Influenza stalks Paradise this month. The health department has finally admitted that the flu status is “widespread,” and the emergency rooms are filling up with wheezing patients and the news crews that love them.

The worst of our influenza season falls in this half-Spring every year. The season see-saws between bright sunny butterfly-and-hummingbird days and windblown drizzle under grey. This has got to be harder on the butterflies but we hate it too. Be consistent! we yell and wave our tiny fists at whichever sky we’ve got that day.

Either I’m getting the influenza myself or it’s just postmodern anxiety. Exhaustion and dissociation are associated with both conditions, so the differential will be made with a thermometer before I go to bed.

Have you ever met a ghost of yourself? I met one today, and it’s been a few years. I saw myself as a very young child — like the one in the icon for this entry — playing on the floor in this house. The tile was different then, and because at close range each tile looked like a city block, I was driving a little Matchbox car along the street with my hand. No doubt there were vrooming noises. At one point in the journey the car encountered a furniture leg and whacked to a stop. Instead of going around, I just kept whacking the little toy car against the wood until some adult told me to knock it off.

And tonight I saw that kid in the dining room.

Maybe it’s the influenza.