Tony was on his way out the door, our door because he comes to our home. A Rolfer and almost qualified osteopath, he has been treating me for, gosh, soon it will be almost 10 years. Good thing about Tony. With all my neuromuscular challenges, I have managed to assemble an informal team of healers. The cast has shifted over the years, of course. But Tony is among the long-running stars. Healing, it turns out, is just that. Medicine is something else. Rolfing and osteopathy are something else. Read more [...]

George Packer, one of America's greatest journalists, sent me off to sleep last night… and I wasn't ready. A staff writer for the Atlantic, he had done a beautifully concise and articulated feature on the staggering destruction done to our federal agencies under Trump. Few things can be more disquieting than this, the dismantling of a social structure.  It has been said before, tirelessly. But there are legions of people who devote themselves to government service. They keep track of air Read more [...]

My mood swings do surprise me these days. But I think it's like wandering down a darkened hallway, seeing something moving and realizing it's your reflection in a wall mirror. This has always been happening. Now in my period of at-home constancy, it has become more apparent. And what a ride it is. I woke up this morning feeling quite rested. Got up and began to feel a certain dread. Another day of queasiness. As though something bad was about to happen. Which it was. Something bad is always about Read more [...]

It's 9 PM and I began knocking things off shelves. Inadvertently. I don't mean to do it, but it keeps happening. An elbow hitting a book, the wheelchair bumping into the bedside table and hurling allergy pills on the carpet. As it happens, I get increasingly angry. And small red warning lights are going off in the psyche. I have had it. Another day is coming to an end and maybe my life as well. The latter being a safe bet, lives having a universal way of coming to an end. But mortality seems Read more [...]

These days everything impinges on me. I resent all commitments. Yet I have almost none. In short, this is a time of madness. I am mad in every sense of the word. At times I think, "is this it? The way it ends?" Meaning that if it doesn't end intubated on the coronavirus ward of a local hospital, will my last days be spent at home, staring at the tomatoes in my greenhouse? And if tomato-staring death is to be mine, does it really matter? And from another, doubtless better, perspective…since Read more [...]