It’s time to write another “oh, God, help me…I hate living in a damaged-back prison cell” piece. I haven’t written one since Tuesday, 2.19, or two days after I fell flat on my back in the Sierra Nevadas, a few miles above Lone Pine.

A friend wrote me a few minutes ago, asking if I’m out of the “pain dungeon.” I replied that I’m “35% or 40% out but still in it. Still painful, still a huge ache in my soul, just not as much as before.”

I’m living in a kind of minimum-security prison with a fucking cane and 10 or 15 hydrocodone pills. (Thanks to the HE reader who slipped me the narcotic remedies.) I hate it so much. It’s so spiritually suffocating. I’ve been in excellent shape all my life — loose and limber, hiking, lifting this or that, running here and there, riding on the hog, no stiffness and aches whatsoever. And now, suddenly, I’m 89 years old. It’s fucking awful.

Do I feel less acute pain now than I did a week ago? Yes. Will I be out of the pain woods a week from now? Not necessarily. If God is with me I’ll probably be feeling pretty good by 3.15, or roughly a month after the accident.