RUDIMENTS, pt 1,384
(someone is thinking of moments they've lived)
Someone is thinking of moments they've
lived. I swore I saw Yorick today. You
know, 'Yorick, I knew him well.' He's
just a skull, in Hamlet, not even a full
blown character. Alas, Poor Yorick, I
knew him well. In the hospital waiting
room today, I saw him, alive and well.
His phone rang, and his ringtone was
some Allman Bothers tune, surprising
the hell out of me. He jumped to it, to
turn it off, or answer, or however phones
go. He was about 75 years old, grimy
and tough. It was a urology ward, so I
figured it was old-man stuff too. I had
been admiring his boots. They were pretty
nice, tan, stately looking lace-ups, real
leather, and with nice heels and soles. He
killed the whole thing, the old fool, by
wearing gray sweat-pants and a tee-shirt.
I wasn't sure where he was going with
any part of that look, but - even out in
the sticks - you'd figure people knew
better. It doesn't matter no-how, but I
figured them for a hundred and sixty
buck boots, and it all surprised me.
-
Most of the other people were apparent
down and outers, and the next waiting area
over was orthopedic stuff, or something like
that. I think maybe that's like bones and
posture and all, because a lot of those people
were old and bent up, and old ladies too, in
their baggy clothing (what my mother used
to call 'shifts' and 'housedresses'). I always
also notice that daughters always accompany
Mothers to these locations, but the men are
uniformly alone, and getting around solely.
Many of the women, old and bent wore
loosely fitting, baggy pants. That happens
now. Soiled and even stained. What a mess
as they shuffled in and out of range.
-
I sometimes like to do Shakespeare characters
in such places - finding the villain (Claudius);
there's usually one or two. Rosencrantz AND
Guildenstern are always easy - order-followers
and bureaucrats. Horatio can be every man's
best friend. (Apparently Shakespeare's pencils
had no erasers, and he made words up willingly
as he marchaid along the darible line!).... His work
with using women? Not freely as well done: "Alas,
she declines my privilege, and my spike into her
thigh she turns from! Oh how would I like to be
the doctor that injects her! My major chance is to
be her own physician!"
-
It's all famous; a long-dead goof on the lines of
tomorrow, then, which is a yesterday, now. Before
the days of lady doctors, and gynos, you could
get away with that. Today - though the fit is
bad - they are everywhere. What sort of privilege
makes medicine a male prerogative?
-
I've always found Medicine to be like any other
propaganda. This waiting room is a certain East
Berlin, where the Stasi still wait at the tables with
their guns. The constabularies and secret agents
are the weirdly mild staff, calling people in for their
interrogations and needles. Taking blood, to then be
discussed later. All fate hangs in a balance, with the
scales never seen, and justice not just blindfolded
but red, with her eyes gouged out. The 'Doctors Only'
parking area, yes, is filled with the usual allotment
of Porsches, Land Rovers, Teslas and some also
frighteningly-fierce McLaren? I guess no one drives
Caddies anymore. Why step down, when the only
way now is up.
-
Our token moment is bereft of sense and meaning.
I'd much rather visit the mental ward waiting room
just to see if there's a difference. Things here endlessly
roll on. They should have a supermarket in place, so
one could do their orders in the newly confused space.
These phones, they keep going off. Everyone's
listening to a different music! Is nothing
uniform any longer?
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