When I call in sick to work, do the math after I hang up the phone, there is a moment where I grin slightly despite the uncomfortable congestion in my chest and head. I have just added five days to the three days I already had off, giving me a total of eight consecutive days [...]
It is almost October and it is, oddly, still sunny and moderately warm here in Seattle. But the leaves are starting to turn, it is getting cooler at night, and it is almost time to store the Ducati in the kitchen again. Soon I’ll have to stop wearing my Converse, stop wearing t-shirts, stop leaving [...]
I have, it would appear, managed to get myself rather sick. This has included, but is not limited to, the following symptoms: fever, canker sores, malaise, more fever, chest congestion, sinus infection, even more fever. This could, I realize, be related to the flu, but I’m not very fond of going to the doctor so [...]
A conversation with my patient:
Me: Are you allergic to anything?
Patient: Men! Like my husband over there.
When the television is gone, the electronic components, too, I slide my loveseat into that now-empty space, stand just off to the side, lean against the wall and take a deep breath. I can feel a sensation of openness now, and I haven’t felt this since I moved here so many years ago. Then I [...]
When I start to wake up in the morning, when I start to feel my body pull out of sleep—like I am ascending from a dive several hundred feet beneath sea level—there is a conscious moment when I know that I can push myself back down, back under water, back into dreams. My body, my [...]
Outside my truck window, I can see that the sky is black, but the lights along the highway skew this aspect of my vision with a bit of a gray blur. It takes no more than a quick moment of concentrated effort and I can see a few constellations that I know, but I don’t [...]
Most bars, I know, open at noon. I know this partly because I have gone into bars at noon for work, but more so because I find myself wandering into bars at noon just in general. When I developed a love of beer some eight years ago, I also developed a love of small bars [...]
When I start to run, when my bare feet hit the sand, I can feel that ache, that pain, in the lateral side of my right foot. When I ran eight miles some weeks ago, this pain seeped its way into the marrow of my bone and found intermittent residence. It is here with me [...]
Today was windy, which felt oddly unusual as I wandered the streets for hours with a dear friend. It rained on and off, and this delighted me to no end, but it did not seem to please my friend, who would prefer that the sun last a little longer, that the rain not find residence [...]