Catatonia

Hope not ever to see Heaven. I have come to lead you to the other shore; into eternal darkness; into fire and into ice.
--Dante Alighieri, Inferno

Rather catatonic this morning. Had a dream just before waking wherein I had gotten onto some kind of bridge in a vehicle propelled by one's own feet (Flintstones style), but I was having a terrible time making the thing move forward at a respectable clip, thus holding up impatient traffic behind me. There was no way to move out of the road, so I had to just keep struggling forward, frustrated and embarrassed at my inability to function.

Upon awakening, I found that this was not really much of a fiction, for my entire body was stiff and aching as I kind of slithered myself to the side of the bed and plopped my feet onto the floor, feeling as I  moved toward the outer rooms of the house that I was still struggling along quite as incompetently as in the dream.

Later on in the morning, I received a text message from my ex-wife saying that she had secured for me a ticket to go to Brunei and Langkawi, wherever those places may be. Are you kidding me? I'm doing well just to get to Starbucks once a day! I strongly suspect that the next time I take a trip, it will be back to America to die. Brunei? It sounds more like one of the outer rings of hell than like a vacation--not that there's anything wrong with the country. The problem, of course, is with me and my deteriorating physical and mental state. Maybe if I could be sent there in a box packed with Styrofoam balls and then stored in a refrigerator like a block of cheese until the vacation was over ... maybe. I can think, at present, of no other practicable method.

The wide world loses its bloom and sweetness, it seems, as one's small world withers and sours.