Disconnect (a very short play about suspicious country folk)

I had a referral from a Viking doctor to see a 94 year-old Holden lady for a swallowing assessment. I called. Her son answered (he's in his 70's?). It went something like this:

Me: I have a referral to do a swallowing assessment with Mildred. Are you a relative?

Son: Yeah. I’m her son.

Me: The doctor asked me to do this assessment.

Son: Yeah?

Me: Is your mom there?

Son: Yeah.

Me: Can I speak to her?


[pause, I listened to him breathe in and out three times]

Son: MOM! PHONE!

Mildred: (old lady voice in the background) I’m on the toilet. I'm taking a craaaaaap!

[another pause, more breathing]

Me: So, can she come to the health unit for an appointment?

Son: It’s OK. She doesn’t need an appointment.  CLICK.

[dial tone]

-----

The ultimate defence: love yourself

After I filled up my motorcycle with gas yesterday, I took off my helmet and walked to the station to pay. A young woman in the car behind my motorcycle, waiting to fill, said, "hey, can you move your bike ahead so I can fill?"

I had my helmet off, I was closer to the gas station than my bike, and her tone was a little demanding, so I said no.

Her instant (anticipated?) response was, "fuck-you asshole!"

I felt my heart race. Fight or flight streaming from my animal brain. But I acted like I didn't hear her and went in to pay.

She followed me in and continued her salty comments about how it only would have taken a couple seconds to move my bike. She followed me in! Early 20's, bleached platinum hair with pink highlights, very girly in a princess pretty kind of way.

"Have a nice day," I replied after paying and second guessing my gas-getting routine. It was hard to concentrate. Did I get my card back? Did I write the mileage on the receipt? Was she going to try to punch me? Was I ready to let my karate training do the talking? Did she do anything to my precious Honda!?

I drove off without incident, and as soon as I hit the freeway I cranked her open. 130. 140. 150. Leaving everyone in my dust. Thinking about all the things I should have said, but didn't. And I felt pretty bad when I got home. Tense shoulders from holding my head up in the wind. Sore forearms from gripping the handlebar. I was pretending it didn't bother me, but it did. A stranger! Why should I give her an ounce of thought?

Criticism hurts. It doesn't matter who it comes from. Especially out of the blue. An art critique is a totally different thing. I'm a long way -- a long fucking way -- from having my heart so full of Wayne Dyer's love that I can suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune and still be a good person.

The sad thing is that I had just finished being thoroughly entertained and creatively inspired by the light-hearted and hilarious Midsummer Night's Dream at Hawlrelak Park and I didn't think a thought about how great it was until this morning when I woke up. Maybe I can get the feeling back later...

I agree it's OK to have flaws, especially other people, but I still feel like I should be better. The starting point to a lot of healing has to be this unconditional love for self, but I ain't there. Not even close. I can't even bear to meditate anymore. I wonder what it's like to accept one's self to the core? What does it feel like to go on from there? It seems remote and impossible to imagine these days.

-----

What's a colonoscopy like?

Just like an old car, a person gets to a certain age when things start to show signs of wear. Wrinkles, grey hair, those cold mornings when it's hard to bend over far enough to put your socks on.

Today I had a colonoscopy. My doctor suggested it because of my age (approaching 50) and because my old man has had colon issues in the past. I wondered what it was like, but the instructions from my doctor were strictly clinical (insert tab A into slot B). I didn't learn much from my friends and colleagues because it seems most people are reluctant to talk about anything going up the arse. Except nurses. Nurses love to talk about anything and everything that has to do with the body. Especially at lunch. I like nurses.

Here's what happened. Yesterday at 8:00 a.m. I had to stop eating solids. I was allowed clear fluids so I survived the day sipping apple juice and whisky*. I also had to take drugs to get my bowels moving so that the house would be clean when company arrived the next day. My doc prescribed 20 mg of Dulcolax in the a.m. and then 2 tablespoons of Milk of Magnesia per hour until the bottle was gone. By the end of the night, it felt like I was peeing acid out my butt as my innards cleared themselves of the food I had consumed the day before. Vaseline is your friend when this happens. Use it liberally after each bowel movement to soothe and protect that tender tissue from the constant stream of partially digested stomach acid. Burning ring of fire indeed.

