A Chinese student sat across from me in the hospital waiting room. Next to him, a woman with a bag of knitting planted herself. As she settled in, kneedles poking through holes in her knitting, she began to interrogate the Chinese student.
— "Where are you from, dear?" she asked, meaning well.
— "Inner Mongolia."
Ask the question of a Frenchman, he names a department or region. Of an American or Canadian, the name of a state or province. As an autonomous region, the naming Inner Mongolia was akin to an American naming Puerto Rico, or, a Briton, the Isle of Man or one of the Channel Islands. You would be forgiven if you didn't know; and, so the woman pursued the logical line of questioning.
— "Inner Mongolia? Is that, like, the centre of Mongolia?"
— "No." The Chinese student was gentle. "It is outside of Mongolia!"
This confused the knitter. The student made a fist with his left hand, and, gently rocked it in the space before them both.
— "This is Mongolia." he explained. With his right hand, he formed the broad out like of China below. "This is China." He pulled China's hand away, forming a pointer to the space below his fist. "This region is Inner Mongolia."
He was beaming. The memory of home appeared fresh upon his face.
— "Oh!" said the woman in shock. "It is occupied, like Tibet?"
Shock looked as if it might have been a tectonic plate. And, it could be seen sliding from her face onto his.
One American's off-cant stories of life in the United Kingdom.
The English language may not be the only thing we do not share!
29 September 2015
EUROPEAN TIME
5:30 a.m. UK time is 6:30 continental time. But, the 6:30 Stanstead train still leaves at 6:30 UK time. There was no consoling the German tourist who'd arrived unnecessarily early. The platform attendant tried to explain that the tourist would have to wait an hour or board the 5:30 south, get off at Bishop Storford and cross to the northbound Stanstead. "ACH!" exclaimed the tourist, "You-ur trains never run on time." — Now, the platform agent had been holding the train for the tourist to make up her mind: would she go or wait. Like clockwork, a voice from the train yelled out, "That is why we want out of fucking Europe."
#ContinentalDriftIsATheory
Floored
Max's 2 a.m. zombie, er, uh, city walkie did not disappoint. Following a fellow who had a rough time staggering from the kebab shop cradling his chips while trying to light a joint. A few steps on, the chips were 'floored'. The young man giggled, finally bringing his lighter to the joint's end. Then a toke brought vomit up against a storefront.
— Free chips & vomit! All because neither of us could sleep.
Nye
This is how the Zombie Apocalypse begins. — 6 a.m. dog walk.
Alarm goes off at the funeral home.
Police roll up to investigate. No sign of break in.
Low, rumbling growl can be heard within.
#ContinentalDriftIsATheory
Floored
Max's 2 a.m. zombie, er, uh, city walkie did not disappoint. Following a fellow who had a rough time staggering from the kebab shop cradling his chips while trying to light a joint. A few steps on, the chips were 'floored'. The young man giggled, finally bringing his lighter to the joint's end. Then a toke brought vomit up against a storefront.
— Free chips & vomit! All because neither of us could sleep.
Nye
This is how the Zombie Apocalypse begins. — 6 a.m. dog walk.
Alarm goes off at the funeral home.
Police roll up to investigate. No sign of break in.
Low, rumbling growl can be heard within.
21 September 2015
I Love Cherries
The
surgery waiting-room was a virtual morgue.
Lots of old people, sitting silently, looking down at
their knees as if
willing themselves to rise and walk. The
Lazarus act just won’t GO! — “I don’t like cherries, mummy!” bursts a young lad standing between his
father’s legs. — “You will one day, son.”
says the father quietly, ripe with double entendre that escapes the boy. His parents blow the age-curve
of those of us waiting in what is, fundamentally, a clinic for people with the
problems of advancing
age. The boy blows the curve yet
again.
Surgery
is simply the British word for doctors’ offices. This one is more dreary than most. It’s aging badly too.
The boy’s remark conjures a vision of cherries forming on trees in the cemetery. Last year’s fruit was juicy and sweet. — I love
cherries. — The vision is
a charming diversion from my purpose here.
I’m in the bowels of the University hospital. I am meant to be an object lesson for future
doctors. My anaemia can’t be explained. There’s no evidence of bleeding, neither on my outsides nor on my insides. Yet, I’ve been bleeding profusely every day
for more than a year. The blood is the
colour of dark red cherries.
Waiting, I humour myself with the
British pronunciation of die-version. This might otherwise be the melancholic
version of my life’s story in which I die of boredom. As I spell the word out, D. I. E., my
German-speaking ancestors haunt me with their very own pronunciation, dee.
The the word. As if I require a reminder that this is the definitive
version of my life.
A nurse
comes to draw my blood. — “A small prick’” she says. It’s the shorthand of someone with experience
for someone with clear sight of a long needle.
