The Long March

With E. out of town, I need to keep my spirits up through means other than spirits....

That's just clanking words together. It's easy to submit to apathy -- in dress, in personal hygiene, in rummaging around for le mot juste -- when it's just me and the cat on our own.

Poor cat can hardly wiggle, so old and arthritic is he. Just trying to keep him going until E. gets back. Mutual grief is still grief, but solitary grief is horror. (Clank. Clank.)

Back to my droopy spirits. Exercise is an antidote, so three out of the last four days I've walked around Lake Merritt, starting at our front door, which is a mile from the lake. I think I'm doing five total. It feels like five, which makes it exercise. That is, it feels like work, since my body is quite the load to tote.

So that's it. This post is like a promissory note. Now that I've said I'm walking, I'm committed to documenting it through photo and video. Today just past the boathouse where the lake tapers to a finger in front of the Kaiser building and the new Catholic cathedral (which looks like a cracker barrel) down through the trees I saw birds in the water. They were white egrets, perhaps two dozen, and they took wing, flying low across the lake, legs trailing.

My spirits improved, just for a minute there. But then you turn and there's no one to tell, no echo for the pleasure. Among other things love is a habit, one which I'd rather not break.