Hunger. I've never really been hungry before. Not like this. And after a while it wasn't so bad. Not pleasant, but not so bad either. In fact, we should probably all go hungry once in a while just to appreciate the abundant world we live in. I'm so lucky to have been born at this time in history in this place on our planet. What must it be like to go hungry for more than a day? To grow up hungry? To die from starvation? I had a patient recently who suffered a stroke that shorted out her swallowing circuits and because she had stated before that she didn't want any kind of tube feeding, she was allowed to starve to death. It took her six weeks to die with nothing to sustain her except IV fluids and opiates.

I was only hungry for one day and once the initial headache passed I was fine. I hunckered down in my Lay-Zed Boy chair (that's what we call them in Canada) with books and a movie and by this morning (24 hours without solid food) I felt pretty good. I've come to the conclusion that one day fasting is not REAL hunger. Six weeks is real hunger. Watching your child die from malnutrition. That's real hunger. I need to think more about my hunger. I'm getting pretty soft around the middle. I could probably do with a lower calorie diet. And I could probably do something to help those who are truly hungry.

I showed up at the hospital at my appointed time, no line ups, gave the distracted lady my ID and healthcare number (I'm also fortunate to have been born in a country with universal health care), and within minutes I was kissing my wife goodbye and stripping down to my black socks and a drafty gown to wait for the procedure. I had about 90 minutes to drowse, consider my almost public nudity under that nearly transparent gown, and listen to the conversations around me. The fellow in the next booth was in for a broncoscopy because his doctor had seen something suspicious on his chest x-ray. I could hear the fear in his voice: breathy and hoarse from non-stop coughing and years of smoking and tentative in the way he answered the nurse's questions about past surgeries and medications as if he was carefully completing a test, the result of which might influence whether he would live or die.

I also listened to the nurses chatting amongst themselves about banal things. How we spoil our kids nowadays with overloaded Easter baskets. "I used to get one chocolate bunny every Easter. That was it. No money, no DVDs, no clothing, just a big hollow bunny. Kids today are spoiled rotten." Another nurse talked about how her 4-year old daughter insisted on having her beautiful curls straightened out every morning before school and would cry bloody murder if she didn't get her way.

Eventually my turn with the doctor came. My IV was already in place. It stung a little going in and then I forgot it was there. Diane was the first one to introduce herself and chat a little as she rolled me to the endoscopy suite. It was cold in that room. Full blast air conditioning, sterile instruments, and a doctor who asked just the basic questions and otherwise studied a computer screen. A resident worked the scope. I asked the nurse to put the monitor by my eyes so I could watch the procedure. She said, "sure, if you can stay awake." Then she shot me up with Fentanyl for pain (Demerol is too hard to get these days), Buscopan to relax any muscle spasms, and a third drug that I don't remember. It was probably a med for calming the mind. I felt a little high almost instantly, but not at all drowsy. So I watched the show.

My innards are complicated looked at from the inside: pinkish flesh, some pooling of brackish yellow fluid, lots of folds and ridges, and a smooth shininess. I didn't feel much discomfort at the back door as the scope was inserted, but I did feel some poking around in my guts as it shoved itself around corners. I didn't see what the scope looked like, but it had a camera, lights, and a little grabber that reached out to snip off samples of tissue for analysis. If I was to imagine what the device looked like using movie images, the scope would be like the snaky eyeball thing that came down into the cellar looking for Tom Cruise and his daughter in War of the Worlds, but smaller. And the grabber was kind of like the scary snapping mouth thing that jumps out of the dripping jaws of the aliens in Ridley Scott's movie, Alien. But smaller and much less viscious. I'd love to have a look at the device. It must be beautiful in it's reliable, functional design. A great machine indeed.

And that was it. The anonymous resident pulled the scope out, wiped it with a rag for the next patient**, and the kind nurse rolled me out to recover from the drugs. Slam, bam, thank you ma'am.

I didn't really feel drowsy or sick after. 30 minutes and I was walking out the door on the arm of my dear wife. The half-hour wait was kind of fun because the doctor came and told me that he only saw the one polyp that he snipped out and an area of suspicious inflammation that he also took a sample of. He said I would hear from him in a couple weeks with results from the tissue sample tests. It's fun to hear that you don't have anything REALLY wrong with you, but it's more fun to be told that you have to push the gas out before you can go home. That's right, the doctor told me to fart. So I did. At first I tried to be discreet and pushed out some little brown mosquitos, but then (perhaps it was the medications lowering my inhibitions) I started to let her rip. I finally finished with a long juicy one that woke up my neighbor who was much more sedated that I. "What the hell," were his first words on waking.