As she becomes crusty with experience, I imagine that she will have
dispensed with the nicety of a preface, and will lead simply with “prick”. As I become crusty with age, I suspect that
this will be an apt characterization of my personality.
I am already perturbed at having had to give my ‘details’ often, and,
publicly enough for an identity thief to have confirmed them. I feel my willfulness increasing. — “Maybe,
this time,” I tell myself, “I won’t tell them what drugs I’m taking or allergic
to.” I should print cards for my next
visit to the hospital. I am deaf and dumb,
it will say and have the implied context of How could you not know this already!
The needle
glides in. I imagine Biblical camels
passing through the eyes of needles. I refuse the flow of blood. It’s a party trick
that I learned, having to suffer through clinical examinations as a child. I’d been subjected to all sorts of prodding,
poking and pricking as doctors sought reasons for my malevolent migraines. It was an era when children were still
thought as likely to be affected by poltergeists as by physical affliction. — “Doctor, I can’t find a pulse.” exclaimed one
nurse. “I think he’s dead.” she winked. It was encouragement enough. I’ve been trying to refuse blood-taking ever since. Nurses
have their own party tricks in response to mine. — “That’s strange.” they often
mime curiosity. Then, they jig the
needle as if it was a rubber tube, and, they were stealing petrol through a siphon.
My doctors
regard the body as a globe. It’s an
adequate characterization given the shape of the old men and old women in the
waiting room. The neurologists who tried
to understand my migraines — how one half of my tongue fell numb while the
other still felt pain — they divided the globe into right and left hemispheres, to
match those of
my brain. My
present doctors shift their attention to my northern to my southern hemispheres.
Their Amazon, their Congo is my colon.
I have
trouble concentrating on the answers I must give to their questions. I find myself distracted by medical
terminology spoken with a British accent.
I hold onto their pronunciation like a child made to linger over the
meaning of the present in one’s hands. ‘Colon’ is just one of
several distractions. Co-Ion, the British say. Co-LON,
I tease the word out between my lips and teeth. Co-LON-Don. I think of the conductor of the morning train announces
our passage to LON-Don. And, I smile, in turn, remembering my best friend in
grade-school. We’d just discovered sex
in the form of printed porn left in our forest encampment. Thereafter, he wanted the role of Long Dong
Silver* whenever we played pirates in the woods.
In LON-Don , I ride the Tube, which is the very Co-LON of LON-Don.
I have lost myself in the diversion. My doctors must be thinking of calling in the neurologist to assess my
repetition of the word. CO-Lon, I shift the accent. This not only throws the switch on a light in my
brain but blows
the bulb as well.
Pop! It’s a moment of discovery. — “Well, I‘Il be damned!” I can hear
myself. “I do have co-Ions. Big and
small ones. Intestines.” One of the
doctors has a dumb founded expression. — “Oh, sorry!” I exclaim, aware that I’m within an explanation of being
called away in a white jacket. “I’m
American. We have coI-ons and inn-test-inns. We pee you’re-in
rather than your-eye-in. I
pause to see if he’s okay. The
explanation is making things worse, especially when I feel compelled to add, “I
suppose, you have in-tes-tines here?” At
least the other doctor is laughing nervously.
David
says that I have away with doctors. I
make them nervous. Before we left
Florida, I went to my doctor complaining of symptoms of appendicitis. There, I was left to await the doctor in a
small room with a small bench, the doctor’s chair, a narrow bed, and plenty of
open floor. I suppose that he’d never
entered a room and found the patient curled up on the floor. It must have thrown him. He quickly dismissed my symptoms as arising
from General Tso’s chicken. I would see him twice more with the same
symptoms before landing in Britain. Each
time, he’d fidget as though locked in his own skin, with a cannibal caressing
the surface, making hairs stand on end.
David reported his experience of the doctor as
of a wholly different man, one at ease with both doctor and patient. British doctors removed my necrotic appendix
a little more than a year later. I was
overjoyed with the
British National Health Service.
I’ve
come to today’s appointment having now learned a new lexicon, not just new
pronunciations. I now dare to visualize wooden Galleons
sailing through the Straights of Magellan, the back passage between my Atlantic and Pacific oceans, on the force
of the wind. I find it odd that a people who can speak so
di-rect-ly about urine,
need to take refuge in metaphors for the opposite hemisphere. When the doctor comes to review my history,
I tell him that Stanley’s already met Livingstone. Tethered cameras have ventured down my throat
and wormed their way into my gullet, while equally invasive cameras have
spelunked through my back passage, not once but twice. They’ve found nothing.
Nothing unexpected in the deep, dark continent of me.
But,
doctors are a literal tribe who otherwise speak a language devoid of metaphor. It comes as a shock when they ask me yet
again to describe the colour of the blood that I am losing, and, prime me with
“Bright cherry red?” — “Cherries, maybe.”
