I can't sleep…
Quiet has many moods. When our sons are home, their energy is palpable. Even when they’re upstairs sleeping I can sense them, can feel the house filling with their presence, expanding like a sail billowed with air. I love the dawn stillness of a house full of sleepers, love knowing that within these walls our entire family is contained and safe, reunited, our stable four-sided shape resurrected.
~ Katrina Kenison, Magical Journey: An Apprenticeship in Contentment
Notes: Photo: Mennyfox55
Tuesday evening. Downtown Manhattan. I’m hailing a cab. Rich food swims in Chardonnay. Wind bursts chill the bones: Winter.
I flip on Waze with an eye out for a cab – 16 minutes to Grand Central. The 8:36 train departs in 18 minutes. Unlikely, but possible.
“Be great if I can catch the 8:36.” This is NYC Cabbie code – a much larger tip in it for you if you giddyap. It’s the American Way: Proper incentives = desired behavior. I buckle my seatbelt, grip the armrest and hope for the best.
“8:36?”
“Yes.”
He bolts through traffic – Rabbit with lock on the Carrot. Think bumper car or go cart sans contact, with the same weaving, bobbing, braking and jarring.
We arrive at the station at 8:36. I run to the gate, hopeful for a train delay. I watch the fading red tail lights down the tunnel, wheezing, trying to catch my breath. Damn! Next train, 30 minutes.
I walk to the next gate, board the train, find a seat, and get comfortable. Chardonnay burns off. Fatigue rolls in, eyes are burning on four hours of sleep. I pop in my ear buds, turn on soft ambient music, lean my head against the window, and close my eyes. Just 10 minutes, please, just 10.
The smartphone buzzes in my pocket, a text message. Let it go. Just let it go. Continue reading “Riding Metro North. With Law & Order.”
Blindness is enveloping. It’s beyond belief to step outside and see so little, just a milky haze. Indoors, a smothering dark. It means that you can’t shed a mood of loneliness with a brisk walk down the street because you might trip, fall and break something. Nor will you see a passing friend, the sight of whom could be as cheery as an actual conversation. Sights, like sounds, randomly evoke a surge of memories ordinarily inaccessible that lighten and brighten the day. “Who are you?” I may already have asked 10 people who have spoken to me. Their body language as well as their smiles are lost to me. Human nature is striped with ambiguities, and you need to see them, but like a prisoner, I am hooded.
I lost my sight once before, to cataracts, a quarter-century ago, but it was restored miraculously by surgery. It then went seriously bad again, until, reaching 80, I needed a cane. Tap, tap. Ambulatory vision is the technical term.
Everything becomes impromptu, hour by hour improvised. Pouring coffee so it doesn’t spill, feeling for the john so you won’t pee on the floor, calling information for a phone number because you can’t read the computer, or the book. Eating takes considerable time since you can’t see your food. Feeling for the scrambled eggs with your fingers, you fret about whether you appear disgusting. Shopping for necessities requires help. So does traveling on a bus. […]
How many of us have watched a possum “play possum” or a goshawk swoop after a blue jay? We feed pigeons and hummingbirds, then have done with it. Nature has become a suburb. Of course I can’t see the cardinal at the feeder out the window, though tidal forces still operate. The leaves natter even if you can’t see them. Your ears report their bustle, ceaseless until dormant for a span of moments. The pulse in your throat signals that in your torso all is well; it will beat till it quits. That concordance of organs lives within us like sea creatures throbbing on a coral reef, strung there as on our skeleton as long as conditions allow.
Novelty is the spice of life and salts our daily round even when we lose our sight. Your eyes don’t steer you as you saunter, yet your lungs, legs, arms feel as fit as ever. For simple exercise, I hoist myself out of each chair, or bicycle in bed, though then unfortunately may pick up two completely different shoes and try to squeeze them on. My socks don’t match either. But why am I not crankier? a friend asks. I’m helpless; I can’t be cranky. Blindness is enforced passivity. I have become a second-class citizen, an object of concern. Crankiness won’t persuade people to treat me thoughtfully. Disabled, that dry term once applied to so many others over my lifetime, now applies to me. As best I can, I’ll make my peace with it.
~ Edward Hoagland, excerpts from Feeling My Way Into Blindness (NY Times, 11/20/2016)
Notes:
Kids: “Dad, People just don’t do that. It’s weird.”
Dad: “Listen, I’m not People.”
Kids: Eyes roll. Whispering to each other, don’t we know that.
My text message is sent to the neighbors the night before.
“…Will Anya be free to come out to play in the morning?”
Text message comes zipping back.
“…Of course. We’ll leave the door unlocked, and the leash by the door.”
This has become a weekend routine.
She now knows what’s coming when the leash is by the door. She hears the car pull up, its daybreak. I walk up to the door, there’s a soft “woof” – she’s been waiting. I can hear the pitter patter of her paws on the wood floor. I open the door and she bounds out, ready to join her new BFF.
When you lose your dog, when the wounds are still fresh, and you haven’t / can’t replace your dog, what do you do? You borrow the neighbor’s Dog, of course. It’s not weird, it’s a bloody necessity. 0.5 Wolfpack is better than no Wolfpack at all. Continue reading “Running. With 0.5 Wolfpack.”
Autumn morning.
The horses in nearby fields are standing motionless.
The pony already has a heavier coat; it seems too soon.
Her eye is dark and large, the lashes scanty.
Walking close, one hears the steady sound of grass being eaten,
the peace of the earth being milled.
~ James Salter, Light Years
Photo: Med777