This is not going to be a “poor me” post.  It will be a fascination with what’s happening to me in the moment.

I’ve often thought that it’s fine to write about what was true at some point in the past but it’s far cooler to talk about NOW.

I suspect food poisoning but I don’t know.  The nausea came first last night and then the fever.  I kept muttering stuff to myself –  incomprehensible then, unremembered now.

My brain says that I woke up 10 or 12 times last night.  My feet and hands were freezing, my body burning up.  Dizzy then, still dizzy now.  Maybe it would be kinder to myself not to write today … but here I am stumbling forward.

It seemed to take me forever this morning to pull myself out of bed.  I could feel in my bones that I needed to get out of the apartment.  I didn’t want to lie in bed all day, a little lump of protoplasm.

Everything was so slow.  I had trouble buttoning my shirt.  I wear compression stockings because of a blood clot I had, but today I looked at them and knew I didn’t have the strength to get them on.  I gazed at the stairs down from my apartment and wondered how I could climb them later in the day.

I like having breakfast in the cafeteria of the HEMA department store.  I’ve always climbed the 25 or so steps to the second floor.  “I don’t need to take the elevator!”  Except today I did.  Thank God I got my ego out of the way.  “This is a first, Bruce.  Why not celebrate it?”

My group cello lesson is today at 4:00.  I e-mailed my teacher to say I’m not coming.  I can’t imagine being able to hold the bow, much less passionately playing the pieces.

Oh! I’m sitting IZY Coffee writing this. A class of young kids wearing their neon green vests just came bouncing by. I smiled. I’m far from being 12-years-old and there’s no bounce in me right now. C’est la vie.

(Wow.  I’m wearing out, wearing down.  There’s not much of me left but I’m pleased that I’m writing about all this.  And the end is near …)

I’ve been looking forward to the play reading tonight at Gregor Samsa.  It’s so much fun to change clothes.  But how, oh how, would I follow the flow of the lines spoken by us?  How would I figure how to say certain words on the fly?

Writing is easy for me.  Following a script is not.  So unless there’s some divine rehabilitation during the next few hours, I won’t be going.  (Sigh)

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Now … for those steps up to my apartment