I woke up a bit better today and the sky was clear so I headed north to Squamish to see the eagles soaring. Drove into a cloud and it was raining a bit, but it was exactly the right thing to do. After the first 20 minutes walking, despite getting wet, I felt so much better. Back home again not long before dark, the wellness still holds.

Wahooooo!

I did go on my little drive. That was lovely, in part because I just like driving, but also because at the end of it I received a gift of a new e-reader. Wahoooo! Guess what I did when I got home?

But still. I was really tired. So I went to bed at 7PM (no lie) and slept for about 12 hours. Feel much better today.

And it’s one of those sunny, warm September days, with just a hint of wood smoke and someone, somewhere baking with cinnamon. My daughter says it’s the kind of day that makes you want to whip out a knife and attack local pumpkins.

Headache, nausea, sore body, throat itchy blahs.

At noonish, ate 3 cherries and drank some hot lemon tea and went back to bed.

At about 14:00 took the dog out, met more animal needs (cats get huuuuuuuuuungry when ignored), and ate some steamed carrots and green beans. Went back to bed.

At 16:02 took daughter to the grocery store (drove, me still in my night clothes). She went to the Starbuck’s inside the store and got me an Americano (here called a Canadiano). Hot black, a little sweet with nutmeg. She brought that out to the car for me to drink before she went back to get the groceries.

By 16:17 I felt a bit better, the headache finally receding, the nausea tamped. (Think I might be addicted?) So now, at 17:52 I am editing poetry and preparing for a submission.

The day has begun.

I’m going out for a walk.

Yesterday was good. I had a croissant and latte and my favourite patisserie very shortly after it opened at 7AM. During the day I finished the novel, saw the movie (it was good), went on 2 nice but short walks, had broccoli and hummus for dinner and the weather was really wonderful. And there was no pain.

Then there is today. I spent all morning just coping with stomach discomfort, to have it turn into downright pain this afternoon. I have a headache and have retreated to my bed. These are minor discomforts really, especially compared to the pain I had prior to surgery. What is really getting to me (I think) is the fear that all these minor things will add up to something horrible like another infection, and ultimately, more surgery.

They probably won’t of course, and I know that, but it’s the fear. It is, I suppose, part of the returning to health process. And realistically I am only just begun with that. It will be months yet before I can really expect any kind of normalcy. Oh well, at least I have no shortage of books and nice walks.

The last couple of days have been slow and rather painful, in a dull niggling way. I’m tired of being ill, I suppose; tired of carrying myself instead of just walking around carrying nothing but my skin. It’s the price one pays for age and its attendant memory, I suppose.

That disconnect: the massive red of azalea occupying the whole horizon, that sea of rose swamping the nose, sometimes none of this is big enough to stomp down that small sequestered memory. And when that it true, when the hands of that memory reach out past its bars, the whole world folds up under the tiny thumb of its dark past.

It’s not regret, nor even a refusal of pain, its just a wiring problem. When that circuit locks, everything runs through the darkness and no joy, no awe can take first chair. But then, one day, it just lifts and the huge blue, is again the whole sky.

O the life we lead, we of chemical nature.

Wahooooooooo!

Like I said, meh…

At least I live in a time and place where there are antibiotics available that I can afford. This would be a rather unpleasant, but pretty certain, way to die otherwise.

Still no poetry. And I feel the lack of it. I also haven’t attended to the page in the last two days either. Someone I know says that if he skips more than a day of exercise he feels it as a need, a desire to move and pull against gravity.  I feel the same kind of thing I think, but for me it is the pull that words can exert when one tries to torque them in the pursuit of some hidden understanding lurking across the threshold of a word’s intelligibility.

Anyway, I have doctor appointments tomorrow so part of the day will be a rest break at a coffee shop so have baby-computer will write. Right now, I’m just going to try and sleep and let go of the idea that I did nothing all day and that this a was bad thing, a really, really bad thing to do – which part of me insists is so.