Sometime
around the time the trees in front of our house break out in clusters of white lilacs, I contemplate disease. No, it seems rather disease contemplates me, and together we complement one another.
I float down the sidewalk, smoking as always in my post-work ethereal state. Sitting on the curbside in the distance is an asthmatic child coughing up its lung. Without thinking I move sideways into the street, proving to some ambivalent part of my psyche that yes, I do still have a conscience.
And what more could I expect than a car barreling toward me, somehow determined to crush my ankles, toss my body to the pavement, to halt with the agonizing screech of rubber burning. I do not expect it, but it happens. Almost.
Paranoia may be expected in these times of trial.
A time of psychological impairment, unresolved. The doctor who did not want to see me said quickly and decisively, "It's a mental problem. I'll write you a dottie referral."
What a dottie referral is, I don't know. She never wrote it, but the phrase sticks with me now, stomping out my cigarette. I'm goddamn dottie, therefore I require a note issuing me rites of passage into an office where my brain will be successfully repaired. This will never happen.
Life is now painted on in large, casual strokes. Pigments break and dissolve under the weak, transient effects of the solar system. Disease calls and I wash my hands, realizing only now that it's too late.
There are too many lilacs. The child will not stop coughing.
I float down the sidewalk, smoking as always in my post-work ethereal state. Sitting on the curbside in the distance is an asthmatic child coughing up its lung. Without thinking I move sideways into the street, proving to some ambivalent part of my psyche that yes, I do still have a conscience.
And what more could I expect than a car barreling toward me, somehow determined to crush my ankles, toss my body to the pavement, to halt with the agonizing screech of rubber burning. I do not expect it, but it happens. Almost.
Paranoia may be expected in these times of trial.
A time of psychological impairment, unresolved. The doctor who did not want to see me said quickly and decisively, "It's a mental problem. I'll write you a dottie referral."
What a dottie referral is, I don't know. She never wrote it, but the phrase sticks with me now, stomping out my cigarette. I'm goddamn dottie, therefore I require a note issuing me rites of passage into an office where my brain will be successfully repaired. This will never happen.
Life is now painted on in large, casual strokes. Pigments break and dissolve under the weak, transient effects of the solar system. Disease calls and I wash my hands, realizing only now that it's too late.
There are too many lilacs. The child will not stop coughing.