Once again, as the gonzo-man says, the bad disease is eating my brain – eating my soul. The spring / pre-spring hypochondriac negative spiral. Autumn is the psychic death, the pure death moment. Fight against it and the wall rises between eye and sky. And when the wall falls, dustless, only the deep sadness remains. But pre-spring / spring is the paranoid death agony: heavy breath, slow heart. Not even the golden narcissi and forsythia in the cold air can intervene. A few warm days may tease me. But only the flowing warmth / warm nights lays the ghost. Meanwhile the savage beast disease ramps and ravages.
            We are old familiars, me and the beast. Now I don’t even feel him inwardly, except the slow heart, the heavy breath. A certain dullness pervades the drains. Silence and mist. But clarity is a gift in any case. One has to focus on it to notice that it’s gone. And mornings without the leaping child are not strange. Even in good times, the acrobatic little genius is sometimes tired, sometimes distracted.
            What I notice is the listlessness. Lifting the hand becomes effort. As Lowell says, the mail piles up unopened. Clearing the sink or boiling water becomes an endless chore. Detached, I watch the beautiful deep spring purple of the hill in the post-rain with the white ragged edges of the clouds reaching down into the wooded folds, but it’s somebody else’s movie.

             I have learned all the tricks, such as they are. The beast is very large. An everywhere beast. Although, once one has seen him all naked in thegrand recovery scheme of things, he is also very particular. Protean, but particular. A very discrete beast. A very discreet beast. He chooses us carefully, apparently. Or so it would seem. It feels like I’m the only one. Others come out in the morning and seem to have no problem unlocking their cars, turning the key in the ignition.
            I don’t walk past him like the proverbial boy whistling past the graveyard. In the autumn, I fail to notice him till he hits the zenith. Like Dylan says, darkness at the break of noon. But this end-of-the-winter beast is the protean cloud of unfeeling. Numbness is his first and last name. And you are his middle initial.
            It’s easy enough. I just push the cart down the road, pray that the guy in the battered pickup truck from the grocery doesn’t drive by and notice. It’s all here. The lumpy bag-lady remnants of my life. Or so it seems. But stuff keeps disappearing. It’s unaccountable.
            First the left leg. Then the right leg. Brush your teeth. Etc. Etc.

             The only cure is no-cure. The indescribable magic of no-cure. He is my friend. Really. In the old days he tended to knock me down in the streets, throw me over the guardrail or into unmentionable situations. Strip me of reason and consciousness together so that I wound up under railroad bridges with a torn shirt. Now he just sits on my chest or follows me around and mocks my friends.
            I know his other name. He doesn’t want me to tell you, because it would be immodest. But once you know his other name, he’s your friend, whether he likes it or not. He can still swing a mean hammer. But since he’s also slightly mythical, the marks are not too visible. You try to look in the mirror – but this is his real trick. You see, he owns the mirror. But this is getting a tad close to his other name. Suffice it to say, that when the mirror bends and flows, it’s his work. So you learn to lift the edge of the mirror. The truth is, he is not too happy to have you looking at his naked self. He has some of your problems as well, of course. So you lift the edge of the mirror and look, and he backs off some.

            There. I’m starting to feel a bit better. But it’s not an equal match, to be honest. He was here first. So first of all, I guess, we have to acknowledge him and honor him in his place. I put up with him still because, when I can turn him over, he’s also my gift.