Tempting the Gods

I should have known better than to announce I had escaped the flu. It's got me by the throat now, (and, like Goldry Bluszco, by the nostrils.) I float along in a light fever, every once in a while dropping into a sinkhole of chills, spinning down the broad flow of the river, like Huck and Jim, supposedly on a mission of escape, but really drifting deeper and deeper.

Or perhaps I'm being punished for my incivilities, big and little. Hard to say.

My body is quite amazingly jacked. I know the names of all the muscles that are knotted and clenched up, now. Doesn't do me a lot of good, but it's always reassuring to have names for things -- it gives me a spurious sense of mastery.

And sinks down, down, like that sleep
When the dreamer seems to be
Weltering through eternity;
And the dim low line before
Of a dark and distant shore
Still recedes, as ever still
Longing with divided will,
But no power to seek or shun,
He is ever drifted on . . .

Dear Percy. It's you and me, kid. Listening to the tick of the clock and the slow faint rasp of Christmas's breath. One thirty.