Hospital Joe

(The following is an edited version of an article Joe wrote a few years ago. Joe had minor surgery at Salem Hospital Thurday, July 15. He will be home Friday and is, of course, already back to business.)

It happens everywhere I go. There was girl in Philadelphia once, she walked toward me on a center city street. She wore a shiny tan skirt, a white blouse, blond hair falling to her shoulders, a page boy bob framing her fresh face, under a totally blue sky and sunshine all around. She passed me by like I didn't exist.

I had quite a conversation with her in my daydream prone mind:

Hey you -- yes you, in the navy blue power suit and pink blouse, with the gold necklace around your neck, and swinging that black alligator attache case, striding along confidently on your way to a corporate takeover. You passed right by and didn't even see me. But that young hunk coming the other way, you gave him a good look. OK, I don't really expect that you will pay any attention to me. My cane gives me away. But even at my age I don't like to be erased. In the inarticulate lingo of today, it feels a little like, you know, being wiped out.

Am I poking fun a myself or am I serious? Both. That girl in Philadelphia reminded me of other times and other girls, as an old photograph tells of times that can be retrieved. I used to buy camelia corsages for girls like her. Sometimes I would skip lunch or eat apples from the trees on campus to have the money. There were rides in automobiles and I would hold the girls tight. And the dancing! I inhaled the slightly scented aroma from her body and we danced cheek to cheek then, not like today where dancing looks like prizefighters squaring off in the ring. There's so much more to dancing than what what they show on TV. That's the serious part. As for the self-mockery? That comes from remembering my age.

Day Dreaming

(I should preface this post by stating that Day Dreaming was first published in a literary journal in Winter 1999.)

The ability to pass time gracefully is an art that makes idleness attractive. Recently I was housebound and largely immobilized for two weeks recovering from surgery for a bone spur. Happily, I was well prepared to endure the inactivity. While some may have chafed at the enforced leisure, I enjoyed these doldrums.

Good habits, we are told, are learned in childhood. So are bad habits, and thus it was that in childhood I learned the pleasures of passing time by doing nothing. To appreciate this skill, one must understand that idleness is as much a state of mind as it is an absence of activity. The essential requirement is a shameful surrender to nothingness. Day dreaming, with its misty, evanescent, self-hypnotic qualities fits that definition. Self-serving and self-indulgent, it is perfect comfort for one's privations.

More Later, Joe