And that was it. My dear wife took me to my favourite Vietnamese restaurant where I savoured every bite and then bought me a coffee. It didn't take much food to fill me up and I slept most of the two-hour drive home.

I kind of wish the drugs were better.

*Not true, I didn't drink any whisky.
**Also not true, they dipped the device in a big bottle of blue chemicals*** like they use with combs at the barber shop.
***The last lie of this story. I have no idea how they clean the scope between patients.

-----

The robin and the roaring engine

Why don't my kids need naps? Once they are up for the day they stay up until they are forced/coerced/bribed to go to bed. Not me. I love a good Saturday afternoon nap. Today, I slept so deeply in my big brown chair, that I woke up drooling. I dreamt I was walking around with my eyes closed, that is I couldn't open them, but no one around me seemed to notice or care. I was carrying on my daily routine with my eyes closed (Hello metaphor!). Next in my dream I was trying to rinse my mouth out with water because my tongue had stopped working and of course, I woke up drooling.

While I was unconscious, my children told me that they watched old Scooby Doo episodes on a retro cartoon station (Really? We need to keep seeing them?), they played Jenga (I remember crashing blocks), they read comics, and they scorffed down one of the baguettes I had made for supper (I'm glad they like my baking).

What could I have done in two hours? Did I really need all that sleep? Could I have finished the boring book I have on improving learning by incorporating body movement and moved on to the novel I'd much rather be reading? Could I have written this blog and then started fixing a short story that's been sitting around for months? Could I have taken worn the belts off my snow blower and run down to Canadian Tire to buy new ones? There are 10,000 things I could have done!

When I finally woke and wiped the spit from my beard, the boys were watching mud bogging on TV. In this "sport," a redneck man or woman buys a truck, puts a tall suspension on it, fat tires, a snorkel for the air intake, and then takes turns racing full throttle through a mud bog to see who will make it through fastest. Tires spin, mud flies, drunks slip on muddy inclines as they walk into the bush for a pee (yes, that part was televised), and those unmuffled engines roar like, like ... well, like unrestrained 8-cylinder American engines -- there is no simile for that! It's like trying to say what a robin is like. A robin is like a robin.

My inner 12-year old still loves the sound of a loud engine roaring fossil fuels through narrow, unbaffled pipes into the atmosphere. I wish I still had the energy and will to stay awake like my 12-year old self did when all that mattered was growing up so I could have my own jacked-up pickup truck. I want to spin my tires, pee in the bush, and drive home with so much mud on my metaphysical car that you can't tell what colour it is. And I want to shout and roar like a souped-up American V8, sending my voice up into the endless, blue empty sky.

Yeah, that's what I want.

-----

Facebook: blessing in disguise?

Written in response to Roxanne's blog post: To Facebook or Not To Facebook …

Facebook is especially deadly now that I access it on my iPhone. Waiting for pancakes to brown? Out comes the phone. Commercials? Warming up the car? Waiting for my dentist? Lets see what’s new with my friends. The result for me is less time to stop and just be. I never need to do nothing ever again.

I’ve tried taking Facebook off my phone and I can last a week or two before I re-install it. Easier has been unliking all the George Takei type sites and then filtering the people who post Facebook-game crap (that means blocking my mother). All this helps cut down on the quantity I look at.

Is this what a smoker feels like? Facebook is there when my alarm goes off, then again before I sleep. I don't like that.
 
My current thinking is that this struggle we are sharing points to a type of loneliness. Facebook makes me feel like I belong to something. Community? The question is can I address this “need” so that Facebook loses its allure. I can live without what I read there so it’s not really a question of content. It’s the delusion of feeling disconnected that I would like to address. Perhaps we are not suffering from lack of contact with others, but instead from a gap in our connection with ourselves? Self-alienation.

I don’t know what the answer is. Cold turkey? Probably not. Heal myself instead? Maybe. At least Facebook has helped me see this inner work that needs attention. I feel some urgency also as my kids approach an age where they can do what I do on the computer. Gulp.

-----

Wordfuse (I hope think.stew didn't do this one already)

Walkward

This is how you feel when you look up from your busy workday scurrying and find that you are walking side by side with a stranger. You are both going the same direction at the same pace as if you are old friends. Like it's a date. But it's not because you're strangers.

(Idea for this wordfuse borrowed stolen from think.stew. He's got a million.)

