July 10, writing exercise -- laces into atoms

The Good Reverend is on his way up to the tower, yeah!!!!!

[The Good Reverend is a nickname for a good friend of mine. We met in Berkley the year before I was working at the lookout and became fast friends. I think the name came from the fact that he was studying comparative religion and biblical Mediterranean languages when I met him. He's smart and contemplative and quiet, with a wicked wit and generous heart. One of my only visitors up in the tower that summer. Visitors had to be OK'd through the Forest Service office and driven up to the tower by the forest patrol. It was all very uptight, since the lookout is within the Bull Run Watershed, which supplies water for the greater Portland area and many counties near it.]

[What follows is another writing exercise with a bizarre prompt... no idea where the prompt came from.]

Don't you hate it when you reach down from your bed to tie your shoes, and the laces fall apart into atoms.

****

Last time that happened to me I was sitting in a hospital bed, stinking of 3 weeks of sponge-baths and catheters, and cruelly bitter sweat. The thin mattress with its cheap egg-crate foam was bothering me so I swung my now skinny legs, covered with dark purple constellations, over the edge of the bed, and pulled on my socks. I hadn't realized until then how dammed bright it was -- and how flimsy. Everything in the room was flimsy polyester cloth (easy to wash I guess) and thin-walled aluminum pipe. I hated the rattle of the rings against the pipe as they pulled my curtains closed.

I could see outside the window today, and the huge trees out there (horse chestnut I think) just glowed in the sun. The sunlight seemed to set them off, like a candle does a lover's skin. I sat for a long while with one sock only half pulled on, staring out into the breeze and foliage outside. I could make out a lawn and curb -- and barely, some cars. One car pulled away, and the movement shook me from my reverie. I looked around, a little embarrassed that I'd been sitting immobile so long. I reached down, slowly, to pull up the other sock. I hated the look of my skinny, wrinkled arms sticking out of the over sized, one-size-fits-all smock they gave me to wear. I looked like a dried-up old desert crone, or a dark-skinned concentration-camp internee.

I lifted one shoe off the floor with my toes -- it was one of a pair my daughter had sent me -- brand new running shoes, with extra-soft soles & they didn't weigh a thing. I pulled it over my thin, wooden foot. Not bothering with the laces, I reached down with both feet to grab the other shoe.

At this point a nurse walked by in the hallway outside, it's walls a stupid mustard yellow. Luckily, she didn't see me sitting up, or she'd be here in a minute, her strong hands pushing me back into that thin-mattressed bed I hate so. I pulled the shoe up to my hands slowly, and felt incredible, dull pain throbbing along my vertebrae, like a diseased snake had replaced my spine. I could see it now, all dull & yellow, pocked, with scales missing.

I slid this shoe on. Something changed and my stomach registered it with a twitch. I crinkled my forehead & squinted my eyes to see. The shoe, halfway on my foot, was vaguely transparent. It was letting off a fine shower of particles, too small to see -- but sparkling. I "humphed" and pulled the shoe on as forcefully as I could, as though that would set reality straight. I reached quickly for the laces, but they slipped through my hands, disintegrating into a transparent whitish cloud, then reformed & flopped again to the sides of the shoe. I sat there a long time, hunched over -- staring at my right shoe.

A nurse's footsteps passed the door again, but this time they stopped. You could almost hear the incredulous stare that must have crossed face when she saw me there, sitting up. She rushed into the room, and I felt the strange tightness come over me as her cloud, her essence, crossed mine. I could smell her perfume as she reached down and grabbed my thin calves, pulled the shoes off me.

She was muttering to herself like a disturbed chicken. I was smiling, and would have been chuckling had I the energy. She took my legs, and pulled them carefully onto the bed. She was very, very careful -- and as strong as a Russian masseuse. She laid me back down, and I was still so amused I didn't even think to protest. She was muttering something, I can't quite remember what, something about "ungrateful old men," and "people who won't let themselves be taken care of."

She was quite peeved -- not only because I wasn't dead yet, but because since I did this on her shift she had to handle a cadaver that still breathed. Somehow that breathing made her look at things she didn't want to look at in her life -- like that useless marriage she carries around like a cross on her back, or a bundle of luggage too large to carry. Yeah, she was peeved. I almost bust out laughing, but I was sure the pain would make that a bad idea -- coming in like a thousand spears into my gut. No matter -- it had been a successful day anyway.