The Flu

• 10 Days Without Cigarette
• Is This Your Final Recovery?

I so much had the desire to start a juice fast which would turn into a water only fast, back on about January 3rd, that I actually did so.

All Better?

Could it have been the November Winds I had been feeling? Did I sense that I had been exposed to the flu virus in this particular 2018 strain, and did my intuition tell me that, should I immediately embark upon a juice/water fast, so I could flush the thing out of my system, bolstering my immune system and giving the virus an environment unfavorable to its proliferation, in the process.
Here it is, 12 days later, and I finally feel like I am over the thing.

Right Now

There were "false" recoveries along the way. I had even gone out to busk a few days ago, feeling as though I might have recovered enough to do so. That was the night that had me feeling so weak  by the time I had walked 9 blocks to the trolley after being rained out, that I had begged the driver to let me ride home for free.
Skeezing Etiquette 101
It is less of a skeeze to ask the trolley driver for a free ride home when you are broke than it is to ask a random stranger for the dollar and 25 cents "for the trolley," to get money to give the driver.
The reasons may be obvious, but they are:
First, you remove one level of credibility, in that it is obvious to the driver what you are trying to skeeze; whereas the random tourist is not sure what you are going to do with the dollar, and could feel like they are possibly being decieved.
Second, the driver of the trolley is probably not (as was the case here) a random stranger to you, if you are a regular rider of the thing and it isn't his first night on the job.
Third, it isn't costing the driver anything out of his pocket to let you ride on the thing; whereas the random tourist is out a dollar and 25 cents...

10 Days Without Cigarette

I suppose if anything is going to live on in history from this particular epoch in my life, then why not the fact that I have voluntarily given up cigarettes for a 10 day period -the first such success in not smoking due to sheer will power, probably since 2014. That time, I had done what turned out to be an 18 day water fast, I believe it was. I was living under the Natchez steamboats wharf at the time, and the black capped night heron had just arrived, so that would make it about July...

I had wanted to do an "abstinence from everything" type of water only fast this time, which is kind of the whole point of a water "only" fast.

It was the flu that had thrown a monkey wrench into things.

The question arose of whether or not this was the best time for a water fast, when the body might "need" things like chicken soup to fight off the virus.

And it was the fact that I had unwittingly bought a bunch of pain relief stuff at the dollar store that had a hefty dose of caffeine as its "pain reducer aid" ingredient, which rendered mute the point of whether or not I should try to give up coffee as well as cigarettes; and maybe migrate towards becoming an herbal tea drinker in the long run...one who doesn't smoke cigarettes.

I had made that ill-advised decision to eat a ham and cheese po-boy sandwich, and then went on to develop a fever, in which delusional state, I began to see the ham and cheese sandwich as being inside myself, constipating me so as to trap the pocket of flu virus where it could live off of ham and cheese and prosper.
As soon as I was able, I walked to the Family Dollar store, where I bought a quart of prune juice, thanking God that I had at least enough money on my food stamp card to do so.

I drank most of it and then waited for the glorious expulsion of the ham and cheese po-boy from my bowels. I pictured it coming out of me black, and maybe even with a skull and cross bones of the skull of  a small rat perhaps.

My fever was probably around 102. There were reports of people dying from the flu.

I usually don't get what "everyone else" gets, due to my unusual diet. But I had eaten a ham and cheese po-boy, for Pete's sake. It had been sitting atop a trash can on a frigid night, making it seem even more probable that it might still be good.

I may have been slated to come down with the flu anyways that evening, but it was easy for me, as I lay there and my temperature rose, to blame it on the po-boy. "I'll bet someone was cleaning out their car and found the thing under a seat, where it had been for weeks, reaching temperatures close to 100 degrees along the way..."

Bobby, my weed guy had been stellar, in that he too had chosen the new year as a time of fasting and cleansing and was living off of things like watermelon, and other melons in the morning, and then was having low fat meals of chicken in the evenings. He had suggested "chicken soup," as a remedy for my flu, but had also given me some chicken. He also gave me some melon, the benefits of which were palpable.

Still, the flu went and then came back, more than once during the past 12 days that I have had it.

This is a situation where, had I been homeless, I just would have lain in my sleeping back, maybe after having hung around the CVS waiting for someone to come along and buy some flu remedy type of stuff, that I could have asked them to sell me a few of out of.

It would have been the valley of the shadow of death, to be sure. Laying in a sleeping bag under a wharf and suffering.  Knowing that I was going to have to wash all the sweat out of the sleeping bag and all my clothes, as soon as I felt up to the task, just to get that flu smell out of it all -but not before having gone out and busked for money to put in the laundry machines...

It could have been depressing. Or maybe not. Maybe it is more depressing sitting around worrying about such things befalling oneself than it is to have them happen. Maybe the latter is a rallying cry and the only way for the tough to get going...

MLK Day

It is 49 degrees on the Monday night. It has been Martin Luther King day, and thus some people have had the day off. I can't recall if this is a good busking holiday...

I have just had my first shot of kratom in about the same 10 days as the cigarette abstinence has been going on. This doesn't leave much still on the list of things to give up.

Bobby gave me about 4 dollars earlier in the day. He understands that I have not been making any money at all the past couple weeks.

Blackstar.

Another thing that can mess with you when you have a 103 degree fever scrambling your thoughts is, well, here is a good example.

David Bowie recently passed away and left behind a couple of works, one of which being the album "Blackstar."

My friend Bobby has put an amplifier on lay away for me at the Guitar Center.

He kind of wants to see me get back on my feet and go out and make a bit of money that I could contribute towards the electric guitar and amp, so that he wouldn't be just giving me the stuff, 100%; kind of like The Lord, in that he want's to help those who help themselves.

But, the fact that one of the amps that he on the verge of buying for me is a "Blackstar" brand and that he (Bobby) bears such a resemblance to the last recreation of himself affected by David Bowie (inset) is just more fodder for the delirious mind of a flu sufferer, one who has always lived with one foot in the astral plane and the other on a banana peel.

Watching the Bowie documentary on Bobby's huge TV with him sitting right there a spitting image of the guy; smoking some of his medicinal grade marijuana and then letting the symbolism do its thing, made for an interesting experience. To say that "Blackstar," by David Bowie is stuck in my head right now would be pretty accurate.
Anything is better than the 5 different radio stations playing at the same time of my fevered state of a few days ago, though....