I Woke Up in the Wee Hours This Morning But Couldn’t Get out of Bed
I was so weak! I kept thinking that maybe my heart was failing, except it wasn’t hurting. I thought it might be from long-term Covid, or one of the new strains. But it didn’t have that familiar brain-fog that Covid gave me.
My Twitter tag is @FearlessFast. My motorcycling buddies gave me that name. We were canyon racers, going insanely fast on public roads. Not unlike Isle of Man, but not quite so extreme. I rode a big BMW motorcycle if my wife was on back, it was called the “flying brick.” It was heavy and fast and I had sticky racing tires on it. When riding solo, I had a Kawasaki 250. The engine, with a displacement equal to a lawn mower’s, was tuned and modified for 20,000 rpms and had a painfully loud exhaust, and tires that were so sticky I got traction on dirt roads.
Canyon racers face risks like deer bolting out of the woods, oil on the road surface, road rage from guys in 4x4 jacked up pickups, but not cops. The cops know they can’t catch us.
I’m fearless because I don’t fear dying. I stare it down regularly, but also I’m resigned. When I do die, that’ll be the end and I’ll never have to think about it again. That’s the trick to living a good life. You live and survive and enjoy every minute you can. You don’t wait for something good to happen: it’s all good, one way or another.
Americans seem to think I have a strange philosophy. But it’s them with their Protestant roots who seem dedicated to living life in misery, in mortal fear of the death that could claim them at any time, and the risk of Hell, or worse, Heaven — and a stupid cloud to stay on for eternity with no toilet or toilet paper.
I’d rather go splat with a motorcycle or slide down a glacier into the jumbled rocks at the bottom. I’ve done both at one time or another but never quite died. That can happen when you’re a survivor and sneer at death.
Speaking of such things, what does any of it have to do with my unexplained weakness today? Well, I may have figured it out.
It’s pretty cheap to live here in Las Tablas, Panama. After I pay rent I have $550 to last me for a month. I have to eat a lot of calories — I’ve always been that way. But most months I end up short of food near the end of the month, so this time I bought many kilos of rice, lentils, green split peas, yuca root and fresh veges, and some chicken and pork for protein (and the pork for also making lard, my favorite fat).
So as evening approached, I got to thinking that even though I seem able to digest all these varied seeds and vegetables, maybe they are inadequate in fat content or protein. They should be okay for protein with their varied amino acids, but maybe I’m somehow wrong. Anyway, I’m adding more of my high-protein sopa to the grainy foods and adding a dollop of lard to each meal. And I’m eating twice what I’d been eating, and now I seem to have my mind and my energy back.
I’ve always read and written about diet, so at least I was open to thinking about the subject. I know I’m a carnivore, there is no doubt about that. Maybe I’ll raise my own chickens: I could buy a flock (of chicks) for $20. They get very big very fast, and also, of course, half of them lay eggs. Neighbors don’t care — there really aren’t any rules here in rural Panama that I’ve noticed, so maybe that’s what I’ll do. I’m surrounded by cows, but aside from petting them at times I never think about killing one. Where would I store a ton of cow meat? Plus I grew up in California, where there was still a strong opinion by the ranchers and sheriffs that cattle poachers should be hanged.
So that’s my story. I’ve now lived another day and my energy is better.
I’m still trying to figure out how to earn a couple hundred dollars a month extra here in Panama. I could teach math and science in an expat area, but I’d have to move to do that. And otherwise, even if I used remote teaching tools, nobody including Medium knows how to send money to Panama. (Hint: Western Union.)
Fred
Oh, a postscript here:
I read, many decades ago, about some novelists who were talking to each other about the idea of narrating their own deaths when that time came. That’s why I wrote this little piece — I was thinking I was done for. I think it came close, and I ain’t out of the woods quite yet. But see, I’m cheerful.