I say, “but deep red cherries.” Like the
child in the waiting room, my response twists the curve. — “That’s impossible,” they say. “The kind of blood you describe. No. It’s
got to be bright red.” I’m
perturbed. — “Why did you ask?” I demand,
“if you’re not going to listen to my answers . .
.” I resolved upon previous dismissals to take
an evidence-based approach. — “I have
pictures!” I say triumphantly, “want to see?” I pull
out a kind of photographic colostomy bag.
A photo album labelled “Blood Diary”. I’m still surprised that they agree to see the
images, when I hear the words that will vindicate me. — “Is that BLACK?!” they say. I can hear myself gloating, “Yes, I am a medical mystery.” — “You should be dead” a colleague whose mother is a
doctor tells me. Black means that the blood is oxygen deprived. On my tombstone, I want these words
inscribed: I loved cherries. Deep red cherries.
* Long Dong Silver, the porn star, was actually our age. For all I now know, my childhood friend may have grown into a career as Long Dong Silver. But, let's face it, it doesn't take a pubescent boy very much time or forethought to make the short linguistic leap from the pirate, Long John Silver.
20 September 2015
LION & HAWK
A businessman walks
along the 5:45's platform puffing on an e-cigarette. — “Mate!” calls the platform attendant,
“put your cigarette out.” — “It’s not
a cigarette.” says the businessman plaintively. — “Doesn’t matter,” responds the
attendant. “Cambridge City ordinance.
2014. Includes e-cigarettes in its banning orders.” — “Oh, sorry.” the business man
affirms. He has the tone of dog-with-tail-between-its-legs.
While I mentally note
the exchange, I continue writing my daily card to MaryJane, my shut-in
neighbour. Yesterday’s dog walk brought
me onto what sounded like a North American Indian Council of War. The Hare Krishna had captured Castle
Hill. There, towering over city centre,
chants of Hare. Hare. Hare Krishna. Hare Rama. were literally
enchanting.
Now, on the platform,
with the businessman turned-tail, the attendant took note of me writing. People often do. And, they become self-conscious, concerned
that I write about them. This one, the
attendant, is making out that he hasn’t noticed me as he does. It’s normal behaviour: this pretense of I am not thinking of you; therefore, you
do not exist.
He takes a wide,
arching path around me, craning his neck to determine what I’m doing. I pretend not to notice. But, as he swings around behind my left
shoulder, I turn to stare into his eyes.
He is easy on the eyes, a handsome mid-twenty something. The look forces a confession from him. — “Oh, it’s a postcard.” he says without a
measure of surprise. — “Does that
matter!” I demand. “What,” I ask more
playfully, “might it have been?” He
holds his distance, like a man who finds himself in the lion’s enclosure at the
zoo. — “I thought you were National
Rail. . . . I mean,” he catches himself,
“I thought you were an under-cover security agent.”
The strain he was
under couldn’t have made him more vulnerable.
My inner lion pulsed. — “And,
you’ve come to blow my cover, have you?”
He has no answer. He backs away,
as you might from a lion, believing that slow, measured steps might mesmerize
the beast into inaction. And, I turn my
attention back to the card, running off to post it before the train arrives.
------------------------------------------------------------
Pay a man
attention, and he can be yours!
------------------------------------------------------------
On return to my
stand on the platform, there is the attendant.
He’s watching everyone, having released his inner hawk. Among his jobs is looking out for would-be
jumpers. Suicide by train is a bit too
common. He is also responsible for
‘releasing’ the train. Most attendants
will release a train and walk on to the next train’s platform. Now seated inside, I sense that this one might be
different. At the sound of his whistle,
a precursor to release, I down my pen, turn to look across the carriage, and
stare out the window. I’ll have a final
glimpse of him, to see if his curiosity turns him one last time.
The train pulled slowly
forward. The fluid landscape of the
station outside drew the figure of the platform attendant into view. Arms crossed.
Less than a few inches from the glass.
Staring in at the caged lion, as if he were a falconer’s hawk looking on
a kitten.
The National Rail’s
inspector turns his attention to the young man in a corner of the
carriage. Conspicuous in his discomfort
seated across from a beautiful young woman, the young man pulls at his t-shirt. Crosses his arms in an attempt to hide a
burgeoning tummy. — “Gerbil,” I
think. “Gerbil. Hawk. Lion.”
Incidentally, on the 16:14 train home out of London, Kings Cross, I sat opposite a National Rail inspector in the far back corner of the train's first carriage. In a small black notebook, in which was printed a rail map, he noted conditions within and outside the carriage at various way-points along the line. When he thought that no one was looking, he unfastened his belt and slid his trouser button from its hole.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)