No better words describe how I feel at the moment than the title of this entry.

Several days ago I fell ill, quite ill, and progressively I fell through the chasm of darkness that spirals from wellness toward the depths of agony.

Head cold?  Flu?  Allergies?

I can’t know for certain what invader besets me at every turn, what vile fiend assaults my body with chills and aches and a nose bludgeoned to painful ends and a head feeling as though every second is yet a new bomb exploding inside it.

My voice left me days ago.

My energy remains a vacuous promise of times yet to arrive.

My ability to think rests within a befuddling fog of anguish and torment.

The black hole of infirmity vacuums to its core the very essence of me, robbing me of interest, intelligence, initiative, intensity, insight, influence, ideation and intrepidity.

What horror this place is.  What terrible darkness surrounds me.

And right in the middle of my recovery from a laptop meltdown that crippled my on-line activities and destroyed my comfortable creativity retreat.

Yet from the latter I have mostly recovered, mostly found my way from hobbled realm of makeshift complacency to a familiar home where I can limp along whilst completing the menagerie of work that remains undone.

But from the former?  I wonder if the suffering has yet to begin or if the suffering even now fades toward distant memories.