-----

Get on with it

Power tie, March 2012

I put my day off from work today to put in a good day of work. Huh? No hospital today. I spent the sunshine hours at home polishing a story that has already be rubbed too thin, but had to be finished once and for all. Enough. I've been running it through Scribophile.com and received a pile of constructive feedback. It's pretty good now. Well, I think it's decent. I'm not sure. (Doubt rears its ugly head.)

Doesn't matter, I pushed through the doubt, wallowing along the way, and sent it off to four competitions. I'm not exactly glowing with confidence, but I feel like I have to get busy and finish the day with something creative. So I'll quit wasting time here and open something new. I can only get better by doing more right?

The tie. My boy put one on today for a school concert and I think he liked it. He looks terrific in a tie. Maybe I need to get my jeans and t-shirt self down to the thrift shop and look for some dead-man ties. It might be good to look like I give a shit for once.

-----

A step, then another

I'm doing some crazy shit this week. As I slowly crawl away from the clutches of the evil Rhino virus, I feel my mojo rising. I've written two things for myself this week: a value statement that details what I think is important and a vision statement where I dare to commit to 1's and 0's the way I would like my life to be. I know, I know, it reeks of self-help, but these two things have not come at the suggestion of a well-paid self-help author. I came up with these on my own. Yep. Mostly.

And tonight, I've done something else. I'm going to a party. I generally hate parties. Especially the ones where I don't know anyone and arrive alone. I'm good at small talk and shmoozing, but it's all an act. My true self prefers to be in a little booth behind one-way glass where I can observe the world without notice. I have those in my work so I can watch kids interact with their parents and make observations on their language skills. Yeah, that's my idea of perfect. I would be great invisible man, nothing perverted, just some benevolent witnessing and recording. So what is this party deal? I joined Scribophile in hopes of getting some of my writing read and critiqued. Hiding out in my invisibility suit is not good for learning and improving. Writing isn't writing unless it is read (à la tree falling in the forest). It's time to drag my sorry ass into the world of the living shed my invisibility.

Hi, my name is Michael. You look like someone I'd like to know.

-----

A whisky story

Come down the path with me, July 2011

Whisky descriptions follow a narrow path. Writers probably have a list of words they can select from: peaty, robust, subtle, hints of chocolate, cocoa, and caramel, etc. Kind of boring and kind of arbitrary. Really. Are our tastebuds that similar that we all taste the same thing? I think not. Here's an example of a description. Quite minimal by Scotch packaging standards:

The GlenDronach Allardice, Aged 18 years Highland Single Malt Scotch Whisky "Matured in the finest Oloroso sherry casks -- the GlenDronach is a perfectly balanced, smooth, creamy, full-bodied single malt Scotch whisky."

Yawn. The website is a wee bit better:

Appearance
Bright deep gold with a tawny centre.

Nose
Sweet aromatics of fudge and muscovado sugar. Fruit compote and glacier morello cherries provide added complexity.

Palate
Rich dark and seductive. Remarkable flavours of stewed fruits and all-spice marry together with classical aged Oloroso and toasted walnut bread and chocolate orange.

Conclusions
Tremendously complex and long.

Better, but it needs more story. This is how I in all my arrogant wisdom would do it:

She returned at dusk as I was splitting wood for the night's fire. I missed her spicy cooking, her carefree accent, and the curve of her neck under her August black hair. She didn't want me to take her to the airport last week so I passed my time today, the day of her return, outside working and waiting for the sound of her car. I felt its low growl before I heard it. She revved that perfect V12 through the stillness of the valley before steadying it on the long drive up to the estate. I felt alive and whole as I put down my labours and strolled across to her. At that moment I didn't know who I loved more, that glorious car or her. When she stepped out from behind the wheel, copper sun catching her Oloroso hair like a halo, I knew it was crazy. It was her. It would always be her. We embraced and I disappeared in her arms. I was no longer of this earth.

Hyperbolic? Perhaps, but it really is good whisky.

-----

Dance is my muse

Watch Sasha Mallory in this dance. She speaks a language that I know, but I don't know how I know it. When did I learn it? Why did I forget it?

Everything about this piece -- the acting, the balance between fast and slow, the height, the in and out connection with the music -- reaches directly to a spot in my brain that is free of words and doubt, a place that doesn't need a reason why, a place that welcomes me and feels like it's been waiting for me to find it again. It is the place where I feel like me.

Dance is my muse. It helps me remember what life has led me to forget.

