The Furious Spinner

The day is grey and rainy, perfect for the shortest day of the year, I suppose. After a morning spent at the doctor's, we came home and lay on the couch together, watching a movie and napping. Anything else feels too exhausting.

Yesterday, after many hours in the clinic, we knew nothing more than we had the day before, or the day before that. We ate lunch at Thai Noon. On the way home we stopped at the grotto. It's a Catholic church and shrine in the city but surrounded by woods and built next to this huge stone cliff. (Don't worry; I'm not going religious. We often go to the grotto at this time of year.) First we sat in the car and I cried and cried and cried. Mario does not get stressed when I cry, unlike most other people. He knows it is a stress releaser. Then we walked toward the church. This is their busy time of year, although it was practically deserted this afternoon. We passed by a corral with goats, llamas, and a burro inside. Sponsored by a bank or hardware store or something like that. Everywhere we looked, it seemed, was an advertisement. Commerce and religion. They go hand and hand in this country. I remembered the story of Jesus going into the temple and turning over the tables and telling them all to get out of his house. (Like the bumper sticker says, Jesus was a revolutionary!)

We went inside the small Catholic church. It's called the Chapel of Mary. Although inside are the crucifixes and bible quotes and statues of saints, the focal point of it all is Mary, not God or Jesus. I'm certain the people who run this place would be absolutely appalled by this observation. On the arch in the middle of the church, above the altar, are the words, "Behold thy mother." On the wall behind and above the altar is a mural with Jesus and God (I guess) putting something on Mary's head. (I didn't pay much attention to what the guys were doing, frankly.) Sometimes this chapel feels like a sanctuary where I can come and see the goddess, especially on days like today when the weather is too miserable to spend time in my true church: Nature.

Mario looked around at all the statues and said, "So this is why other Christians called Catholics pagans?"

"Yep."

I went up to the statue of Mary. She was all white, her hands open. I stared at her and was certain she smiled. Although it could have been a trick of light—or the adrenalin that had been coursing through my body for days now.

It was dark when we got home. We checked our messages. No one had even come to look at our wrecked car, which was still parked hours away. We had several calls from friends who had heard about the accident. Our friend Kevin in Hawaii mentioned "microsleep" in an email, and I looked it up and showed it to Mario. It sounded exactly like what happened to him. People can fall to sleep, or have a kind of loss of consciousness, even with their eyes open. Microsleep happened to people driving all the time. We both thought this might be what happened. I started to feel better.

After a dinner of leftovers, we walked into a gorgeous cold night. The stars twinkled just like they always do on cold nights, reminding me of Christmas nights when I was a child. The sky was indigo, the clouds preternaturally lit—like clouds created by a storybook artist. The town was sparkly, white lights draped across the trees on the county courthouse lawn and the big old walnut next to the Big River Grill. Joe was standing outside the BRG and he called us over. "Come on in," he said. "It's our yearly party." "But it says closed," I said. "Isn't it for your staff?" "It's for everyone," he said. "You'll know most everyone in there."

So we went into the restaurant. It's long and narrow and tonight it was packed with people—all of them taller than I am. As we walked the gauntlet, we spoke to a few people. "Hey, you're not supposed to be here." Accident. Oh, but you're all right? We waved, nodded. Noisy, dark, crowded, cramped. I wanted to stop and talk. To embrace and be embraced. This was my home. These were my neighbors and friends. It felt nice to be invited inside.

George, the bagpiper and artist, stopped Mario, "Heard you saw the elephant, man."

"Yeah," Mario said, "and the elephant was spinning."

We stepped out into the cool fresh air and walked away from the restaurant.

"Have you ever heard that expression before?" Mario asked.

"I'm sure it's a George-ism," I said.

Later Mario looked up elephant in the slang dictionary and it said to "see the elephant" meant "to see or experience a great deal, as much as one can manage; an extraordinary sight or remarkable situation and the experience of such that leads to gaining knowledge or the loss of innocence."

We watched movies. I made blueberry muffins without the muffin cups. Blueberry cake. While I was stirring the egg, oil, maple syrup, and vanilla into the barley flour and baking soda, a conversation popped into my head from characters from a book I had often thought of writing but never had. I have talked with other people who are chronically ill or who have to spend a great deal of their time with doctors or in hospitals. I said it's like being a citizen of another country, one no one wants to immigrate to.

In the imaginary conversation that came into my head, a group of these citizens sit around a table in a hospital or some huge medical complex, like homeless around a fire. They're even dressed a bit like the homeless, disheveled and tired. Clearly not the ones who are benefiting from a massive health industrial complex.

"Don't you think it's like we come here once a month or once a week to be entertained and cured by magicians," one says. "They give us their potions and enchantments and voila! we're healed."

"But we're not. Healed. Cured."

"They're not magicians," one of them says, almost spitting, as though this is a ridiculous suggestion. "They’re just people who know some things about some things and not a lot about a lot of things."

"And we're cogs on their assembly line," another person says.

"So there's no such thing as magic?" one of them asks the spitting man. She is young, still believes in possibility.

"Sure there's magic," he said. "And we still all die any way."

When the blueberry muffins were ready I took them into the living room and told Mario the conversation I overheard from a group of immigrants in that other country.

“That reminds me of the screen saver at the doctor’s exam room,” Mario said. “It said ‘We are guests in our patients’ lives.’” (Donald M. Berwick, MD)

Every time I woke up in the night, I was shaking so hard I could hardly walk. Fear and adrenalin. I'm good in emergencies; later the shit hits the fan.

In the morning it was off to another doctor. On the way there, I asked Mario what he thought happened when you die.

"Nothing. It's just over. What do you think?"

"Yeah, probably."

"I read somewhere someone saying that we all know we're going to die but we have this kind of social agreement to ignore that fact so that we don't all go crazy."

“I apparently don’t have that.”

“Well, you’ve never been one for social niceties,” Mario said.

I tried to imagine being in the world without Mario. I started to cry. I was crying so hard I could hardly see the road, so I knew I had to stop the car or the crying. But when I tried to stop crying my throat hurt and I could hardly breathe. Mario held my hand. (It's not as selfish at it sounds. Mario was not worried, and my crying did not alarm or worry him.)

We went to the doctor. He was reassuring, but idle reassurance does nothing if it ain't backed with truth or knowledge. Tomorrow Mario would get an MRI. Thursday he would see the doctor again.

Mario suggested I try to meditate so that I could relax. I looked at him and said, "The last time I meditated I was in a car accident. I don't think that's gonna be happening again soon."

Today was Solstice. The days would soon be getting longer. New light was born. I spent most of it in the arms of my sweetheart. Ain't a bad day after all. Extraordinary, actually. Like seeing an elephant. Only this one wasn’t spinning. 0 comments

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

All photographs and written material copyright © 2003-2008 by Kim Antieau unless otherwise indicated. May not be used without permission.