Damn. I’m at that stage of brain rot where I really can’t figure out my bills anymore. I literally can no longer do it. I used to be a master of that stuff, had everything worked out a year in advance. Now it’s like handing a stack of papers to a chimpanzee. About the only thing I can do anymore is write. I do that really well. Apparently what’s left of my grey matter has adapted to drive me mad with hypergraphia, writing at five a.m. when I ought to be in bed. Not that mind that much. I get a lot of writing done that way. It’s weird, though, losing my sense of time. I know today, but before today and after today is pretty close to non-existent. I don’t have a week, I have trouble remembering the day of that week, I know the month only by the days we get paid. I just live blissfully day to day, each morning utterly new, devoid of the previous day and oblivious of the next.

This past Monday (I remember it was Monday, though that feels like yesterday, or maybe the day before, and actually, some of my devoted fans may recall, I thought it was Friday, i.e. today) I was noticing I was feeling stiff. Everything stiff. Like it needed loosening up. So I figured I’d run some items down the stairs the recycle bins. The night was just a tinge chilly, the breeze carried the scent of night blooming flowers, the moon bathed the deck and steps in a pasty light. It was gorgeous. I stood there a minute soaking it all in. Suddenly I realized I had not been outside the house in a week. Well, I had, a couple times, out on the deck for moments, maybe a minute or two in total. A minute or two in a whole week. I hadn’t noticed. I was busy the whole time, never bored. I was reading and writing and following the madness in Washington, I did chores and cooked and washed dishes. I had done laundry. I watched a whole mess of Alfred Hitchcock movies. But I had never left the house. A whole week had gone by and I didn’t even realize it.

A friend of mine has an epileptic cousin. You’re so different from him, she once told me. You have a day job and a writing gig and go all over the place and seem so in charge of your life. Which was true. It was a struggle, the epileptic damage was already afflicting me, but I hid it well, complained little and managed to keep very busy and productive. Not like her cousin, she said, who mostly stays in his room all day and never goes anywhere. The poor spastic bastard, I thought, thank god I’m not one of them. Most of us are, helpless and housebound and out of sight. Not me, though. Not back then. Funny how things just sneak up on you.