In glee-filled excitement I wrote yesterday about the bald eagle at White Rock Lake, yet I have nothing to show for it.  Still clawing my way up to the depths of sanity from a week with the flu means I am in no shape to take a walk.  I saw the eagle as I drove by the lake on my way to the vet to pick up a refill of Grendel‘s steroid prescription, a drive that seemed endless and difficult.

Trying to capture an image or two while safely driving had me holding the camera at arm’s length toward the passenger window.

What I ended up with is simple: two blurry shots of the inside of the car door and three blurry images of an army of trees racing by the window.

Sure, one photo showed a speck of smeared dark in the sky that could have been the eagle; it also could have been a sunspot or a UFO for all the clarity lacking in the pictures.

Yet I feel disappointment only insofar as having the eagle here for two weeks is a gift to Dallas and an event worth memorializing if possible, an opportunity I missed in my fugue state.  Perhaps at a later time if the bird remains in the area.

For now, though, I still have little strength or energy, little mental acuity, little interest in doing more than sleep.

Nevertheless, life had more to pile on my plate.

I awoke this morning with some kind of infection in my right eye, something that had sealed the lids shut overnight with all manner of unspeakable substances akin to cement and glue—only vastly different.  Gross, I know, but the swelling is worse than the ick factor: I look like someone punched me.  That won’t help my fledgling career in face modeling…

Woes and ailments aside, however, the world continues to spin.

My job remains overly demanding, one that has taken from me all but the most remote opportunities to write, to get out and walk, to photograph, to do anything really.  Given the economic condition of the planet, now is not the time to rock the boat as I see it, so I keep on keeping on.  And I hate it.

Something in me needs to be wild, carefree.  That something has been robbed and pillaged of its life for months on end, and in that raping of my inner self a death has neared so close that it can be tasted on the winds of my own breath.

To the darkest realms have I ventured, the places where demons fear to travel, and in those shadows I have caved beneath the weight of torment.

What a fragile thing I’ve become.  What a trembling sack of flesh.

Things will get better.  Isn’t that what we’re programmed to tell people suffering through hard times?  And do we ever believe it when we say it, or do we just say it because we feel we must say something?

Perhaps silence is better.