…for the paucity of posts in the last few weeks. Thanks to everyone who keeps coming back, and especially to those who have donated a little to the Keep-Hilary-Alive funds. Things have been quite difficult, and it’s not over yet. I’ve found a place in the vicinity of Perugia, but the search has drained my physical resources to the point where I can no longer distinguish between being exhausted and being ill. I begged off another trip up there this weekend because I simply could not do it again. I’ve got a couple of weeks to rest, and then have to go up to Norcia to pack up the house. I’ll move my things out and into the spare room in the place in P. but can’t live there until after the middle of April, so after that it’s back down to Lazio to live out of a suitcase for a few more weeks.

Meanwhile, I’m going to be guzzling vitamin supplements and eating nothing but fish and meat and vegetables to try to gain back some semblance of functional health. I’ve come to the stage in the perpetual exhaustion that my old normally-dormant epilepsy has come back; I had a visit from my old childhood pal the other day, something I don’t normally get nowadays unless I’ve got a furious fever. The result was spending most of Tuesday in bed. Stress and exhaustion are having other weird effects. I nearly walked straight into a wall the other day at a train station somewhere…

So, this is what being “worried sick” means… good to know.

I had a long conversation with my bloggie-buddie Steve Skojec last night, and we both noted that quite a few of the people whose voices have been strongest against the Regime are currently undergoing massive and crushing personal and domestic crises right now. And that these are making it nearly impossible to write or think clearly. We just don’t have the extra juice to pay attention to anything but the immediate necessities of survival at the moment. We were wondering if this is no mere coincidence.

It’s incredibly frustrating to be watching the entire catastrophe unfolding and being more or less unable to fulfill any useful role in it all. But at the moment, it seems that writing is just not really possible. I hope it will get better soon and as of last weekend I think the end of the tunnel has finally come into view. But it seems like a combination of stress, exhaustion, the long-term effects of chemo/surgery, creeping depression and earthquake-induced homelessness has come crashing down on me at last. So I guess we can call this a sick note. I’ll just have to take a break.

So, hold that thought.

HJMW

UPDATE: a note about comments. I’ve shut off commenting for all posts older than 14 days. The only reason for this is that in the last few days I’ve been targeted by a Russian spammer on a bunch of older posts that had high numbers. And the guy is pouring hundreds of spams an hour. I’ve tried de-posting some of them, but he just goes to the next one on his list and I can’t keep up. Comments are still mostly moderated by hand one at a time whenever I have time, and I’ve just had to go through 2500 today and have just been bulk-dumping them 20 at a time. So if your comment has not been posted, this is why.

We’ll see if the new thing deters this guy.

~