Good News; Bad News

Despite a recent significant hiatus in my reading, I am about half-way through The Aeneid and enjoying it far more than even the greatest Science Fiction novel. However, I am reading the Fagles edition and definitely feel it is too modern and popularized for my taste. I did study classical literature at university and developed a preference  for the more classical translations. Thus I naturally lean towards Richard Lattimore than John Fagles.

Of course this is squishy ground since I do stoop to reading any translation. If I were a purist (or elitist) I suppose I would read The Aeneid in Latin as Virgil intended; however, both my Latin and Greek suck (despite a concentrated one quarter cram course in both languages).

So that’s the good news: suggesting that I will finish The Aeneid before the end of the month. However, the bad news (and some followup good news).

The ambulance came again and rushed me off to the hospital. Yes, the cycle of pneumonia continues but this time my physical body was  in good shape so the tedium of bed confinement, the tree of intravenous bags of murky liquids, and the ever-present beeping of the merciless monitors was tolerable. Spit-spot and the antibiotics wiped out the bad lung-goop and I escaped death once again.

The followup good news I that this time they went a bit farther, even to the extent of jamming a television cable deep in my throat (yes, I gagged a lot but soon adjusted my breathing a swallow to power through the aggravation and even enjoyed watching my swallow and humming skills on the TV). So the apparent cause of my pneumonias is gastric reflex: I swallow okay, despite the stroke, but it tends to come back up for an encore which allows food, etc. to be sucking into my lungs where it rots and eventually the banshee comes to escort me to the hospital for another game of chess.

The bad news here was that I was not doing well in my old age; the good news is that I left the hospital with a fistful of instructions on what to do and what not to do to improve my chances of a long and interesting end-game.

With a little dedication I will lower my sugar, stay out of the hospital, and certainly finish The Aeneid.