“Listen you mugs: another day in the Big House, but me
and Bugsy are bustin’ out.”
(Sorry, but I just never had the nerve to write anything
like that. It’s liberating.)
Diane was here this morning to join me in my masked seclusion.
Misery loves company, but so does joy.
Tough day today after she left, and I dragged my brain
into this. Just when I think I have my mental house in order, a blip or two
pops up on the screen. Sure, it was another day of diagnostics, prognostics,
and pureed coffee, but I let my guard down and the emotions in. Not a good
idea.
The old standards apply: Thinking with my head, my
heart or my stomach? It makes a difference in how we problem-solve, how we cope,
how we imagine. Today my head did the driving for a while, when I lingered too
long with why this bad break I’ve been given. It's not a good question to ask myself on a bad day.
Don’t get me wrong: I’m a big fan of emotion. My wife’s
cats and some of my best friends are emotional, but drawing only from that wishing well is just as bad as thinking with any other disaffected organ. The best results
come from a mix of all. It’s a system of checks and balance that we all use,
even if sometimes we’re not aware of it.
Okay, enough hiding in the language. Just what is all
this high talk about? Bottom lines:
I feel that my body has betrayed me, and when I
confine myself to coming at life from that angle only, it’s hard to have any
forward motion.
True enough, my throat is painful, my burn is painful,
my swollen leg is painful, my intake and output are inside-out, and I’m so tired
of being tired and not having just one day (out of thirty; I won’t be greedy)
when something wasn’t hurting.
Just once on one day, when someone asks, “How are you?”
I want to be able to simply say “Fine. And you?”
Today, life was like this plate of pureed potatoes,
pureed beets, and pureed hot dogs. (No, I’m not complaining and I'm not being punished. I just must eat
this way until my throat clears, and the food, even mooshed into oblivion like
this, wasn’t bad.)
More as we go, El
