Anus Porcupine Eyebrow

My eldest son, Ryan, has been very ill with flu for the last four days. In addition to being very dizzy and puking like a television, he was experiencing strange visual and cognitive hallucinations. On Wednesday, when I first brought him back from school, he asked me to put on some Grateful Dead and give him a book of modern art to look at. He figured if he was feeling trippy, he might as well enjoy himself.

Finally, we took him to the hospital emergency last night as he was getting very dehydrated and the flu wasn't going away. We were there for about six hours. I'm happy to report he's feeling much better today and is downstairs in the basement concocting some kind of recording with glasses filled with water. His hymn to rehydration, I guess.

While Ryan and I were waiting, I began writing this series of little verbal/visual haiku. I took a break when Beth (his mom, my wife) got there and read to us from Thomas King's fantastic short story collection, "A Short History of Indians in Canada," but continued after, as the IV dripped.

The image is so small that you have to click on it to see it, though I do like the idea of nano-visual haiku.

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It was one of those weeks: On the weekend, it was minus twenty or something and our furnace went out. It wasn't fixed until Monday night at which point we had a float in the basement. The next night, a pipe burst and we had to rip open drywall in the ceiling so that the plumber could repair it. By Wednesday, the furnace had broken down again. Then Ryan got sick. Thursday, the transmission went out on the car and that had to be fixed. Friday? I can't remember Friday, though I do remember slithering into bed with a bowl of rice pudding, a bottle of beer, and a DVD of The Maltese Falcon.