August 18, 2006
When I woke
I began to remember an accident
from the night before.
As I began to be appalled by the details
I realized I was remembering a dream.
Then I redozed and dreamt I was elected
president and had a fight with my mother
who was interfering with a conversation.
Then I dreamt a lost status had been restored
and I was embraced.
Each tableau brought its own affirmation. Why?
Why are these side trips into the genre
of the absurd reassuring, so affirming,
even in the unpleasantness of their conjectured circumstances?
Is it the satisfaction that accompanies creation:
It was good? … something is better than nothing,
absolutely, that which is where nothing
might be? Just the joy of the whimsy
of the journey? A more or less benign
god-like idolatry: standing in awe before
that which one has made, the repose
of the 7th day, hands on hips, smugly smiling?
Maybe it’s relationship, the satisfaction
arising from the inherent connections
the dreams afford or that are implicit
in their content.
* * *
Friday, later this morning
we will sit for 3 hours as P
receives the final treatment in the first
cycle of 12 week treatments, the last
of the big ones…drip, drip, drip.
This will be a mile marker and good
to have behind us though there are
the accompanying
anxieties of the inevitable effects of next week
as well as those of the unknown,
the 2nd 12 week cycle of treatments,
one per week—drip—for 12 weeks,
and what will be the inevitable effects of these?
And I will be in NJ for the 1st of these
rather than there. Of course, even this
absence is a positive sign for it
would not have been imagined for
the first cycle. Later she will sit erect
in a reclining chair, her right arm
attached to a dangling bag, first
saline, then red, then clear,
then clear, then saline. I will sit
in a straight-back chair more
or less in front of her. She will have
taken a pill orally before hand to counteract—
along with the red drip—the side effects.
It will become tedious, and we will
be surrounded by a few very sick people.
The staff will be pleasant and effectual.
The physician will be interested and reassuring.
When its over we will go own our separate ways:
her back to work next door, me
to have the Pony checked
out to determine why the engine light came on.
Then it will become another 90 degree day in Georgia,
the routine of the ordinary suffused with the extraordinary
in the sacramentality of medical science.
When I woke
I began to remember an accident
from the night before.
As I began to be appalled by the details
I realized I was remembering a dream.
Then I redozed and dreamt I was elected
president and had a fight with my mother
who was interfering with a conversation.
Then I dreamt a lost status had been restored
and I was embraced.
Each tableau brought its own affirmation. Why?
Why are these side trips into the genre
of the absurd reassuring, so affirming,
even in the unpleasantness of their conjectured circumstances?
Is it the satisfaction that accompanies creation:
It was good? … something is better than nothing,
absolutely, that which is where nothing
might be? Just the joy of the whimsy
of the journey? A more or less benign
god-like idolatry: standing in awe before
that which one has made, the repose
of the 7th day, hands on hips, smugly smiling?
Maybe it’s relationship, the satisfaction
arising from the inherent connections
the dreams afford or that are implicit
in their content.
* * *
Friday, later this morning
we will sit for 3 hours as P
receives the final treatment in the first
cycle of 12 week treatments, the last
of the big ones…drip, drip, drip.
This will be a mile marker and good
to have behind us though there are
the accompanying
anxieties of the inevitable effects of next week
as well as those of the unknown,
the 2nd 12 week cycle of treatments,
one per week—drip—for 12 weeks,
and what will be the inevitable effects of these?
And I will be in NJ for the 1st of these
rather than there. Of course, even this
absence is a positive sign for it
would not have been imagined for
the first cycle. Later she will sit erect
in a reclining chair, her right arm
attached to a dangling bag, first
saline, then red, then clear,
then clear, then saline. I will sit
in a straight-back chair more
or less in front of her. She will have
taken a pill orally before hand to counteract—
along with the red drip—the side effects.
It will become tedious, and we will
be surrounded by a few very sick people.
The staff will be pleasant and effectual.
The physician will be interested and reassuring.
When its over we will go own our separate ways:
her back to work next door, me
to have the Pony checked
out to determine why the engine light came on.
Then it will become another 90 degree day in Georgia,
the routine of the ordinary suffused with the extraordinary
in the sacramentality of medical science.
posted by Dafath at 3:10 AM
2 Comments:
...reminded me of drinking dreams so palpable after years of abstinence that I had to go several hours into the next day to become convinced it was a merely an extremely vivid dream...and yet... even now...
who is this KoKoNuts fella?
I don't dream your dreams. Mine have been rather disturbing lately but can't remember much only wake with a vague feeling of unease.
I can picture the room - the liquid from a rubber vein dripping into a female one. It is getting better - I think, I hope. Extraordinay how life carries on amidst our tragedies.
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