He was not in a good mood.  He wasn’t sure why.

The day had dawned pretty “normally”, not a beautiful day but not dreary, just, perhaps a bit hazy, probably because of ashes from the nearby quiescent volcano.  The haze obscured the four nearby snowclad peaks which often made the day interesting.

It was a Sunday, a sort of quiet Sunday.  His wife’s domestic assistant had arrived and both were engaged in the weekly apartment cleanup but because of a crick in his back (for reasons unknown), he was not being very helpful, more of a hindrance really, and the crick kept him from sitting without a stinging pain, so writing or researching did not seem great ideas.  Perhaps bedrest would help, but he resented having to curtail his activities.

Damned uncooperative body!!!

He did have books to read, and baseball was finally back, albeit only spring training.  Second games today, a split squad, but the Yankees’ manager, a nice guy, was awful during yesterday’s opening day game.  He seemed to be using spring training to practice awful managing; the first game had been lost 7 to 4.  It was as though the terrible three in charge were setting the stage for finding the silver lining in too many losses, and that did not help his mood.

Damned uncooperative Yankees, he despised Hal and the Cash Man, and felt a bit bad about his disdain for Aaron (bleeping, at least in Boston and now for very different reasons, in New York) Boone, but he was so damned inept as a manager.  The terrible trio certainly had Yankees’ fans polarized, the cheerleaders-no-matter-what on one side, and those desperate to maintain classical Yankees’ traditions on the other (hoping that failing to make the grade was not replacing winning-at-all-costs as the norm).

What to do, what to do? 

Damned uncooperative back, or was it his left hip.  He had tennis on Tuesday and insisted on getting better before then but his body seemed set on teaching him a lesson on its proper use, and the consequences of its abuse.  Maybe bed rest was really called for.  He did have a few books he was reading.  He liked to read several books concurrently as the themes and scenes and dialogue mixed in his mind to create a composite image, and that, in turn, helped with his own creativity.  But he did not write in bed.

He hated pills but had asked his wife for a few.,  She was a beautiful and highly competent chemical engineer and knew a good deal about just about everything, but not in a know-it-all fashion.  He was a pretty lucky guy.  But his damned back, or was it his hip.  The pain seemed to enjoy confusing him as well.

Damn, damn, triple damn.
_______

© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2023; all rights reserved.  Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.

Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet and, in this case, the protagonist) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen).  Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales.  He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies).  However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta and cosmogony.  He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.