Please read this as a "mood" piece...
On this dingy, climatically unpleasant day in late October, I am sitting here at my nearest Starbucks, driven here by Melissa after the health care authorities at the hospital enjunctioned me against driving for a while. The business is slack and the workers are right now inactive, standing around talking. I don't like the corporate music being piped through above me, but the cinnamon dolce latte Melissa ordered for me is very good. I remember years ago when I could walk into this place and sit at a high black-top rectangular study table that resembled high school chemisty lab, quickly lighting into my reading and writing. Coffee shops used to be good places to go to just sit and think, but in the most recent years I've usually felt the urge to get up and leave after only a few minutes there. There's this creepy sense of being under someone else's negative scrutiny, and I'd rather be in a place that accommodates my desired privacy without any feeling of an impending deadline for the stay. So sitting comfortably at home, my head leaning back on a soft pillow, seems more attractive: maybe I can slip into a nice nap! On the other hand, why not just pass up on Starbucks and sit at the dining room table from here on? With my medical issues I don't see circumstances improving in the near future. With me and my afflictions, at least for these recent times, my negative reactions have arisen from their treatment and not directly from the afflictions themselves. So here I am at Starbucks, a recently-turned 69 year old man with a horribly hideous surgical scar streaking across the top of my head, just barely under the cover of hair. Welcome, Halloween! I am grateful to be able to be at home, finally released from hospital confinement. I can still exercise, which I do through no-impact movements that raise my heart rate to zone-like levels: that's good. Well, I am committed to a light shower later on today, and then it's the couch for me. I really deeply love and appreciate my dear Melissa, as well as our sweet, silly uptight mixed-breed rescue dog Daisy, who I call "Little Pee Wee"...
