Shundo David Haye – Zen Priest

If you had asked me what I wanted for Christmas I would’ve said some fine weather, a chance to ride my bike, watch the pile-up of soccer fixtures that happens at this time of the year in England, to relax, and catch up on a few chores (I still had the thick end of 5000 photographs to edit, which I like to do before the end of the year, plus I have been at least three issues behind with the New Yorker since we moved into our new place in the summer, so I was hoping to get much of that done).

What I would not have chosen was to suddenly get sick again. Unlike my condition a couple of weeks ago where I just felt inexplicably tired and lethargic, on Sunday I went from having a tickle in my throat in the morning to having a temperature of over 100 in the evening and a raging headache. I slept for the best part of twelve hours that night with that strange delusionary sleep when you are slightly feverish, but the headache was most prominent part of it, except for a few moments when I moved and suddenly it went away. The next day my temperature dipped to 97 and then went back up to 99-something. On Monday night, having cancelled all my groups for the day, and the Tuesday morning meditation, I also crashed early and slept another twelve hours, with less headache but more coughing.

Who knows where I got it: it might have been heading out to watch some festive jazz on Friday night. It might have been getting wet on the way down to the farmers’ market on Saturday morning. It might have been at the roam on Saturday afternoon. The forecast was for the same as the previous Saturday, with rain tapering off in the early afternoon. This time however it didn’t; it might not have been enough rain to for the meteorologists to call it rain but nevertheless we got pretty damp and then a few times it got a little stronger and we didn’t even finish the route that I had intended. Afterwards, I went into Japantown to pick up a few little extra presents and the air in the mall was fusty with the crowds, and so that might have been the most likely source.

In any case by Sunday I was feeling starting to feel rotten. Thankfully again it wasn’t Covid. The weather has continued to be damp and grey for days now; since this is the kind of conditions that killed most of my Cornish ancestors through tuberculosis, I think I’m congenitally not inclined to enjoy it. Resting on Monday I got cold to the bone several times in our house which was not necessarily very cold. But that’s just something that happens when I don’t move. Thankfully Ruth cooked me a delicious Filipino dish (she had already promised to cook all week – generally I cook and she cleans) which made me feel a lot better for a while, though I don’t have much of an appetite. I’ll see how I do when we break out the Christmas pudding and mince pies.