---



-----

An easy conversation

STARLA and BONNIE are in a green-walled lounge waiting for their father who is having hip surgery. They are side-by-side on plastic chairs. There is a framed print of a mountain sunset painting on the wall behind them. All the brush strokes are feathery and look as if they were laid down by a depressed worker on an Asian assembly line. In front of them is a coffee table stacked with magazines that no one bothers picking up anymore because you just know how bad they are. Both women are lost in their own worlds. Waiting alone together.

BONNIE

This coffee smells like urine. We should have stopped at Tim's.

STARLA

Bonnie, what if we have it wrong? What if life isn't difficult? What if it's easy and we're just missing this easiness because we believe it's difficult?

BONNIE

So we should lie to ourselves and say it's easy when it's not? Is this more of your positive self-talk crap?

STARLA

See! You believe it's hard. That's why you said that! You believe it. It informs your words and your actions.

BONNIE

Uh-huh. I'd like to pick up one of those magazines now.

STARLA

Yes. What if you're wrong? Haven't you ever thought something was a certain way and then been surprised to find out it wasn't?

BONNIE

Like The Crying Game?

STARLA

Ha ha. But yes. You remember when you met Big Johnny last year.

BONNIE

I thought he was a scary biker gangster --

STARLA

-- because of the way he looked: 400 lbs., that biker-beard thing, the way he looked at people ...

BONNIE

Or didn't look at you. He seemed shifty.

STARLA

Yeah and then when you met him...

BONNIE

He's the nicest guy in the world.

STARLA

Right? He's just shy.

BONNIE

He stopped and helped me change my tire that time. I thought he was going to rape and kill me, but he gave me a blanket from his truck and changed my flat tire. He talked about his kid playing soccer for the first time.

STARLA

Uh-huh, I told you he's all about the helping. You need help with any man stuff, he's the one you call.

BONNIE

I think I see what you mean. But just because I was wrong about him, doesn't mean I'm wrong about how hard it is to drink this coffee.

STARLA

What if life is easy? Dad's surgery, finding a publisher for your book, losing weight. What if they are all easy? What if we've been thinking life's difficult forever because everyone acts like it is, but in reality it isn't?. We just make it hard because we believe it's supposed to be that way.

BONNIE

I don't know what to do with that.

STARLA

Don't do anything. Just let the idea to float around. See what happens.

BONNIE

It's all easy, huh?

STARLA

What if it is? What if it is?

-----

Ernestine will dance alone

Home to none, July 2009

Ernestine doesn't want to leave the hospital. She can walk around the unit nine times without stopping, she can make toast and dress herself, and when no one is looking, she waltzes around her room to music that only she can hear. She does not want to go back to the farm.

He is still there. Like the rusty combine behind the barn. He won't move into town. He eats three times a day, shits every two, and sleeps more than half the day away. The thought of moving makes him mad enough to load his shotgun and blow them both to hell. What's the point of anything, he asks.

Before her hands went, Ernestine could play a whole cord of fiddle tunes without pausing. Waltzes, reels, and jigs flowed into each other without a pause. Aurora borealis. Now she listens to the radio for company. She can name all the name-that-tune songs on CFCW, but she's too shy to call.

Tomorrow he will drive her home and later, after the supper dishes are put away and he is sleeping in the calloused palm of his leather chair, Ernestine will dance alone on her shiny-smooth kitchen floor.

-----

What if we all said no?

What if we all said no?, November 2010

Revelry didn't work. He pushed the button and the tape would play for handful of notes and then nothing. He pushed play stop several times hoping that the tape would jog loose and play like it did last night, but all it did was spit out a few notes of the mourning bugle song. There was one scoff in the audience of a couple hundred people. Most over 60. That person was shamed into mute by the the rest. No one coughed. No chairs slid. I could hear the man with the tape sweating as he did all that he could do. Play stop play stop. Finally he gave up and encouraged us to pause for two minutes of silence. There was no more hope.

-----

A story of passion

I want to write a story like this. If you click play, make sure you listen until she (Esperanza Spalding) starts singing. That's when it really starts going, and oh! what an ending. Amazing.



-----

A life without corners

Corners behind, none ahead, March 2010

Wilbur was checked in to the rehab hospital this week. His home was a trailer on the Johnson's land. Working as a farm hand, he passed most of his days out from under a roof. Mr. Johnson said Wilbur was semi-retarded and that we weren't likely to get much out of him.

"Yer a little retarded, ain't you Wilbur?" Mr. Johnson chuckles in a friendly enough way.

"Yeah, I guess."

