Yesterday I returned from 17 days in Burma, partaking of village life. I ate the food  that was graciously offered to me and I drank the water and I felt all right—until I felt like hell.

Today I have a full-on tropical malady: fever, chills, soar throat, tubercular cough, Burma belly. To top it all off, my left leg—previously broken—went numb between my ankle and mid-calf during a 17-hour train ride from Yangon to Mandalay. If ever there was a day for giving myself a fashion hall pass and stepping out to lunch in yoga pants, today’s the day.

The best I could do is peel the cool gel patch off my forehead right before these pics were snapped.

And because a security guard at Suvarnabhumi Airport threw my over-ounced Kiehl’s sunscreen in the trash on my way to Burma–the land of pulverized-tree-bark-as-sunscreen–I’ve renewed my fashion love affair with the parasol.

When you feel like shleb, swap out your sweats for yoga pants and you can at least be a shleb with a silhouette.

yoga pants: Lululemon; shirt: James Perse; sandals: Gizeh Birkenstocks; earrings: lava from Burma, made in Laos; Navajo turquoise bracelet: the rez; scarf: Russian Market, Phnom Penh; hand-painted parasol: Ancient Siam

And many thanks to my cell phone photographer for feeding me Paracetamol and putting up with feverish me!

Being the neo-Luddite that I am, I just managed to accidentally erase the photos I took for today’s post. Thank goodness I have backup. And by backup I mean some old skool photos from an external hard drive, confirming that I have been criss-crossing the globe in the cherry dress I wore in last week’s post–SNAPSHOTS FROM THE IRRETRIEVABLE–for over a decade.

Here I am studying at Cambridge in the same Free People dress. I think I’m all of 24. Acrylic fibers must have the half-life of plutonium.

And here I am at the Bruneau Canyon overlook in Idaho circa 2000. I like to wear my favorite clothes until they disintegrate, at which time I find a way to work them into a quilt. And just for kicks, because I’m in the thick of photo library nostalgia right now, an ancient pic of myself on a long-forgotten LA beach by my favorite photographer and pal, Lydia Burkhalter:

Gosh I miss those cherry red Asics Tigers! Check out the ghost surfers behind my head. I hope everyone is enjoying that summer feeling, and I promise to be back to the future in next week’s post.