And welcome to my first Blog-of-the-Week. I‘lll try to be more faithful.

I have had three consultations with a pain doctor: one in person and two by phone, and he guided me off a terrible drug prescribed by my family doctor last summer when the pain was at its worst. I want to cope with my chronic pain (degenerative disk disease, sciaitica), with as few OTC drugs as possible and as few side effects as possible.

I’ve googled a lot of exercises and advice, especially after the pools closed—in my apartment as well as the city. I managed to stay ahead of my disability as long as I was swimming every day. It’s hard fitting in exercise. I do a few flights of stairs and a couple of corridors in my building. My son Matt and I have a fear of the outdoors (ice and snow) after we each broke a limb (my wrist, his ankle) the year before Covid.

What I did discover, just last week, is neither drug nor exercise.

Years ago I wrote a collective play with Theatre Passe Muraille about Reverend Russell Horsburgh. (You can look him and me up. My play, The Horsburgh Scandal, was published by Black Moss Press in 1981,) I had several interviews with Horsburgh before he died of bone cancer. He told me that when he gave a sermon, his pain lifted above his head and he could preach with a clear mind. When he finished it descended. I thought of that this past fall.I gave four virtual readings of my new book, Endings: A Book for Almost Everyone, and I made the same discovery. The pain lifted while I was talking, focusing on something outside my body.

Now, in the winter of our Covid disaster, with the sparse spare time I have, I have been turning to some fresh writing and new ideas and I feel better, lifting the pain away for a while. Someone I read once said that when you feel fine you actually don’t feel anything at all. that is, nothing hurts. You’re still here, still you, but the pain or malaise or whatever it is, is gone--temporarily.

It’s called Distraction Focus. I hope I can turn it into an addiction.