"Maybe a lot!" Mr. Johnson slaps his dirty jeans and laughs at his old joke. Wilbur looks at his paralyzed right arm. The hand is like an empty baseball mitt with fresh dog shit fingers.

"My hand is like mush," he says to no one in particular.

The nurse, uncomfortable with the r-word, moves ahead to her last question. "What church do you go to Wilbur?" Her voice is kind, but still has a tinge of fear because Wilbur is a scary man to look at. He's well over 6 feet tall and must weigh a good 300 lbs. That mushy hand must have helped the other one wrestle yearling steers before his brain stroked and stopped sending signals to the muscles. His head is like a caveman boulder. Its base is a red and poorly shaved tree-trunk topped with a silver-stubbled jawbone is as thick as a Clydesdale horse shoe and probably as strong. His eyes are small and lost behind murky, greased-up glasses. They're the old-fashioned kind of glasses that people wear when someone else buys them and doesn't want to spend a lot of money. It's hard to tell what Wilbur is looking at. He never looks up. Above his eyes are wild caterpillar eyebrows and oddly, a tiny dome of bald head, pale and white from living under a cap. His head is a distorted dinosaur egg with a distinct point on the top. It leads one to speculate on a traumatic birth that starved his brain of oxygen, killed his mother, and left him an orphan in the care of the Johnson's.

"I belong to a round church," Wilbur finally says after an uncomfortable delay. "That way the devil can't catch me in a corner."

I can picture pre-stroke Wilbur walking through a dusky pasture with bottomless shadows and a blazing purple sunset sky. He takes long, steady strides and knows instinctively where to step to avoid gopher holes and cowpies. The pasture is his. He's like a lonely bull fenced off from his herd. Even though he's alone, he feels at home here, completely free at the center of a landscape that curves around him in a perfect circle and tells him that he belongs. He stays here until the sun is gone and then he returns to the distant light of his trailer to sleep until the sun rises again.

---

Upsetting the ladies (edit)

There was one more fellow to see. Ralph. I thought it might be good for my student to see a patient with a combination of dementia and delirium. The latter is medically-caused (like having a uninary tract infection) and can be reversed. The former is a one-way road to retrogenesis. (Retrogenesis describes how people with a dementing disease like Alzheimer's gradually lose skills in the reverse order the gained them as a child. It's like aging backwards except the body stays old.)

I'd been trying to check his swallowing, but he'd been too sick to do much of anything for the last month or so. The door was closed to his room. I knocked. Maybe there was some bathing going on. The physio answered and called me in. She was working with a fellow in bed one. Ralph was sitting in a geri-chair by the window. A rare glimpse of winter sunlight was shining on him like a far-away spotlight. The light was still anemic but it was warm enough for some nude sun-bathing. His hairy white body, still fairly strong, was sprawled out on the chair with nothing to hide.

My stout-hearted student didn't flinch. She followed me in like an seasoned colleague and introduced herself to Ralph. She shook his hand. Awesome.

I crouched down beside nekkid Ralph as my student moved back to watch.

"Ralph," I said, "why are you all nekkid?" (My young boys have given me a new appreciation of the pronunciation: nekkid.)

"I was rolling hose," he said. I looked over at my student and cocked an eyebrow. She allowed a half-smile.

"Rolling hose?" I looked back at him. He wasn't looking at me.

"Yeah. Rolling hose. Hot work that is. There was a fire at the mountain and Sally wanted to go for a picnic so I had to go find ..."

Ralph stopped and stared into space as if he was waiting for the rest of his story to appear. He looked over at me. "Who are you now?"

"Ralph, I'm the speech therapist. Are you getting enough to drink?"

"I'm a little dry," he replied, "can you get me my cup?"

I did and he swallowed it down with a gurgle and a cough. So it goes for Ralph. Aspiration pneumonia is almost expected with dementia. Patients forget how to swallow and accidentally inhale their food and drink into their lungs.

Just then, a nurse came in and my student and I watched while she gently wrestled and tricked Ralph into putting on his hospital gown. I chatted with my student about Ralph's history of small strokes (the likely cause of his dementia) and how he used to be a firefighter.

"We can't have you going around with your clothes off Ralph," she said, "You'll upset the ladies."

Ralph was still staring in the empty space that used to hold his memory, his connection to now. When we all left, he was already trying to wriggle an arm out of his gown.

-----

In the absence of light, part one

We spent two days house hunting this weekend. Dozens of houses that blurred together and none that shouted, "YES, I am the the home for you."

