Healing strategy No. 1

My current state: Asthmatics can’t go bike riding. The minky blanket on the couch curled itself around me. Illness makes a person regress. I became my own mother and nurtured my sick inner child.

Movie of my choice: I watched A Good Woman on DVD. It's our current version of Oscar Wilde’s 1892 play Lady Windermere’s Fan. If seen as a cheesy film for older girls it’s harmless. What shocked me was connection between snobbish 19th century London society and 21st century upper-middle-class-urban life in Damascus. I remembered those elegantly-rigid Damascene lounge rooms from the casual objectivity of my Western life where nobody cares how we dress or what we say. I missed the sit-up-straight scrutiny where there’s always someone watching and gossiping about what they think they’re seeing. When I was over there my children told me I was different. I knew how to play the game. My scrutineers were never quite sure what they were seeing. The movie had an air of sadness and playfulness. That's what it's like in Damascus.

My writing tasks: Replaced by healing today.