I’m old today. I went to the grocery store right after today’s snowstorm, the second one we had in New York this winter. About five or six inches of wet snow, a real mess. I find something is happening in the front of my brain now that never happened before; when I’m walking through this stuff, I’m so conscious of the possibility of falling. During the last storm I cut a walk in half because I was slipping around so much on the sleet.

C is in Uruguay for five weeks and I’m on my own. And I’m sick: I think it’s a cold. I had to get to the grocery store; almost out of milk, and I needed something to eat tonight. By the time I got to the store, my head was spinning, maybe from looking down so intensely during the walk. So I staggered through the store filling out my list.

Then I pay for the stuff and I start home. I’m sweating; the interior of my skull feels like a cavernous space with no fixed horizon. It’s not vertigo but a light-headedness; there are a lot of terms for it on the medical websites. None of my many doctors has been able to establish a cause. Maybe it’s a drug interaction; I take so many drugs.

I’m clumsy as I smash through the slush constantly looking for cleared spots or icy ones. The buildings around here are pretty quick to clean the sidewalks. In this part of Manhattan, routine maintenance happens fast. It’s a lot different from where I lived before in the South Bronx. Outside the Mitchel Houses no one would touch a frozen sidewalk for weeks. Litter and clogged drains would be there for months.

So I’m carrying these two heavy bags. I hold them with one hand while I look for my keys. I open the door and the cat is there making little noises. I can see he’s in a mood to sit on someone’s lap. I put the groceries down and try to untie my shoes. He’s rubbing my ankles as I do it, rubbing past them, claiming me with his scent (they say). I don’t know what’s wrong with me, but it drives me nuts. I feel like I would never have a cat if I lived alone. I remember a line from “Kill the Dogs,” a song I wrote back in 1980 or '81. The jaundiced singer is complaining about dogs, saying they’re just “another claim on my time and my responsibilities.“ So I can’t even blame this feeling on an increasingly bitter old age. I’ve always been this broken person.

I see the plants that I haven’t watered, since of course I’ve forgotten again. When I was single all the plants died. I like having plants around; I like having cats around (though not dogs). But I don’t want to have to take care of anything, I don't want to be distracted and prevented from doing exactly what I want right that second: old man panic.