Until They Don't
Pisces (February 18 - March 19): A surprise encounter or sudden change in circumstances will soon have you questioning the status quo. A stunning email or the last message you ever expected to hear on your answering machine are possibilities. Don't count on anything. It'll be another three weeks or so before the fat lady finally sings.
Sunday. This is a joke. It may be a wake up kind of a joke - get thy act together - but it's a joke. I didn't mention yesterday, when I got out of bed, my right knee hurt. What had I done to my right knee? I don't remember having banged it against anything, although I could have and, since the pain went by quickly, forgot it just as quickly, the brain seeing no reason to make an imprint. OK, I seem to talk too much about maladies here, I didn't think piling on another malady made any sense and, since the thing allowed me to walk, albeit slowly, I let it rest.
This morning I got up and couldn't walk. Couldn't get into the kitchen to feed Ms. Emmy, who found this most upsetting behavior on my part. A test hobble here, a test hobble there. Ms. Emmy was fed. The morning meds were consumed. Well, the important ones, anyway, we'll get to the vitamins and such later. No way I'm going to photograph a parade this morning or else I'd be there now.
A drive much later than usual to breakfast, a parking space available at a somewhat scary distance, a walk both to and from the car with the gate of an old guy with a walker who can't quite make it across the walk before the light changes, the drivers in their cars staring, tight lipped, as he shuffles to the curb.
This is a joke. A pain and a joke. The knee feels like crap, although I assume it will get better pretty soon, there's no discoloration or swelling involved other than a here again, there again, round pink spot. Just, you know, the knee letting me know it's there and life will not be good until “there” goes somewhere else. Coughs, knees, headaches. I've become a cartoon. Reality. Here in Oakland? Who would have thought.
Later. Not that much later, approaching two, the knee somewhat better, but walking (hobbling) from the bedroom to the living room is still a major project. I did have a large breakfast - pork chops (one instead of two, but still quite a bit), eggs, country potatoes (reddish skins chopped into squares and browned - a Russet variety?), toast and coffee. The kind of breakfast most people eat maybe once a week to avoid weighing three hundred pounds.
Why so much? I'd eaten little yesterday beyond breakfast and knew I'd had nowhere near a full day's calories, something that's been happening recently far too often even with the occasional ice cream bout, so this morning I ate. A logical decision rather than a demanding urge - HUNGER - coming express mail from where? The stomach? The ancient areas of the brain that kept us alive as salamanders back in the climb out of the ooze days demanding that we eat, eat, eat pretty much anything that popped in front our our nose?
If find this existence weird here in the sunny no earthquakes (yet) part of the world, what must it be like elsewhere in the rubble - strong arm government - volcano ash - earthquake areas of the planet? Hmm. So I'll smile (ruefully, there's no way around it) when we say life is a joke. The Bob Dylan meaning of “...life is but a joke”, although the Sarah Palin variety works just as well.
Later still. The knee keeps improving. Still a hobble, a careful hobble so as not to set the foot on the floor in other than exactly the right spot, but nothing like it was this morning. This is good. The cough is also better, the other aspects of the flu or cold or whatever it was seem to be finally leaving after what has become two weeks.
I'm not particularly unhappy about any of this, I seem to take life as it comes, probably too passively and to a fault. I say I whine, but I suspect there are times I should whine not so much more, but louder. Put some passion in it. Have some passion in it. Rage against the dying light and all that. But, you know, the sun is shining, the day is warm, I had a good night's sleep last night. There have been some complicating factors, the knee and such, but they'll pass. They'll always pass until they don't.
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