Now is the hot winter of our discontent.

I was generally unwell, mucus pouring from the usual places, but it wasn’t really onerous except for the persistent headache. I slept mostly, or tried to in shifts. A few hours and the hurt would wake me again. Mid-afternoon, I took a big dose for it, and another bath. I began to turn the corner.

Appetite was returning and the pantry was nearly bare. So I had reason to go into town, and I thought getting up and getting out would help anyway. I made it down before the setting of the sun. A fast burrito to stave off hunger. A trip to the grocery, to keep it away for longer.

The checkout clerk was depressed about her life and in particular the fact that she would be at work until after midnight.

I said something like this to her: “It’s a shame, that we get to be this age, having worked all our lives, and still have to put up with this shit.”

She started to tell me eagerly about her plan to escape these sorry facts. But other people came up behind in her line, so she demurred. I said, “We decided just this week that my wife and I are going back to driving team.”

She probably didn’t even know what the hell I was talking about, or how that could possibly help.

I’m not sure it will.

I think the ‘decision’ will stick anyway in some form. I’ve already given up in my heart on the certification, though not the learning.

Heading back I thought about how going sedentary was the wrong turn humanity made, and maybe the wrong turn I made too, or so it’s begun to seem.

Getting back behind the wheel of a big truck is not a palliative return to hunting and gathering by a long shot.

Maybe a return to ceaseless movement for a time is the best course regardless. It doesn’t line up in the logical sense at all. But at the level of myth, it works without flaw.

I am sick, of the village, the city-state.