BLAH
As I sat in my black stressless chair in my post Covid torpor I wondered what it was that made me unenthusiastic about doing anything and wondered if the rest of my life would be this way, an old man in an extended care bed nodding away my life as I‘ve seen so many old folks in retirement homes doing. A quick Covid end would almost be better.
But I wasn‘t sure it was Covid. I had just had a huge adventure for a month with every day being stimulating in a new way. This is almost the story of my life. All my life I‘ve escaped the routine of everyday life to travel with student groups in India or to visit Kathe‘s family in Germany and every time I‘ve returned to normal everyday American cultural life I have been flattened. The greatest culture shock in my life has been returning home to the expected and the ordinary, to the constraints of American culture. This happened most intensely after my two years in the Army in Germany when I had to fit back in again at home. But it has happened again and again. So I wondered if maybe this was what was happening here, it was simply a comedown from having such a stimulating trip for a month.
But in the end it seems much more likely that something in the Covid infection is what was flattening me, and two days later when this malaise suddenly vanished and the world seemed a beautiful place, I was sure it was Covid and nothing else, certainly not culture shock.
BILLYBABA’S WANDERING 