Yesterday was again spent in the clutches of a system that fails people without insurance. As I had posted on Monday, about my friend, who is ill – we were back at the emergency room supposedly for admission to the hospital to begin treatment for a very serious illness. Unfortunately, it took 2 1/2 hours to discover that an important piece of paper that needed to come from his doctor was not there.

We were faced with two choices:
1) Start the entire process over again – with the probability of and 8 – 10 hour wait or
2) go early in the morning to his doctor, get the paper and come back to the emergency room.

As it was now late in the evening, doing all that has to be done in the morning seemed to be the best choice.

All this was terribly wearing on my friend, but with encouragement he handled it very well. Of course, having to wait even longer was becoming a throbbing pain to him. I don’t blame him at all.

This has been an adventure or a roller-coaster ride. Unfortunately, there are no “carny” stands to win a teddy bear or other such trinket.

So, encouragement became the most important.

To sleep, perchance to dream-
ay, there’s the rub.” –From Hamlet (III, i, 65-68)

Perchance to Dream

The child sat in his bedroom
while night undressed the sky
and opened up the window
through which his dreams would fly.

The stories in his paintbox
sailed on and out of sight.
He took the moon to pieces
and bade the stars goodnight.

The sedative nightwatchman
crept clockwise through his pulse,
chasing the naughty ghosts off.
But he was somewhere else.

The tipsy blobs of colour
diffused, then recombined.
He found a sheet of paper
where they might be defined.

His thought, turned inside out now,
strode through itself, agape,
watching the transposition
of syntax into shape.

Here, in this gentle country,
no thought was contraband,
but music fused with grammar,
and pictures held his hand.

And in each patient landscape,
where speech refused to slur
the vowels his heart was hiding,
he was inventing her:

lost in the mind’s penumbra,
and shy to be expressed
in syllables too prudish
to see themselves undressed,

she waited. As he saw her,
his words began to spin,
and tricks his toys had taught him
to shield his sleep from sin

came back in strange declensions,
a lazy paradigm
of some forgotten language
where love grew out of time.

She stepped – a perfect stranger,
perfect, yet not so strange –
from myths of many colours
where time had frozen change.

The light was growing soft now –
sepia monochrome:
an open family-album
welcomed its father home.

The dream dissolved in moonlight.
The child sat up in bed,
and asked his dumbstruck mirror
where all the years had fled,

while features of adulthood,
staled by their sense of sin,
stared back at him in wonder,
masking the child within.

And out of force of habit
he closed his eyes to hide
his fears from the warm person
unconscious at his side.

His arms were safe about her
whose words his heart would keep.
He turned them into windows,
then smiled and fell asleep.

Andrew Moore
1977/1980
Published in Proof: Anthology 2, 1980

In this moment of silent communion with Thee,

O Lord, a still small silent voice speaks in the depth
of my spirit.

It speaks to me of the things I must do to attain
holy kinship with Thee and to grow
in the likeness of Thee.

I must do my allotted task with unflagging faithfulness
even though the eye of no taskmaster is on me.

I must be gentle in the face of ingratitude
or when slander distorts my noblest motives.

I must come to the end of each day with a feeling
that I have used its gifts gratefully
and faced its trials bravely.

O Lord, help me to be ever more like Thee,
holy for Thou art holy,

Loving for Thou art love.

Speak to me, then, Lord, as I seek Thee again and again
in the stillness of meditation, until Thy bidding
shall at last become for me a hallowed discipline,
a familiar way of life.

– From Jewish Liturgy

May your day end with peace and quiet and joy

Poor Santa ~

First he is angry about the what’s been happening in his workshop . . .

It seems the 12 fiddlers fiddling have all come down with some kind of disease from fiddling with the 10 ladies dancing,

The 11 lords leaping may have gotten pregnant the 8 maids a-milking, who obviously weren’t.

And the 9 pipers piping have been arrested for doing weird possibly illegal things to the 7 swans a-swimming.

The 6 geese a-laying are, but it’s not eggs, it’s the 3 French hens,

The 4 calling birds, 2 turtle doves, and that partridge in the pear tree are having their own little nasty party.

And nobody can find the 5 gold rings.

