RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,381
(hospital days with Arthur, pt. ONE)
Of late I'm running jammers 'round
the cornerstops of Hell. I've been 4
months now a captive : doctors and
medicines, needles and knives. I am
so tired of all of that.
-
At least being home has its privileges.
Private-type moments again, free of
intrusion. Sunlight and vapor to better
watch and to see. Noises to listen to,
casual for me. One thing I've noticed,
through all this time - with my many
interactions running - country folk
are funny. Sometimes even visually
so. But certainly in their talks and
manners. Cliche-like, they say funny
things. Can I see your 'INsurance card?'
That's one I easily recall, with the funny
emphasis on the first syllable. The same
gets done with 'veHICle' - which is
often just as funny. Cops (we have none
here) I can picture at the side of the road
out by Scranton, saying, 'Step out of the
veHICle please.' Another cool thing, my
food-service and meal-attendant was a
young girl, maybe 20, in a Mennonite
outfit. Each day, black, stately dress,
and a little doily-like hat or hair covering.
She never talked except for the cursory
hello and you're welcome. Everyone
else seemed to love talking. I did so
want to hear her language use, but
never did.
-
You get on any of those larger roads
that criss-cross through Scranton (you
can even 'bypass' the place if you want)
on the big roads, and the roadways get
more common, and large - Rts. 81, 80,
any of those crazy big routes. There are
some cops, and State Police, zooming
around, and plunges at guardrails and the
occasional wreck on the ground. People
drive like their butt is on fire...or their
house anyway. There are those ubiquitous
roadside crosses and markers and shrines
for the dead. 'Robert Quinn, 1964 - 2017'.
Sad markers certainly for the places where
death occurred. When I was younger, reading
illustrated travel-books or whatever, such
death-scene shrines were often catalogued
and collected in these books, along with the
oddly-actual religious shrines and statues -
not marking any accident in particular, but
more just acting as places to pull over and
pray or worship - at the edge of a cliff or
some treacherous turn in the Andes somewhere
which needed divine intervention to pass.
Amen to that! When I was at Princeton there
was even a band with an album out called
'Roadside Shrines.' The band was 'Racket.'
-
There's somehow a distinctly different
feel between a private-room Cardiac section
stay and a 2-man regular-section stay; at
least where I just was anyway. I was locked
in for the last 3 days with a true nut-case,
one probably worthy of a mental-ward,
(where he'd most recently been, in Montrose,
PA. Man, what a time that was, sharing
a room with him - beside his constant
bullshit television and movie-watching,
albeit thankfully at low-volume, which he
was nice about - he went often enough on
and on with his thorough knowledge of
movies and actors and bios. All endlessly
fascinating, I guess, if you're an idiot.
(It's a difficult scene, always, I've always
held it against actors (whom I really
dislike) for taking on roles and faking
their insincerity as sincerity, and their
way through stupid scenarios, and
mistaking the real place of their lives
and minds for the inauthentic sham of
the suspension of disbelief so that you
cab believe this asshole in jodhpurs in
Henry the VIII. How they can get away
with this in their own minds is always
beyond me, and if they can manage to
eke out another real/fake life all while
play-portrait lives are dangling before
them, I so pity their fabric.
-
So, back to my 'roomie' : He had a claim
to be, I think, 46, with a birthdate of
March 26, 1977. Close enough to April
6th that I thought it warranted a Happy
Birthday anyway. He said thanks. He was
in for numerous, serious, failings. Pancreas
problems, kidney problems, digestive woes,
a festering abscess on his back-right side,
above the waist. He couldn't poop (6 days),
was on laxatives, had a catheter bag, and
was otherwise amidst a menu of ailments
and treatments. Just the guy I wanted to
spend my free time with, right? His name
was/is Arthur, with a long, consonant-heavy
German/Jewish last name Wenkenberger
or something. He said he was a farm-boy
from up north Pennsylvania (New Milford,
NOT Milford that makes the Jersey/PA border
well south of there). He knew Yiddish, and
English, and had a heavy influence living
through him of his Grandmother's life and
influence. New Milford is up at the NE corner
of PA, more near Starrucca, with the railroad
trestle of note. She had taught him the Yiddish,
and of course we began fooling around with
words and making Yiddishisms and accented
comments. He also liked cars, and we ran
through an entire litany of 1950's car, names,
models, engines, and designations. So, between
movies, ailments, cars, and languages, we stayed
fairly busy at times. Usually some nurse would
come in for to 'take your vitals' - his or mine -
and that would end it until we began again.
-
There's something cool about old-world Jewishness;
different for sure from that which surfaced basely
in this country and it has, by now, all died out,
leaving only the slick new. Concoctions, old
remedies, strong attitudes and opinions. In so
many ways it's a throwback society; to a time
when people called things as they were - 'You
schmuck, asshole, Schmiel, whatever. The sayings
and retorts were pithy and direct, often touching
onto the very edges of divinity references. That
was kind of what Arthur meant by his very light
Jewishness; more was in the attitude and the
language tendencies than anything to do
with 'religion' per se. Arthur referred to his
non-pooping and a real 'need to 'shite''.
-
The coolest thing about Arthur, and easily
shared, as he spoke, was his fear of things.
It was a paradox, because the things he did
because of fear were worse than the fear he
was experiencing. Here's a for-instance;
pretty amazing, yes, BUT, remember too
that it is based only on what HE told ME.
If he was truly a trickster Jew, it could all
be BS also. His fear of dentistry and dentists,
he said, was overwhelming. He claimed to
have had 3 teeth that needed extraction.
Three in a row to each other. They were
loose, and they were painful if chomped
on. So, he says he, self-made an old-world
Grandma-concoction - a paste composed of
some name of a toothpaste, and (I think he said)
codeine, and a third ingredient I can't actually
recall but it was common and simple. He rubbed
that paste into the base of the teeth and the gum,
at each of the three trouble-spots, for three days.
After which time, numbed up as they were, he
pulled the three teeth out with pliers. Just like
that! He said it worked and it was simple. I
figured that would be worth something, if it
could get approved! I hesitated to tell him
that the Dental lobby would probably oppose
that and pay to have it rejected, and they were
probably all Jewish guys too, but not his
Grandma's kind.
No comments:
Post a Comment