Samain Moon of the Winter Solstice
Yes, self-absorbed. It’s one of the moral hazards of serious illness or significant medical procedures. The world is about my temperature, my pain, drugs, sleep, diet, chair. Other’s agree. For a while. But there comes a point where too much attention can become a path to a different, darker place. In that place the original cause for self-absorption passes, but the demands for preference do not. I’m raising the red caution flag for myself. (ok. yes, it’s ironic I do this on a blog devoted to my thoughts and life)
It’s time I began to take on tasks again. That gentle veil of opiates is still there, so is the pain, but my understanding of what this will take is also much greater now. Time and persistence. That’s what it will take. So, I’m on that and on integrating myself back into my life.
Kate’s taking a rest day, maybe two or three. The divorce. The grandkids on weekends. My surgery. Her own arthritis. She’s a dynamo that’s slowly wound down. Needs a recharge.
The main lineaments of the divorce, the rules of disengagement you might call them, are recorded. (I think.) Given the drama and pitched battles of the past few months you could be forgiven for thinking this is the end. Really, though, it’s the beginning. Being divorced is a verb, an ongoing action and it relates to the after marriage. Ask anyone who’s negotiated what to do with a sick kid. Or, had to choose a new school for children in a shared custody arrangement. Ask anyone whose heart thumps on that first date. Ask anyone who’s self-doubt still drags a locked trunk marked: the ex.
Let the after marriage life begin! And, as my buddy Bill Schmidt suggests, let the post-surgery life begin, too.
In two days I go bionic. Metal in my body and a song in my heart. Or something like that.
Pre-op physical yesterday. EKG within normal parameters. Dr. Gidday walked me through the pre-op questions including one which wondered if I had dementia. When I asked her how I would know, she laughed, slapped my hand, “Everybody says something like that.”
I’ve seen two movies in the past couple of weeks, Dr. Strange and Arrival. I saw Dr. Strange in 3-D. Fantasy and science fiction still have my attention after all these years. Dr. Strange was fun, great CGI, a cast that includes Tilda Swinton and Benedict Cumberbatch, and the Dr. Strange origin story.
neither is the heptapod language. Time is more flexible than we think, malleable. No Randy Quaid flying his jet into the mothership, no Luke flying his fighter into the weak spot of the death star. In fact, no onscreen violence at all with the exception of an explosion, a brief one. Though you won’t understand unless you see it, Arrival is about the power of language.
And, improbably, it will be Thanksgiving next week. There is no hint of over the river and through the woods weather to stimulate that Thanksgiving feeling. We may get a storm on Thursday. That would help.