Time Not to Write

When living in a fever dream like the one that caught me on Thursday. Then I went to sleep for some 24 hours and woke up mired in a muddy, viscous molasses of weariness, my head hovering high above me on a spiderweb string. Throat closed, ears ringing, inertia, chills and sticky sweat. Sick days are days of nothing to me. I hate the sensation of hours evaporating, free time I didn't earn and haven't the energy to use. I've taken this flu badly, worn myself further by fighting it, not fighting it, fighting it some more.

I read horse blogs much of Saturday, if only to be up out of bed. So many words and ways given to trying to understand them, given to trying to know them. The varied accounts spooled into a stream of consciousness, into one pulse, heavier than mine, quicker than mine: the horse, the horse, the horse. I'd give up a lot to know that any horse understood me, never mind that I thought I understood any of them.

I tried to spend some time studying the anatomy of the hoof. I have research to do for Saxony, another farrier to find. Feel bruised thinking that when it was my turn to find a new farrier, I brought in one that ended up doing on hack jobs on our horses. Learning what's not the right thing doesn't point the way to what is the right thing. How can I ask Do you know what you are doing? when I don't know what they are doing? Trying to learn what they are doing becomes impossible when words and images wave and ripple before me on the screen, like cramming for a calculus test at the eleventh hour when I don't even know basic math.

I watched two of my favorite football teams make it to the Super Bowl, but it happened in a haze, barely breaking through the indifference that illness sometimes brings.

I have an awareness of the cats during this confinement. They claim me, sleep on me, surround me, carry on with their lives. I like them all, like how they assume I am there to suit their needs. Sleeping dully beneath their weight, I feel glad they are getting something useful out of me.

I can see through the windows it's a lovely day, my kind of January day. The grey flanks of the winter sky lay soft, enclosing, sheltering, windless against the snow. I want to be out, like a horse.