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The poet Mark Meco suggests that we do the simplest and hardest thing each day, in order to be here fully. Well, I have a feeling that if I were to try to live up to his excellent idea--namely, to be here fully, without turning away—well, the first thing I'd have to do would be to give up genre fiction. Devouring, for hours at a time, an exciting police procedural certainly is at odds with any idea of being here fully. Unless, of course, my complete immersion in a story means that I am fully there, not turning away. But I'm pretty sure that's not what we're talking about.
So all right (spelled as two words, as was deemed correct in 1950), all right—and putting in that little parenthetical aside (isn't an aside always parenthetical?) made me totally lose the thread of what I planned to say after "all right".
But now that we're here in the land of forgetting, there are things to say. Recently I was entering the St. George station to come home. Just as I reached the Presto gates, a woman came toward me to exit the station. For some reason (and for the first time in my life) this triggered a switch in my brain and even though I had my Presto card in my hand ready to tap it and enter, I suddenly forgot and apparently thought I was leaving the station, or I thought—who knows what?—and I tried to enter without tapping, as one would when leaving. Needless to say, the gates didn't swing open as I stood close to them. So I moved over to the neighbouring gate. It didn't open, either. And then the penny dropped and I saw what I was doing, tapped my card, and went into the station.
The day after this mistake, heading for a 10:30 doctor's appointment, I misjudged two things. First, my timing was off; even though this was a trip I make frequently, I should have allowed more time. Even so I might have arrived on time if I hadn't made another mistake. Knowing that I would be heading south from the Yonge-Bloor station, I nonetheless got it into my head that I needed to be in the front car (which, as any Toronto subway user knows, would position me to take the steps up to the north-bound trains). So I confidently got on the north-bound train and confidently sat down and opened my TLS. And then the speaker announced that the next station was Rosedale and I knew I'd messed up and that I'd never make it to my appointment on time.
So: off the subway at Rosedale, up the steps and across the bridge and down the steps and wait for the south-bound train and then go south to College and then walk through College Park and then cross Bay Street and then arrive in the office at 10:45, fifteen minutes late. The only good thing about it is that this gave my doctor a real-time view of how my mind isn't working these days.
The interesting thing to me is how normal one can appear—no, how long one can appear normal even though the mice are eating the brain. How long will I be able to pass? Note to self: avoid proper names, book and movie titles, authors, and directors—in fact, do not comment on anything specific. And hope no one notices that you are keeping shtum.
Musings blog: http://www.scenesfromthejourney.blogspot.com
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