We had some unusual glimpses into the truth of suffering. There was the owl-eye lady with micrognathia (an unusually small jaw) who followed us around to make sure we didn't steal anything. She clearly fears what the future has in store for her. In another place the owner sat at the kitchen table with his head bowed. He had his hands in front of him as if he were counting (and recounting) his fingers. One resident appeared to be 14. She was bouncing an infant on her hip and singing, "Mommy needs some time now, mommy needs some time now." Her soft song was only interrupted by long drags on a king-size menthol and polite welcomes to the strangers looking through her home.

Thankfully the rest of the homes were empty and the worst truth we had to face was the "dog pee - garlic house."

There was a dim sadness about most of the houses we looked at. Suffering present and real. Dusty echoes of pain like a stench that couldn't be cleaned away with Mr. Clean and urgings from the Realtor that it wouldn't take much to fix this place up: some new windows, an upgraded kitchen, flooring, paint and you could turn around and sell this place for $80,000 more in a year.

We did find one place that whispered, "I am loved, love lives here." It's a little smaller than we are used to, but it felt like someplace we could live. We will sit with that one for a few days to see how it feels and then decide whether we should make an offer or wait until the spring market opens up.

--

Here are some photos from a recent walk about Lohwinkel. After weeks of grey skies, I was a more than a little desperate to find some colour.


Different kinds of tracks, some with promise, February 2010


Welcome blue, February 2010


Permanently in progress, February 2010


The ride would have been smoother in a Cordoba, February 2010


A sale on pink, February 2010

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Another day, another dollar

The carrot and the stick, January 2010

“LET ME GO,” he shouted. His voice echoed off the walls of his cinder block cell.

On his knees, he bent forward to gather his strength and build momentum, then he wrenched his torso backwards, hoping to force his bonds off Hulk-style.

“LET ME GO.”

Hulk-style, yes. He was that angry. His patience was gone and he wanted freedom. But his bonds did not fall away. They cinched tighter, cutting into his back with the sting of salt.

So he stopped struggling. This felt better, but the bonds did not let go. He had been bound like this for so long that his body had become accustomed to the restriction. Like the sore hip that only hurts when you run, so you don’t run. The middle aged man who rushes across the street to avoid being hit by traffic, but doesn’t actually run because he’s forgotten how and even if he remembered, his hip wouldn’t let him.

“Why won’t you let me go?” he asked. He didn’t know who he was talking to. God. The universe. Satan. Buddha. Himself. No one.

“I am not holding you,” came an answer like smoke at dusk.

It was voice-of-God style: I must be talking to God, he decided.

“Who is holding me?” This was the only question he could ask. It shouldn’t need asking really. Why is God wasting my time?

“Nothing holds you but yourself,” replied the voice, a rumbling sub-woofer sitting on a shelf of porcelain Madonnas.

“I don’t understand,” he said. He really didn’t, but oh damn, did he want to. He felt like he did when he was 8 and his parents told him that they were going to live in separate houses but they were still going to be a family.

There was no reply.

“Uh, God? Are you still there?”

Still, no answer.

“Buddha? Universe? Anyone? I don’t understand what you just said.”

Nothing.

“I don’t understand.”

More silence. Minutes pass. Seconds. It was time for a tantrum.

“I DON’T UNDERSTAND. 
I don’t understand. 
I don’t understand. 
I don’t understand. 
I don’t understand. 
I don’t understand. 
I don’t understand.”

Finally he whispered, “I don’t understand.”

His ignorance was as unyielding as his bonds. It was time to lay down. Slowly he stood, leaning against the wall for support. His knees ached and his feet tingled as if they were being stabbed by a thousand needles.

As the circulation returned to his legs, he stepped carefully over to his mat and lowered himself down. He still felt the ropes stinging into is flesh and he didn’t want to fall again.

On his mat he stretched out his legs. He was a corpse waiting for someone to discover him so he could be put to rest. He listened to the sound of his breathing. It was steady and slow. Reassuring. Like the impossibly loud grandfather clock at his uncle’s house that he only noticed deep in the night on weekend sleepovers. In. Out. Tick. Tock.

“Another day, another dollar,” he sighed as he softened into sleep.

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My highway guardian

An old Ford rolls through the dark, November 2009


The road glows with life, November 2009


There's a new movie in which some of the characters see a snowy owl perched outside their bedroom window late at night. 3:33 in the a.m. Just staring at them. And it's not an owl. It's an malevolent alien who has edited out their screaming memories. Last week on my way home from work I passed an enormous white owl sitting atop a power pole. "Aliens," I scoffed. That movie has its symbols messed up. In the desperate reaching of my racing high-beams, my owl glows like an angel, a Bodhisattva. She is my old friend who tells me everything will be fine. Everything IS fine.

