(3089/898) Transitioning

314) All of a sudden, this morning I realized that I was old. That's just it. I never noticed before, not really. I realized that there was no longer any given week in which I didn't have a doctor's appointment. I can't help but notice my diminishing energy. It is more difficult to hear, to see, to endure long walks, the cold, the heat. I have a more difficult time walking my black lab on a leash. I see from my friends that a broken limb is not a small matter. We are not back on our feet in a matter of weeks. Often it is the beginning of a fearful and eternal process - operations, recovery in bed, which weakens our limbs, our muscles, makes us more brittle, nursing or hospital care that clouds our minds, confuses us. My children are angry with me. They want me to be vital, helpful, present, and they simply can't accept that I can't.

posted on Prodigy
quoted by Jon Katz in
"The Tales They Tell in Cyber-Space
Are A Whole Other Story"
Sunday New York Times Arts & Leisure Section (1/23/94)

315) Harold Pinter [...] once interrupted a rehearsal of his own [play] "Lover" with the murmur "We don't know the author's intentions here."

Benedict Nightingale
"In Pinter Country, There Are Only Questions"
Sunday New York Times Arts & Leisure Section (1/23/94)

316) -What I held as true yesterday, today I see as banality.
317) -The sense of horrible [is] reinforced by distance.
318) -Exhaustion does not mean that you simplify but that you complicate; you sink your teeth into something and do too much.

Ingmar Bergman
Images: My Life In Film (1993)
quoted by John Simon in
"The Magician" [review] in
New York Times Book Review (1/30/94)

319) The majority of new [AIDS] infections have always been from heterosexual contact, as far back as the AIDS epidemic can be traced. Although homosexuals, hemophiliacs and people who inject drugs have borne the brunt of the epidemic in industrial countries, they have always constituted a minority of the world's HIV infections. Thus, AIDS was, is and will continue to be primarily a heterosexual disease.

Russell Mills
Letter to the editor,
Scientific American (2/94)

320) Contrary to the stereotypic view of injecting drug users, many travel frequently, for business and pleasure. For instance, a recent study found that 62 percent of drug users from Berlin had injected drugs outside their home city in the past two years; 14 percent of users from New York City had injected outside the area in the past two years. [...] The fact that cocaine, heroin and related drugs are illegal encourages the use of injection. Severe statutory restrictions greatly increase the cost of illicit substances to nonmedical users. Injecting provides a way to economize. Injectable forms of opiates and coca are much more concentrated than traditional forms, such as opium and coca tea. Injection provides an intense and economical effect by maximizing the amount of drug that reaches the brain. People who sniff or smoke drugs say that if they inject they need only one third of the amount of the drug to maintain a habit.

Don C. Des Jarlais and Samuel R. Friedman
"AIDS and the Use of Injected Drugs"
Scientific American (2/94)

Note: "3089/898" is the designation I've given to the project of posting all my collected quotes, excerpts and ideas (3089 of them) in the remaining days of the Bush administration (of which there were 898 left when I began).

As of today, there are 776 days remaining in the administration of the worst President ever.