My dentist's yarmulke pleased me. It lent my appointment a sense of officialness and dignity as though I hadn't set seven separate alarms to make sure I would wake up in time or spent six minutes searching the house for a piece of chewing gum in case I needed to freshen my mouth in the half an hour it would take me to travel from The Peach to the city surgery. Any kind of official or religious hat has this effect on me.
This sense of adult officialness followed me through my medical morning as I produced my private health fund card to cover not only my dental expenses ($263) but new lenses in my old glasses ($120). I worked out that with this morning's appointments I had effectively reimbursed myself nine months worth of health fund payments. I left the combined dental/eye care surgery, makes sense to me, and walked out into the cool morning ahead of schedule.
Marching down Elizabeth St back towards Central I realised that despite my appointments I would be early for work. I was congratulating myself on my efficiency when the first urge to listen to adult contemporary music rolled through me. Confusingly a simultaneous urge to telephone to mother and report on the excellent and cavity-free state of my teeth took hold. I briefly wondered if I was too old for a reward for being good at the dentist.
My confused state of organised adult and childish wish for rewards travelled well. It arrived at my office and caused me to telephone my mother and listen to adult contemporary music and organise my NPR podcast subscriptions in alphabetical order. I'm still waiting to hear if I qualify for a reward.
Death by raindrop
One moment somewhere between determination and anger, with my elbows sticking in to my own waist and one foot slipping a little sideways on the wet path, I suddenly and completely surrendered to the rain and the water revealed itself as beautiful.
Knee deep in a cold puddle, witnessing sheets of water pouring down the ordinary front steps of a house, I fell deeper into the thought of submersion and surrender. First I thought about the obvious things, daily landscapes transformed offering a clean perspective, cleansing and redemption through deluge, fluvial geomorphology and rills, concrete, concreteness and the literal and figurative concrete nature of the paths I walk.
Submersion returned as an idea and my thoughts fell first to floating and the sensation of being held by an ocean then drowning and dying and there my thoughts locked. This must be like dying. The wild oscillations between anger, determination and despair, an entire life's landscape transformed and then the surrender and revelation of beauty.
Slamming through The Peach front door in a haze halfway to convinced that I had this dying process pegged Grizelda announced that she 'got heaps wet in the rain!'. And ordered me to stop dripping on the carpet and go and have a hot shower.
Knee deep in a cold puddle, witnessing sheets of water pouring down the ordinary front steps of a house, I fell deeper into the thought of submersion and surrender. First I thought about the obvious things, daily landscapes transformed offering a clean perspective, cleansing and redemption through deluge, fluvial geomorphology and rills, concrete, concreteness and the literal and figurative concrete nature of the paths I walk.
Submersion returned as an idea and my thoughts fell first to floating and the sensation of being held by an ocean then drowning and dying and there my thoughts locked. This must be like dying. The wild oscillations between anger, determination and despair, an entire life's landscape transformed and then the surrender and revelation of beauty.
Slamming through The Peach front door in a haze halfway to convinced that I had this dying process pegged Grizelda announced that she 'got heaps wet in the rain!'. And ordered me to stop dripping on the carpet and go and have a hot shower.
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