Happy Tuesday, everyone.  I guess this is, traditionally, the day of Mars, since the Spanish word for the day is “Martes”, which I think harkens back to the Latin name for the god of war (Mars…duh).

At times, I find it strange that there even ever was a god of war (mythically, I mean‒I know that there never was an actual god of war).  I guess, given the human race, it shouldn’t really surprise me.  Heck, I’ve even been led to understand that the good ol’ god o’ Abraham was originally a war god, but I have less provenance for that conclusion, so take it with a pillar of salt.

Incidentally, it’s also 7-11 in the American dating system, and that’s mildly amusing, given the name of the ubiquitous, quintessential “convenience store”.

As you might have noticed, I did not write a blog post yesterday.  Unfortunately, that’s not because I was dead, in case you were wondering.  I suspect death is, if not pleasant, at least not as unpleasant as the way I felt yesterday and the few days before (and is much how I feel today, though somewhat less so).

I started feeling ill on Saturday during the day, with that general achy soreness one feels when fighting an infection.  Then by Sunday I started having a modest fever, and yesterday I was just wiped out and in pain and my back pain was also acting up worse than usual.

I still don’t feel great today, but I need to go into the office before too much stuff gets backed up with which for me up to catch.  I’m not completely sure about the grammar of that last sentence, but I think you probably get my meaning.  I suppose it doesn’t much matter.

Anyway, I’m still under the weather, but I don’t have any symptoms that suggest contagion, so I’m going in.  I may have some low-level bacterial infection somewhere, but if so, it’s difficult to tell where without more localizing symptoms.  I suppose it’s possible I could have an infection in and around the hardware in my lower back, but I would expect the character of my back pain to change at least subtly in such a case, and it has not.

Maybe I just overdid things with my walking in the morning last week‒if my calculations are correct, I walked about 40 miles total, and in the reputedly hottest week on record, or something along those lines.  Maybe I just overexerted myself enough on too short notice to have given my body time to adjust.

If that’s the case, I may regret taking the days off yesterday and the day before.  But then again, it would be rather disappointing to walk myself into oblivion just locally.  How drab and dreary that would be.

I suppose, in a sense, such a thing would be appropriate for me.

So, all that and other lifestyle changes may have affected my resistance to some ailment, and maybe I’ve just been fighting some low-level virus or something.  If so, it doesn’t seem to be too horrible a one, or at least it’s not acutely too virulent.

It’s a bit sad to think, but I probably will die alone, when it happens.  Of course, in a sense, everyone dies alone.  Even if you die at the same time as lots of other people, perhaps in some massive catastrophe, you die alone, since it’s not as though you can share the experience with anyone else.

Of course, by that logic, everyone lives alone too.  But maybe that’s just an impression formed by someone who is probably on the autism spectrum and who has gone through a series of reversals* that have left him sundered, at least physically, from the people with whom he used to be able to connect.

Anyway, the point I guess I’m making is that there is something non-futile, or so it seems to me, in dying with your loved ones nearby, for you and sometimes even for them.  I was very disheartened to have arrived too late for my final visit with my father, and could only say goodbye to him after he had died.  I was at least there for my mother’s final day or so, and I think she was aware that I had come.  She was quite out of it, but she interacted with me some.  I tried to start reading The Chasm and the Collision to her, which I had just published not long before…I think.  My recollection may be faulty here.  I have the impression that she just missed reading that, and I think it would have been her favorite of my books.

I don’t think I would have wanted my parents ever to read Unanimity.  It’s just too dark.

I think I may take an Uber to the train this morning.  It’s a bad habit, I know, but I’m still a little wiped, and the prospect of walking to the bus and then from the bus to the train is mildly unpleasant.  If so, I’d better leave soon.  I may write more of this once I get there.

And that’s what I’m doing, just for a short while.  I don’t want to make the post too long, but I figured I’ll let you all know that I got to the train station, and that I even got on an earlier train than I was expecting given that fact, because that earlier train was running late.  That’s a slightly amusing bit of irony, I think.  But I have a weird sense of humor.

Anyway, I’m glad I took the Lyft (not an Uber; my apologies to the branding and marketing people at Lyft) because even walking down the stairs from the bridge over the tracks kind of wiped me out and made me feel a bit breathless.  I wonder if I could have a low-grade lower respiratory infection without having a cough.  It does happen.  A low enough respiratory infection often doesn’t trigger the cough reflex; that tends to involve the upper airways.

Oh, well, who cares?  I’m probably fine, and if I’m not, well, it’s not the worst thing that could happen.  The only people really relying on me are doing so for business purposes, and those purposes can all be fairly easily adjusted.  I’m certainly not crucial or essential for anyone or anything.

Anyway, that’s enough for now.  I have over a thousand words of gibberish down so far, written on my phone.  I think for tomorrow I’ll try to remember to bring the laptop with me; my thumbs are getting sore.

Again, I hope you all have a happy “day of the god of war”, contradictory though that may seem.  Contradictions can be okay.  And at the same time, they can’t actually exist; they can only be spoken (or written, etc.) they can never be instantiated.

*I suppose it must have been an odd number of reversals, since an even number would have left me going in the original direction, and that’s clearly not the case.