I was afraid of a chindi.
We thought to walk the city trail WSW of us. It leads from Sam’s Club east past the County Fairgrounds, the Fire Station, and the Community Center. It lies along part of a Frisbee golf course.
Early on, the path goes behind the Kingston. After some five years there, we greeted some of Mom’s last hours. We had talked about the walk. That night, I had hard dreams. We scrapped the walk.
The Frisbee course starts far up at Avenida de las Campañas. Would a mile and a half of disc basket obstacles disarm a chindi?
As I age, I get more paranoid over each ache and pain. Old farts fear mortality. A hair caught in a brush or a slow-healing scrape: skin cancer. Eek! (Smirk at it.)
What a pain in the ass: go on. Constipation hints colorectal; so does diarrhea. (Sit on it.) Headache: brain tumor? (Knock on it.) Losing a pen or forgetting the date: ooo…dementia! (Think on it.) A runny nose… well, it’s not.
Over half a century ago, a favored English teacher gave me a favorite poem. In “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”, T. S. Eliot wrote,
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,
And in short, I was afraid.
Decades passed: I reviewed this blog. “Writing as a hobby: read it or don’t.” 393 posts since 2006. Inane, routine, political, and so on. Now, writing as a sloth: every month or so.
“Writer’s block”: word prune? Hemingway gave anal tips. Short sentences, short first paragraphs, vigorous English, positive and not negative. Then in “Don’t Make Me Think,” Steve Krug. “Get rid of half the words on each page, then get rid of half of what’s left.” And someone said, “Better to remain silent and seem foolish than to speak and remove all doubt.” Perfect: shhh!
But “essentials to happiness” were hints from Joseph Addison. “Something to do, something to love, and something to hope for.” I spend a lot of danged time sitting on my fat ass playing solitaire. Do something? Where’s the hobby? I forget. And in short, I am afraid.
To escape the chindi, the (app finger) pen is mightier than the sword.
A touch of memory. (A good change from checking my turds for black spots.) I may remember how to try. Let the want come before the need.
¡BoogaBooga!