Catch a Falling Star

I woke up alive this morning. We also have a new, more human president. Today there is reason to be cautiously optimistic… Wow! That’s a new feeling for me!

Being from small-town, rural America, I have to celebrate how much the new president will be good for farmers, the rural economy, public education, and the environment. It will take time to repair the damage, but at least no more intentional damage will be done.

We…

if we can allow ourselves to be united in the work going forward, can focus on the simple joys of being human and alive. We have given too much to greed and avarice recently, and now, we must take a fair share of it back.

We need to decide if we are going to live with the drawbridge down and the city gate open, or will we be the kind of people who want the drawbridge up and boiling oil heating in vats atop the city walls?

We desperately need to heal from the pandemic in ways that make sense and that provably save more lives.

We need to sing more songs.

And we need to laugh more, and joke more, and smile at cats more… well, take ourselves less seriously, at least.

My stupid old head is acting up in very strange ways. I am not depressed or anything. But I think I may have Parkinson’s Disease just like my father before me.

I have been reading up on Parkinson’s since my father was diagnosed with it four years ago. I have learned enough about it to think I may have it without absolutely proving I have Munchausen Syndrome or am simply a very bad hypochondriac. When I thought I had certain conditions before and went to the doctor about symptoms, most of the the time I was right.

Last night I had massive problems with motor control. My legs kept kicking and randomly jerking all night long, especially the calf muscles below both knees. I have had similar random-movement jerking of my shoulder muscles in my upper back and sudden, painful uncontrolled stretching of the muscles in my lower arms. I don’t know why they call it a Charlie horse, but Chuck has been living in my arms for a while. I have banged against brick walls with my hands and elbows at particularly inopportune times, and came away with bruises for my trouble. Walking has increasingly become the same stumbling shuffle I observed in my father a couple or years ago. It is bad enough that my dog has been complaining that I don’t keep pace when she’s walking me on her leash.

My talking dog has even been involved in the strange hallucinations and partial visions that I have been having. It is a common thing for Parkinson’s sufferers to see people they know who aren’t really there. And my sightings of the ghost dog, or the ghost dog’s disembodied walking back end are that same kind of visions that Parkinson’s patients often report.

Today, while watching voting-tally updates, I kept blacking out, leading to brief, vivid dreams of people I don’t know and have never seen before saying a weird, random sentence to me or to each other. Like the portly Chinese woman with lots of powdered make-up and bright red lips saying, “You shouldn’t even be thinking about tigers!” Followed by me being startled awake.

The awakeness-startling is itself a problem. I keep hearing hammer blows knocking on the outside walls of the house near my bedroom window. And that is on the second story, high enough to realistically be declared hammer safe. The noise has to actually be coming into my stupid head from the stupid inside.

I know I should be going to the doctor to find out for sure. But Covid is out there in a very big way, especially in Texas doctors’ waiting rooms. Since the disease is incurable if I have it, it can certainly wait until after the pandemic is over. In the meantime, writing this post is becoming difficult, and life has become an even more complex adventure.

Now we face a moment of decision. I keep hearing messages from the media that the Pumpkinhead President will steal the election with various strategies. I saw video of the Trumpkins in white pickups going after a blue Biden Campaign bus. A Trumpkin spokes-monkey said on television yesterday that the Trumpists would “Steal back” the election after it was over because of the Supreme Court, recently packed by Republican hypocrisy. I cast my vote already. I did it without catching Covid.

But, cynicism aside, I have always believed in the American people doing what is right in the end. I don’t understand why we let an obvious criminal take over our government for four years. Or why we are allowing him to compete in the current election. But it seems there is more than one criminal who didn’t really win the popular vote in power in our government. The foxes control the henhouse, and the keys to the henhouse door. I guess we must get on with things without making any more omelets.

I know this post is rambling and incoherent. But I am ill and upset with the state of the world in 2020. So, just go vote. And vote against the criminals… all of them. Maybe I will feel better in a couple of days. But probably not.

I recently finished and published a novel, The Wizard in His Keep. I have been working hard to get my books reviewed on Pubby. You have to review the books of others to get reviews. So, I have read a lot of very bad books, and a few really good ones. Yesterday I wrote the hardest essay on my blog that I have ever written. I had to explain to Facebook friends from high school how it was that I was sexually assaulted when I was ten in 1966, and yet they never heard about it until last Saturday.

My energy levels are at “cooling charcoal” right about now. Just in time to watch Trump steal the election next week and force me to give up all hope But with fireman Mickey’s help, I should be back on fire again soon..