Days and nights merge; the only difference between them is the amount of light I see at the windows—or the hours of darkness that hide the sun. Sleep, once the kingdom of the night, increasingly stakes its claim to daylight hours, its visits growing longer and more congenial. Nighttime dreams and daydreams collide as they invade one another’s domains, making it impossible to distinguish realities in another dimension from fantasies in this one. I become an observer of both, but a participant in neither. I simply watch experiences, over which I have no control, unfold. Reality inserts itself into delusion and fantasy infringes the territories over which I expect facts to have domain. Dreams gone bad become nightmares, but the term for blighted fantasies escapes me. No matter; they switch places and roles at will…their own, not mine. As a watcher, though, I am sometimes drawn in to the confusion. Left wondering what is real and what is not, I cannot risk a response, only to discover I have intruded on an illusion.
All right. I will admit my descriptions may be somewhat enhanced. Exaggerated. Overblown. But more mundane expressions would be boring, revealing me as the originator of boredom; the perfector of tedium. But I will not leave the subject without saying this: think deeply enough about the differences between reality and fantasy—and between daytime and darkness—and you will question the legitimacy of your own perceptions. I will now attempt to close the hyperbolic chamber.
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An unexpected surprise yesterday afternoon supplied a burst of energy to offset my lethargy for a time. The surprise came in the form of pie; Dutch apple pie. Nectar of the gods. The kind of surprise that might reverse my weight loss. People who deliver pies— whether apple (especially) or pumpkin or pecan or cherry or…anything else—are nothing short of angelic. They know who they are. As do I; I can tell by their wings.
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Today is Saturday, I think. But it could be Monday or one of several other weekdays. And it could be the other weekend day, Sunday, but nothing about the day so far feels Sunday-ish. Days and nights, as I have already suggested, seem to switch places at will. Or they join together to form unfamiliar day-parts. The same is true of the 24-hour packets of time we identify by specific names, but they have the capacity to combine with others, creating new time-based experiences we have yet to name. We cannot legitimately claim the right to assign names to these new time-based experiences…any more than we can claim authority to rename existing packets of time. Yet we do (e.g., Humpday in lieu of Wednesday). We are judged by other sentient beings to be arrogant bastards for asserting what only WE perceive as our superiority. Just ask them. I have. They are universal in viewing us as contemptible creatures with a god complex. They see us as we see him; he, whose claims are so utterly absurd and who actions are so thoroughly despicable that we weep with every breath he takes. Hmm. That brief deviation from the direction of a carefully-planned narrative has now been corrected. Pardon the fact that the train went so abruptly off the rails.
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Speaking of trains. I do not recall a time when I was not fascinated by trains. Passenger trains, especially. I have ridden the rails on several occasions, promising myself each time I would do it again soon. But soon is an imprecise term; December is coming soon, but tomorrow is coming sooner. Long, leisurely, luxurious train travel remains on my bucket list. Though I am firmly committed to equality for all persons, I would make an exception for train travel. I want a private train; one with a private dining car, a private sleeping car, and a private car for conversation and entertainment. It goes without saying, of course, I want the locomotive to be dedicated exclusively to my train. And I want to own the rails, as well. Because there are places I’d like to go where train tracks have not yet been installed, I would expect to have a crew available to lay tracks at my direction. I would invite my family and friends to travel with me and to participate in sightseeing as well as in an ongoing orgy driven by fine food, fine wine, and a commitment to the pleasures of debauchery in all (or most) of its forms. I could probably live if I had to scale back my train-related fantasy; I would be willing to make do with an empty boxcar at the end of a freight train.
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Each time I am scheduled for a PET-scan, I feel my anxiety begin to spike. The closer I get to the time for the procedure, the more on edge I feel. Though I try to be confident that the results of the procedure will be good news, that is more difficult than I like. But, on the other hand, I try to anticipate how I would feel if the results show the cancer’s growth has accelerated dramatically. And I try to be ready to simply accept the results, whatever they are. Last Wednesday, my oncologist told me she would call me next Monday afternoon to review the results with me, if possible. I told her I could wait until my regular chemotherapy appointment next Wednesday; I think she knew, though, I would prefer to know sooner than later. I don’t know why I tried to brush off the anxiety; though I know stoic is not a good look on me, I seem to keep trying to make it seem like a good fit. Very few people know I failed the college course in bravery due to excessive absences. I made up for the damage to my grade point average, though, with the A+ I got in the course on flippancy.
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Next week is packed with appointments. In addition to the PET-scan and the chemo session, I return to the podiatrist for a follow-up to prevent the return of an ingrown toenail…the day after chemo. And I have a haircut scheduled after the toe thing…and a wines of the world dinner that night. Whether I drink any wine that night will depend entirely on whether I expect the chemo to treat me well. I have grown so accustomed to nesting at home that these adventures will seem really edgy.
