THE COVID CRAZIES 3 My days blend, merge, blur, one into the other. Tomorrow feels like today. Today feels like last year. I plummet into the ennui, mindlessness, of Netflix streaming a concoction of confections designed to numb my brain and supposedly heal the pain of lacking hugs, kisses, touch, from others not just touching…
THE COVID CRAZIES TOO I’ve got the Lock Down, Crack Down, Smack Down, Blues.
Anyhow. I have moved in my transition to actually being ABLE to eat frickin something to going toward VEGAN or VEGETARIAN diets. In Canmore, there is a wonderful whole food market called Nutters. I shop there, preferably during seniors hour, for my staples — Soy free, Gluten free Teriaky Sauce; GF Bread, Rice flour and…
It is 4 in the morning. I am listening to the rain piss down on the stone tiles outside my room. The balcony door is open a foot and the 27 degree Celsius, muggy tropic air wafts in. I have been awake since 2 a.m. And, IT is happening again. IT being the return of…
P is for PTSD The taxi pulled up in front of my daughter’s home. I was waiting on the porch at the side. Shivering in the cold. My breath making clouds of cold steam. I hurried to the taxi, cane in left hand, small travelling bag in right hand. I opened the right front passenger…
Preface I started this memoir when I was a patient on Unit 58, Neuro Rehabilitation, of the Foothills Medical Center in Calgary, Alberta. Sunday, September nineteenth, twenty ten I wrote these lines, “Dr. Manfred von Neumann was a prick. A very capable prick but a prick nonetheless. Manny, as he was known to his peers.” I…
I last saw Brandi when she was swimming with me in the VRRI pool. It was over the noon hour, January sixth, twenty eleven. She made the appointment for the swim at our last session just before Christmas twenty ten. Brandi was the Recreation Therapist assigned to me by the CAR program. I still remember…
I looked up into chocolate eyes. Like mine. But much darker. A face soft, smooth, rounded. Shortish hair curled in disarray. She spoke. “Hi. Are you Lyle?” “Yes.” She said, “My name is Monick. I am assigned as your Occupational Therapist. Do you know what Occupational Therapy entails?” “No.” “The official party line is that…
I pulled my Oldsmobile into the small dirt parking lot. I would come here often when I wanted to feel lighter, happier. The parking lot was reached by a very potholed dirt road running off of fourteenth street in Calgary’s northwest. The parking lot overlooked the district of Huntington Hills where I had lived aeons…
Here is what I wrote in my diary July 20, 2010. I have been in severe pain every day since i came back from the mountains 3 weeks ago. Basically the pain starts at 2 or 3 in the morning and goes for 12 to 14 hours. I’m not sure how long I can sit…