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Is today the day I write that profound line that someone will confuse with Marcus Aurelius' stoicism and will be quoted for centuries to come? I'm afraid not. How can I compete with Trump. When told that 200,000 had died from COVID-19, he observed as he peered over the battlefield covered with dead bodies, "It is what it is."

How can anyone compete with Trump when he's filled with steroids and like a great general is predicting that in the near future the enemy will be defeated and normalcy will be ours? Like David dueling Goliath, Trump wrestled the behemoth and vanquished it. So he claims, but he's so saturated with medications that Frankenstein may be more human than this creature who stalks us with a voracious appetite for more cadavers. The scientists predict that millions will follow the president's example and in the next four months 200,000 more will litter the sanguine fields. 

Three weeks from today we will elect a new president, flip the Senate and increase the Democrat's majority numbers in the House. That's the prognostication based on the current numbers, but the election, like my profound statement, isn't happening today. And if Trump loses, what terror will he unleash in the three months until the late January inauguration?

I have hope, but I must base this belief on something more tangible than politics. I went to visit my old friend Dr. Polyphemous Pangloss and he took out enough blood to run 20 tests. A doctor can look down your throat and squeeze your balls, but your blood doesn't lie. I went for a chest X-ray. For several months I have had a pestering cough and shortness of breath. Nothing that would keep me out of the lineup, but I need several more years to add to the records that I have set so that they will never be broken.

The results will arrive in a few days. I know it is something Dr. Pangloss doesn't like to do, but regardless of my PSA numbers, he needs to stick his finger up my ass and check my prostate. I had my second  colonoscopy about five years ago so my ass may be in for yet another rude intrusion. Raised in the Sacramento and Brownsville sun, I have a rough spot or two that a dermatologist must scrutinize. I took my flu and pneumonia shots two weeks ago, but there is a new two-shot treatment for shingles. I thought the one I had several years ago sufficed but apparently not.

Living, or more accurately lingering, longer becomes an expensive investment, but that doesn't mean the end is going to be any less painless. We can solve our political problems, but our physical problems we can only postpone. I am finishing my writing earlier today. I have made plans to meet Estanislao at eight to play tennis. The clock just struck one so I'll have plenty of time to strum my guitar, study French and Portuguese, continue with the short stories by the Chilean author Robert Bolaño and take a nap.

"Delta" Dave Handelman, spends eight hours each day playing his guitar. Then he goes for a long bike ride before settling down for an evening of reading. Being an amateur historian, he is certain that the second wave of Coronavirus is going to be as virulent as the second wave of the Spanish Flu. While we're in the eye of the hurricane, I should pay him a visit tomorrow. I miss his conversation on the back porch beneath trees that I remember three-feet high when they were planted more than four decades ago.

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