--

Trotting beside me on the crumbling shoulder, I'm doing 60 and he's doing 5, a coyote barely glances at me. Like me, he has someplace to go this morning. I see him for a second, then we are both gone. Recently, a woman was attacked and killed by coyotes. They are efficient hunters. Coyotes. Misplaced survivors.

--

A doe with shredded hindquarters lies on the road. I tack slowly around to avoid disturbing her. The colours are vivid. Red that was so recently alive has no place to go now. Black and white magpies cling to her. They look after the body she no longer needs. Guardians of her passing. Jagged white ribs stab through her sienna chest like prison bars burst open from inside. They free her heart to roam on another plain.

--

It is so dark in these hours before most people wake. I'm a racing island of light that reaches into a vast universe of black. Lonesome in my arcing capsule. My mobile cocoon. The owl appears again. She swoops through my headlights and disappears in a blink. I'm startled. Awake now, she has reminded me that I am alive and breathing. My eyes relax and I can see a little farther into the dark.

I believe the owl is my guardian. She guides me safely through the blackness. She helps me understand what is true.



My guide, November 2009

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Norbert's toenails

I watched Norbert edge his way out of bed. I’m not so good at transfers, but I thought I could at least help by getting him up to the edge of his bed. My occupational therapist partner would be there in a few minutes to help move him from the bed to the wheelchair.

He flipped off the malnourished hospital blanket with the back of his wrist, but the sheet snagged on his feet and stuck there as the sour, sweet smell of morning gas-passing escaped from under the covers. Norbert was much too old to be embarrassed. Many delusions like pretending our farts don’t stink have to be abandoned when you check in to acute care.

Realizing that he wasn’t down far enough in the bed, the guard rail with the bed control buttons was in the way, he propped himself up on his elbows. It was like he was lifting a cement sidewalk block into the back of a pickup. Once he had the leverage, he shifted his rear down the bed. His diaper had a plastic cover, but it still didn't slide easily along the rug burn sheets.

After three one-inch bum slides, he was far enough down. He took hold of the sheet and tried to yank it off his feet. Still snagged, he yanked and yanked until he was finally able to free his trapped feet and hoist himself to vertical on the edge of the bed.

“My arms are just cotton-pickin’ useless these days,” he said.

I only nodded. My eyes were simultaneously compelled and revolted by his newly revealed feet. Each toe was capped with a half-inch nail. They were yellow, the colour of nicotine stains on the Marlborough man's fingers, and they curved to dangerous points like mini daggers. They looked like they could shred those bleached white sheets, never mind harmlessly hook them. Images of freak show wannabes like the Californian grandmother with seven-inch toenails who likes the attention she gets when she takes a stroll in Compton (what kind of shoes could she possibly wear?) or the Indian in Poona who’s left hand is disfigured by four-foot long nails that twist and curl as if they were blackened branches on an irradiated apple tree.

But this was just Norbert Walker. He wasn’t trying to be famous. He was just trying to get out of bed so that he could be wheeled down to radiology for a video x-ray of his disordered swallowing. He was deaf as an antique telephone, but he had the voice of an auctioneer or an evangelical radio preacher. Powerful, chesty, and driven by a melodic intonation.

I got a good look at his pale pink head fuzzy with post-comb hair as I yelled in his ear. “Can you get to the wheelchair?”

“Well, I can get in alright, you see. But gettin’ out might be a whole ‘nother story.”

Then before I could do anything to help, he slid off the edge of the bed and swiveled into the chair. It was more of a fall than a transfer and I immediately regretted not waiting for help to move him. Luckily the chair’s brakes were on and he landed squarely on the seat,

“Can you still wear shoes?” I asked, wanting to keep the process moving so that nothing bad would have time to happen.

“Yes. Yes. I do believe I can.” He gestured with gnarled fingers to his jaunty deck shoes, stashed under a nearby chair.

Later when I was charting, I mentioned to the ward nurse that his toenails were pretty long.

“I know,” she said. “Dr. Mohamed, the podiatrist, is coming in two weeks.”

She looked at me filling in my part of the conversation and responded before I my wheels had a chance to turn. “Nurses don’t do nails.”

A call bell sounded before I had a chance to raise my eyebrows.

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