Dora is my sister

Cervical pain is bizarre. So apparently this is what this is. Not anything auto-immune, which I'm not sure I've really come to terms with identifying with, not sure if that category fits me, or if I'm someone who just gets burnt out from too much travel/stress/work easily. But I guess this terrible burning (and switching sides) shoulder pain is due to masked neck pain, a pinched nerve, probably C5, my neck pain persistent because of my almost entirely fused spine. Growing more persistent with age. The doctor wouldn't give me drugs. I thought it'd be nice for him to give me drugs. He told me I should watch myself with Ibuprofen. I mean, I usually take the natural path, but sometimes I'd like something woozy, to make being a semi-invalid more recreational, interesting. The doctor is Swiss, I believe. He owns the integrative health clinic I go to, which isn't especially integrative except they sell vitamins and have an acupuncturist on staff. I am always drawn to, for some reason, the model of the white male doctor-patriarch with the Euro accent who will calmly tell me it's nothing, dear. It's like my obsession with the modernists - my desire to have been treated in a Swiss sanitorium or by a fancy French nerve doctor. My favorite passage in Heroines, which is a retread from when it was a mss. of semi-fiction, Mad Wife, deals with my original French doctor in Chicago, Dr. Bruno. I won't quote it here.

I tried to joke with the doctor yesterday. I said - Am I just Dora, doc? Is this all psychogenic? I mean, neck paralysis, that's so cliche right? He had no idea what the fuck I was talking about, or he didn't find me amusing, or most likely both. 

John and I are going to the ballet tonight. A traveling version of Snow White with costumes designed by Gaultier. We have always loved to see dance together - yet it's been difficult for me to shower lately. In so many ways, the idea of showering and transforming myself into a glamorous enough comely enough person wearing a dress and heels seems too much right now.

I've started to work on publicity for Heroines. It's a strange balancing act. In Heroines I write so much about celebrating the illegitimate, the outsider, and yet the process of coming up with a list of who receives review copies is all about fetishizing the legitimate, whatever that is. If you have read my blog for a while, and really feel you'd like to write about Heroines for a publication, online or whatever, or your fairly well-trafficked blog, or interview me for somewhere, please contact me. That last sentence made me feel dirty.