Still alive

At this stage of my life, I must get out and walk at least a mile every day, or my tendons start to calcify and lock up, and every step turns into an agonizing process in which a little homunculus scurries about in my blood vessels and uses a pointy hammer to shatter the crystallized pulleys and levers and get the joints moving again. It’s not fun. It’s better if I make a daily effort to keep the limbs supple and well-oiled, and then everything runs smoothly all the time.

My next life-stage? I’ll either be constantly moving, restlessly shark-like, or I’ll be frozen stonily, a kind of Morris Giant. In the latter event, at least my wife will be able to sell me to a freak show, or even charge admission to see the terrifying antediluvian hominid.

Anyway, so I have to take a lubricating constitutional every single day. One catch today is that we’re in the waning phases of a blizzard…but that does not stop me. I don my layered apparel and brave the fierce assault of the frozen north lest I face the dreaded tendon-freeze. External frigidity is better than internal rigidity.

So I wandered through the drifting snow, waded over roads empty of all but snow-clearing vehicles, fought against chilling wind-blasts, felt the ice build up in my beard, was occasionally blinded by flurries stirred up by the fitful gusts, to end up here, in a coffee shop, thawing. Also typing as an act of procrastination — when I finish this, I have to swaddle, zip, and button up and stagger out again to fight my way home again. Right now I’m alive and limber and warm, but that could change. Everything could change. Nothing ever stays the same and it’s always bracing to do battle with one thing or another.

The alternative is that career as freak-show statue, I suppose, which at least sounds restful.