Sector Nine

Cottage bound; 400 square feet and little else. Everything within an unsteady hop or two. No crutches inside.

No car to use, can't engage the clutch on Daisy without putting everyone on the roads around in danger so she's loaned out to others who can use it so long as they limit the "hard brakes" in order for Progressive to give me a safe driver discount in t minus 28 days.

El Camino, albeit loaned with good intent and being a kind gesture, crapped out and left me sweaty, stinky and stranded.

All I've got is Roger Miller spinning on vinyl reminding me that the last word in lonesome is me.

I've got Stein and Steinbeck, 3 Lives and The Winter of our Discontent.

I've got C.S. and Chesterton, Perelandra and The Everlasting Man (way over my head but I appreciate his dry humor nonetheless).

I've got an overdue DVD on Pete Seeger, blacklisted and somewhat happily banished to his cabin in the woods but still spreading the message on his banjo: "This machine surrounds hate and forces it to surrender", causing me to think out loud that "Gee, it sure would be swell if musicians would follow the example of Seeger and Guthrie and still come up with saying such as this"

I've got my trusty recliner in which I mentally count down the days to the next podiatrist appointment (less than 4 now) while fighting the impulse to free my left leg from the bondage that prohibits the relieving of annoying and persistent itches, interspersed with evening games of backgammon with Matt and pestering Penny the dog who runs in fear from crutches like a herd of gazelles runs from a pride of lions in the African veldt.