS HEAVY ENOUGH TO BEND OVERTREES. A FEW SMALL TREES WERE ACTUALLY BROKEN. THERE WAS AN INCH OFSNOW ON THE GROUND AT PARK HEADQUARTERS AT 8 AM THIS MORNING. ALSO AT8 AM IN CANTWELL JUST SOUTH OF THE PARK THERE WAS STILL AN INCH OFSNOW ON THE GROUND. A CABIN 25 MILES SOUTHWEST OF CANTWELL REPORTED 4INCHES OF SLUSH ON THE GROUND AT THE SAME TIME. AT CANTWELL 5.70INCHES OF WATER EQUIVALENT HAS FALLEN IN THE PAST TWO DAYS. IF NOTFOR MELTING THE SNOW DEPTH WOULD HAVE LIKELY BEEN MEASURED IN FEET.BY 9 AM THIS MORNING THE SNOW HAD EITHER CHANGED TO RAIN OR WAS MIXEDWITH RAIN AND SNOW ON THE GROUND WAS MELTING QUICKLY.
  

  VERY HEAVY RAIN FELL SOUTH OF BROAD PASS. CHULITNA REPORTED 4.01INCHES FOR THE PAST TWO DAYS ENDING AT 8 AM THIS MORNING. TALKEETNAREPORTED 3.34 INCHES OF RAIN AS OF 9 AM. LAST EVENING TRAPPER CREEKHAD RECEIVED 2.64 INCHES OF RAIN. THAT WAS AT 7 PM AND IT RAINEDHEAVILY ALL OF LAST NIGHT.
  

  ALL RIVERS AND CREEKS IN THE UPPER CHULITNA AND NENANA RIVERDRAINAGES WERE AT OR ABOVE BANKFULL. WHOLE TREES WERE SEEN FLOATINGDOWN THE JACK RIVER WHICH FLOWS INTO THE NENANA RIVER. CANTWELLRESIDENTS SAY THEY’VE NOT SEEN THAT ALL THE YEARS THEY’VE LIVEDTHERE.
  

  UNUSUALLY COLD AIR ACCOMPANIED A STORM SYSTEM THAT MOVED OVER CENTRALALASKA SINCE WEDNESDAY. TEMPERATURES AT 8 AM THIS MORNING WERE 28 TO34 DEGREES FROM CANTWELL TO THE DENALI PARK ENTRANCE. A COLD FRONTMARKED THE BOUNDARY BETWEEN COLD AIR FROM THE ARCTIC AND WARM MOISTAIR THAT FLOWED NORTH THROUGH COOK INLET. A COLLISION OF AIR MASSESOCCURRED IN THE SUSITNA AND CHULITNA VALLEYS NORTHWEST OF ANCHORAGE.
  

  REFER TO FLOOD STATEMENTS FOR INFORMATION RIVER CONDITIONS.

  • 2:23 pm
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