Long Covid, Literary Transcendence and Nursing School in My New Life

About 7 months ago I had been contracted to build stairs for my apartment complex. I work for my landlady occasionally. I did the project by myself hoisting very heavy timber, climbing up, and down ladders, holding heavy boards in place while screwing them together while standing on a ladder in about 3 days; ergot, it took quite a bit of physical strength, balance, and determination. I attribute this to my many years of yoga, healthy food, and exercise (outdoor life, biking, kayaking, hiking, and distantly snowboarding;) so why was it suddenly so hard to breath? Right after the project Covid Omicron hit around last Thanksgiving. Life changing. I hadn’t had nor needed Health Insurance for 8 years at least. This lead to my decision to apply at the Mental Institution I work at now with health insurance, and organically lead to my enrolling in classes towards Nursing school. I fit in more with the Nurses, and Psychiatrists than the other workers as I am a Jr. status English major at a Liberal Arts University (on a very long sabbatical.)

Covid had changed me. I felt mortality, and weakness for the first time in my life. I was 34 then, and I was gasping for each breath, and using my yoga breathing exercises to maintain my calm. I became okay with death. I accepted it. It’s the journey we all must take sometime. Accepting, and laying deep into my kayak as the current pulls me down the river Styx into the Greek pit where warriors go; torches of the young and strong being lit on the shores of my journey. We all take that trip and yoga breath helps control our emotions. Why miss the end of the movie freaking out about something that is inevitable? Stay calm and be present for the experience: where some never arrive.

I had fought through the initial sickness, but had remained foggy, dizzy, and distant. I had began my new life at the psych ward, but I had kept to myself. I wasn’t quick to get to know anyone. The Covid booster I had to take cleared some of the fog away. But I had a solid month of pure serenity. As far as the other workers knew, I was a lonely, anti-social old guy, and it was awesome. (Generally, I can’t keep the attention off of me in the more social crowds.) I loved my new life. It was a green aura. I was in an Early 1920s state of mind. I quit drinking coffee, and switched to tea; reading Modernist Poets like Yeats, Auden, Sassoon, and authors like Woolf, Joyce, and Stephen Crane living in a nice but modest English home with antique teal gables, flowers, and potato gardens. I could feel the dry boards, and earthen floors beneath my feet: bought and paid for. I could ignore the insanity of today’s politics, and consumerist advertisements. I didn’t have to buy the next hot, and new item being pushed. It was just tea, poetry, writing literary criticisms, and eating food from my earth. I could stay in this state of mind. No one to interrupt the calm, meditative process of reading the best authors who walked the earth, writing literary criticisms, heading in to work, fulfilling my duties, and repeat. I was in the fortress of stone walls and on the earthen floors of the great academicians of the ages way up in a castle in Appalachia where most do not know it ever existed. It was like synchronizing with myself in a past life: my ancestor who was me back then. Everything was clear and illuminated through that cool grassy, and mossy green haze and aura. It was the grassy path all writer’s, and poets have trudged since the Greeks. I could raise my head up high and look back through the ages. And then wham! Ren and Stimpy, my supervisor, and coworker decide they like me, because I do a lot of work for them. And here I am again, liked and beloved on the earth. Death was pleasant.

I have began my classes towards Nursing school. It’s good to back in academia. I had noticed I wasn’t full of energy like I usually am. I read an Article in last Sunday’s paper about Long Covid: fatigue after exercise, and other symptoms fit. They projected that I have 3 more months before it wears off completely. New, and fresh wind is coming! The spirits of my my teachers aid my cloud, nimbus, as I soar along on my board like the Silver Surfer. Life is good. Now where is my kayak?

Last updated June 01, 2023