Then – to make matters worse:

Not were there problems with the lords, ladies, geese and all…he was really angry because the elves were threatening to go on strike over tea breaks.

Mrs. Claus was beginning to show signs of PMS – and was continually complaining about the dirty laundry he leaves her every year.

The reindeer had gotten into the sour mash, and Rudolf was trying to sober them up to be ready to fly.

And to top everything else – the angel Santa had sent out to get the last Christmas tree to be delivered STILL hadn’t returned, and it had been over 4 hours.

Finally – the angel returned dragging the most bedraggled tree Santa could ever even imagine…stopped in the doorway and said: “Hey, fat man … where do you want me to put this thing?”

And thus was born the tradition of the angel on the tree top.

The beauty of e-mail is the quickness of sending, receiving and replying. No more waiting a day or two or three – now, a few clicks and it’s sent. And with certain people, a few moments and a reply.

However, with that quickness came a sickness – spam (used to be the junk mail I tossed into the garbage can) and all the helpful advice.

This is my way of saying thanks for all the helpful advice I’ve received:

–Because of rat poop in the glue on envelopes, I now use a wet towel (or my cat’s tongue) with every envelope that needs sealing.

–I now scrub the top of every can I open for the same reason.

–I no longer have any savings because I gave it to a sick girl who is about to die in the hospital for the 1,387,258th time.

–I no longer eat a any fast-food chicken place because their chickens are actually horrible mutant freaks with no eyes or feathers.

–I now longer eat fast-food hamburgers as their meat is nothing more than ground-up worms.

–I no longer use cancer-causing deodorants even though I smell like a water buffalo on a hot day.

–I have learned that my prayers get answered if I forward an email to seven of my friends and make a wish within five minutes. (and I will get my answer within four hours)

–I longer drink a certain brand of cola because it can remove toilet stains and clean crud off car battery connections.

–I no longer use plastic wrap in the microwave because it causes cancer.

–I no longer boil a cup water in the microwave anymore because it will blow up in my face disfiguring me for life.

–I no longer check the coin return on pay phones because I could be pricked with a needle infected with some deadly disease.

–I no longer go to shopping malls because someone will drug me with a perfume sample and rob me.

–I no longer talk to people as they may drug me and steal several of my vital organs.

–I no longer receive packages from any courier company since they are all actually terrorists in disguise.

–I no longer answer the phone because someone will ask me to dial a number for which I will get a gazillion dollar phone bill with calls to Jamaica, Uganda, Singapore and Uzbekistan or Seattle.

–I no longer have any sneakers, I sent them to a kid in Namibia – but that will change once I receive my free replacement pair from Nike.

–I no longer buy expensive cookies from Neiman Marcus since I now have their $250 recipe.

–I can’t use anyone’s toilet but mine because a big brown African spider is lurking under the seat to cause me instant death when it bites my bottom. And I spray mine each time with bug spray just to make sure!

–I can live a better life now because Andy Rooney has told me how to fix everything.

–I don’t ever pick up $1.00 in the parking lot because it probably was placed there by a sex molester waiting underneath a car to grab my leg.

–I can no longer drive my car because I can’t buy gas from certain oil companies on ceratain days.

–I took out a 2nd mortgage on my house, but I’ll be able to pay it off as soon as all the exciting stocks I received “private tips” about reach their full potential.

— I will have health insurance coverage for any condition known or un-known as soon as the 16 policies I purchased come to me.

— I no longer watch TV as people will send me the clips of the shows I miss and wanted to miss. And, I no longer have to go out to see people make idiots of themselves, the clips are available 24/7.

— I will share the 17 million I’m about to receive from the overseas government official trying to escape with a lot of money, with all my friends. (Yes, I know he only offered me 10% of it – but I’m greedy!)

–As soon as Bill Gates/AOL/Netscape and the others pay off for participating in their special e-mail tracking program, I will move all the money into an off-shore bank, which I will incorporate in Nevada.

–And my love life (sex life?) will certainly improve when all the cheap enhancement drugs I can order ONLY by e-mail arrive.

So, for now – I’m enjoying my cup of coffee and trying to decide on which overnight, no exercise weight loss drug I should order!