Archives for October 19, 2004

It smacked me down Saturday night, and I’ve been walking a monotonous circuit from bed to couch ever since. Thank goodness for OFOB, who has been on 24-hour call; Ned, who brought juice and The Hockey News (with Yzerman on the cover, no less!); and sweet, sweet television,* because I haven’t even been up to reading a good thriller (though Terry has, from the looks of his latest Almanac).

Tomorrow morning I’ll make every effort to get my achy, emptied self to work. Second thing on the agenda is blogging; I do have several posts in mind, but at the moment my head just feels too stuffed with buckshot to make much of them: I’m for bed. Look for me back around these parts in the late afternoon or evening, barring a total relapse.

*And you can guess what I’ve mostly been watching. Hey, these half-day-long baseball games are a real boon to the couch-bound and hockey-deprived. (A wee demographic, I grant you.)

“Depression was a sickness, they told him. The previous year he had been worried enough by symptoms of physical illness to visit his doctor and had come away with a series of warnings and prohibitions concerning diet, alcohol, tobacco–the usual nonsense. But paradoxically his efforts to comply had led him inexorably to ask himself why he was bothering; what was so bloody marvellous about this life he was trying to preserve. Such metaphysical speculations were entirely foreign to his make-up and their formulation now was light years from being precise and intellectual. It was just a feeling of hollowness at the centre, a reluctance to awaken from the safe blackness of sleep, a sense of life like a hair floating on dirty bath water, sinking imperceptibly, moment by moment, till a final, spinning gurgling rush carried it away.”

Reginald Hill, An April Shroud