Shadows grow so long before my eyes
And they’re moving across the page–Peter Frampton/Baby, I Love Your Way
I can’t speak to what happens with a serious illness, thankfully, but on the rare occasions when I spend a few days of couch time, I find that time slows down a lot. It’s not that I’m bored, exactly, but it does get a little more difficult to keep myself occupied. When my brain slows down, so does everything else.
My usual at home hobbies would seem to be ideally suited to the sick bed. Reading, knitting, watching movies, listening to music, and writing are all sedentary activities. Any of them can be done right from the couch!
Except.
Well.
Cold medicine.
Even non-drowsy cold medicine makes me a little vacant. So I’ll read something un-challenging, or watch an old comedy. It’s nice, but it’s hard to keep track. Knitting anything remotely complicated involves a certain amount of counting and math, so that is out. Same for writing. It all gets a little too stream of conscious and odd. Not that it stops me from putting it out there, but…
It might sound like I’m complaining, but I’m not. There’s something to be said for having life pass more slowly. Of course, it will never move as slowly as it did in the first grade, when each tick of the clock on the last 5 minutes before recess seemed like an eternity. But it reminds me a lot of that. Like having an emptier mind makes everything else stop racing.
Cold medicines, or maybe it’s just the cold, also have the odd side effect of making me feel…disengaged. Or maybe invisible.
So, I find myself looking out the window a lot. Not really doing anything much. Watching yellow leaves fall onto the green grass. Watching the shadows move across the yard. If I’m writing during the day, it looks something like this:
Earlier today, I watched 3 leaves drift down, one by one, spinning around once in my office chair in between each leaf’s descent.
Exciting? Not very, but it’s the right speed for me today.