“[A]nd in a real dark night of the soul it is always three o’clock in the morning, day after day.” Fitzgerald.

Tens of thousands of people around the world are dying of COVID-19 and there is no room on this earth for lesser complaints.

Yet in sickness we become our own island, surrounded by the pain of others but having to concentrate first on getting ourselves better. In my condition I can still send money to help others and I have been doing so, but that good is only for other people. In the meantime, I continue to get more and more mentally and physically tired.

Wrenching my back last month was an awakening experience. I threw out my back several years ago and got better within a week or two. This is different.

It seems I injured a nerve in my lower back but somehow that nerve is connected to others. I have radiating pain down to the sole of my left foot, pulsing throughout my left leg. Yet, I can walk two miles or more without much discomfort. How odd. It’s just when I move the wrong way that my life collapses into screaming pain.

After weeks of any irritating condition you’d think I’d get impatient and angry at it. That’s not happening. I don’t have any energy to work up frustration or anger. I’m just numb and tired. As Dylan once penned, “I don’t have the strength to get up and take another shot — And my best friend, my doctor, won’t even say what it is I’ve got.”

This is much like the anxiety I have had since the third grade or my nightmares which started in October of 1988. Eventually, after decades of pursuing treatments, you resign yourself to your life. These problems have become chronic. Even the best boxers reach a point where they can’t get off the canvas any more. There’s only so many knockdowns you can take before you tell the ref to call it.

But I have always come back from physical problems and healed quickly. This is truly new for me and I don’t know how to handle it. Again, it comes down to a lack of physical and mental energy. My world has been reduced to waiting for the dawn which leaves things visually and therefore mentally brighter. Being awake from midnight to six in the morning for weeks on end is like dwelling in a dark dungeon.

I am so sad for everyone who has died.

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I continue releasing my photos into the public domain through Wikipedia Commons. I think this is the best looking mariposite pig carving you will see all day. My collection, unknown artist:

Link here:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mariposite_Carving_of_a_Pig.jpg (external link)