Aurel's laurels

I sometimes feel that my working life takes place in one of these awful cubicles. It is actually very varied, but varied in the same way every day and every day I take the same streetcars , buses and trains, often with the same drivers and somehow I fall into the tramlines of regulated existence and disappear from myself. I have just been off for three weeks of sick leave and those weeks were very different. I got up before dawn and went for long walks, with and without the charming dog, saw the dawn, different each day, and looked at raw nature down by the lake. One day I saw about sixty Canada geese in a huge flight above my head, a long line not yet in V formation, heading higher for the rising sun and making enough noise to drown out the garbage trucks. The air at lake side is especially oxygenated, fresh and with a hint of a fishy smell. Very bracing. I drank gallons of tea, smoked cigarettes, a pipe and one cigar, lost weight and gained lean muscle. I shaved my beard differently and took lots of pictures on my cell phone. I had a demo film editing program and assembled short films of the cell phone pictures. I even posted these on face book and one on You Tube. I had a good hypo manic time, but returned to work chastened by the thought that I could not spend five weeks at home and then go off to France for two weeks. I had to get better for the journey. In the last week at home, Cathy slipped and fell very hard on her hip and I had to sober up to be there for her in her pain. Ten days ago I quit smoking again.