The Burned Out Carcass of a Once Beautiful Thing

I spotted this a few blocks from my mother's house.  A burned out car sitting in the driveway.  I have no idea what happened, but the flames apparently damaged part of the house, too.  I had my GFX 50Sii with me set to panoramic mode.  I stopped and made the picture. 

That is pretty much how I feel this morning.  Burned out.  The injuries from my accident are bothering me much.  I can't get the doctor to respond to my calls for a gel shot into my knee.  I'm anxious and depressed and don't even know if it is possible to be both at once.  I'm sure apnea is killing me.  I keep reading about the symptoms of dementia that happen before the disease is obvious.  Everything I read tells me that I am doomed.  But I know that already.  One step closer.  

"Next."

Tennessee will be in town this week.  So will my mountain buddy from Cali, I think.  I feel like shit.  I look like shit.  How do I psyche myself up for their visits?  

Red told me she was coming to town, but I never heard from her.  

Mr. Tree called to tell me it is time to clear my trees and shrubs.  I said no, but then I began to worry.  I sent him a message yesterday to say yes.  

I need to have my car towed to the shop.  

I fear I will never get to enjoy anything again.  

At home, the scanner isn't working right.  It will only scan two images at a time, not the whole lot that I put in.  I can't figure out why, but now the scanning takes much longer.  There is much to scan.  They are images of a much better life.  

I took a muscle relaxer and a Tylenol last night, so I am very muzzy this morning. 

Fitzgerald once remarked, "Show me a hero, and I'll show you a tragedy."  That surprised me.  I've always thought of Fitzgerald as a stylist but never a thinker.  The opposite is not true, however.  

"Show me a schlemiel and I'll show you a comedy," doesn't work.  Show me a schlemiel, though, and I'll show you something pathetic.  The difference is in the distance the two must fall. 

Funny enough, I read that quote in a sports column written about Lionel Messi's last World Cup game.  It made me think of Housman's "To an Athlete Dying Young."

The time you won your town the race
We chaired you through the market-place;
Man and boy stood cheering by,
And home we brought you shoulder-high.

Today, the road all runners come,
Shoulder-high we bring you home,
And set you at your threshold down,
Townsman of a stiller town.

Smart lad, to slip betimes away
From fields where glory does not stay,
And early though the laurel grows
It withers quicker than the rose.

Eyes the shady night has shut
Cannot see the record cut,
And silence sounds no worse than cheers
After earth has stopped the ears.

Now you will not swell the rout
Of lads that wore their honours out,
Runners whom renown outran
And the name died before the man.

So set, before its echoes fade,
The fleet foot on the sill of shade,
And hold to the low lintel up
The still-defended challenge-cup.

And round that early-laurelled head
Will flock to gaze the strengthless dead,
And find unwithered on its curls
The garland briefer than a girl’s.

I must go now and take my mother to another one of an almost endless series of doctor's appointments.  After showering with her hearing aids in, they aren't working so well.  My own head is a slop bucket of dying snakes.  I can't imagine what is in her own.