Giving myself room

There are moments, sometimes lasting for hours, when I do not think at all.

I have discovered face book.

Face book is populated with many of my cousins, filled with my genes and several friends from other sources. It also has the neverending movie quiz.

I am in competition with myself to beat my longest streak of thirty nine correct answers in a row. I was quite frustrated that I stuck at 39 and not at forty but decided I don't mind being younger for a moment. I find the thought that in twenty four hoursI have answered more than 700 questions overall a little unnerving. As a mindless entertainment to while away an hour or two it is sheer perfection.

I needed to pull back a bit. The time spent with, spent waiting, for doctors is all about disease. The waiting rooms are full of people suffering, their pain, their fear and mine. It grows, cold manacles around your ankles so you do not even change your seat, just frozen in one place waiting. To hear your name. To be released. To be judged.

You sit, you wonder what you did to make this happen. What strange law of attraction and why. In the deepest recesses of memory that little 'roll guy' is kicking his little sneakers and waving his little white gloves, because of a poem I wrote thirty years ago. I had exquisitely painful migraines every few weeks at the time.

That might, in some way, answer the 'what', but not the 'why'! I have a theory as to why. And again, it matters only that it works for me.

Things that work for me are things that make me smile, even if it is just the slightest twitch of barely convinced lips. I'll keep working with the theory until it has a context and a shape to reflect the light so i can laugh out loud at my confection.

My poems have all wilted on the vine for now, composting down, leaving dormant seeds to grow new strains of trumpets to herald future dawns and sunsets with a fanfare taken from the very guts of living in the moment. Or something.

I needed to pull back, the trees were all around me and I needed space to breathe. Today, I go to work, a gentle irony, to record and produce a program on health supplements. My job to ensure the claims are not extravagant, untrue, to keep the hype under control. And also make good radio, not just an infomercial that fills half an hour. I will be editing like crazy to get it on air Thursday.

Tomorrow I go to the hospital again. This time a CAT scan and a core biopsy of the mass in my lung. I sincerely hope it is less painful than the lumbar puncture, probably, because the needle is quite fine. They say.

My neurologist told me last week that they did eventually find some atypical cells in the fluid they took from my spine. Nothing they could type unfortunately, so whoop-di-do. It will be a cold day in Barbados before I sign a consent form for another of those. I now have four doctors on 'my team'.

I am grateful somewhere but I keep thinking,I really do not like team sports.