Strum
Jim awoke feeling well-done. Like he’d been turning on a rotisserie all night. The pain in his hip and thigh had kept him turning over, trying to find a comfortable position.
The rain on the tin roof was comforting, as always. He loved the sound as much as anyone.
But the dripping down the flu was disturbing. As always.
Twang
It was keeping time, alternately strumming and twanging. Irregular time.
There was something beautiful about it.
But Jim had installed the flu himself. The dripping sounded like failure.
Strum
The strumming and the twanging set off a song in his head. Lanie Lane was singing “You fell in lo-ove with a Cowboy. And that’s what you get”. One of his favourites.
It reminded him of snippets of his dream. Cowboys. Jim was trying to take over a farm, from some heavily armed cowboys. Or a heavily armed farm. There was a stables – with no sides. Well, half tall walls. With a trough on top. And lots of guns.
Dreaming of reasoning with cowboys to give up their guns. And their farm…
Twang
Or something like that. “And that’s what you get.”
The pain is in his ilio-tibial band and the perambulator muscle in his butt. Except he learned yesterday that the ITB doesn’t have any nerve ending, so it can’t feel pain. And he knows it’s not really called the perambulator muscle.
Jenny won’t tell him its proper name. She laughs as he keeps trying to guess it. Won’t tell him again. It’s been said too many times in the last month.
Strum
But he can picture it on the anatomy diagram. It’s not the procrastinator muscle? No. Can see it cutting horizontally across the glutes – straight through the middle of the buttock.
But she won’t tell.
In the hut with the tin roof, there’s no internet. So he can’t ask Dr Google.
“Just remember – you fell in lo-ove….”
Twang
The irregularity is because of surface tension. How long does it take for the drip to get big enough to break free?
Not as long when it starts raining harder.
Strum
In the dream, there was a little fellow, being cautioned about falling off the roof. Beware of getting a brain injury, they said.
Maybe a slight brain injury would make life less complicated, Jim thought.
But he would argue til the cows come home that he doesn’t make things complicated – they just are.
Twang
Jenny reckons arguing the cows home makes things unnecessarily complicated.
Jim knows better than to argue with that.
But he’d really like to remember the name of that muscle. Because that’s where the pain is coming from, even if he feels it along the ITB – which is really the quadriceps, since the ITB can’t feel pain.
The piriformis! That’s it.
Strum
Then the rain stops.
Koo koo kook ka ka ka kakakaka cacophony of kookaburras marks the start of the day
But there’s yet another twang…