It’s 12:51am. I’m in Clinton, South Carolina. I’m less than thirty miles away from the house where my children live currently. I thought of staying in that crappy town so I could see them for a night (before I see them as planned a few days from now), however, they’re at the beach for the week. Oh well. Soon enough. I’m roughly ninety miles away from my parents’ home and I am heading there in the morning. I’ll be glad to get there.
I really don’t mean to whine, but I’m going to anyway. I spent two nights in Jasper thinking I would get better. Then I drove to Rome. Surprisingly, changing my geography didn’t heal me. I thought I would drive to Athens and stay in a hotel again to try and get better and I decided instead to camp out just west of Athens. Again, no improvement to my health. The next day, the shakes came on again from a fever. I stayed in Athens for a night. Today I finally got out of Georgia and drove here. To Clinton.
I’m emaciated, I’m entirely without energy, I have more infections than I can count, and I have a cold on top. I’m reasonably certain that I’ve remained dehydrated for a while now despite drinking liquids. I’m also reasonably certain that I’ll be visiting a hospital next week. And it’s probably going to be a VA hospital, you know, me being a disabled vet and all.
The thing I loathe about going to the hospital is that whenever I arrive, they always want to admit me (and I usually need it). And they always think that maybe there’s something else wrong with me other than what’s been diagnosed one hundred times over. And they always think that, “ah, well, we can fix him.”
I do love me some cold, clinical care, though. Those nice quiet rooms, somewhat muffled voices coming from speakers in the hallways that, from time to time, call out for Doctor Such and Such to report to the ER. Machines sitting still beside the bed with the occasional green beep, a black-faced LCD constantly monitoring something or other on a precise and pretty screen (matching paper readouts also available). A saline drip into my veins, after three attempts to get the needle into my arm. (The nurse had a bad day, what with her daughter just wrecking her new car; can’t hit the vein.) The sheets that are too tight on that first night before they become a mountain of blanket and sheet in one corner of the bed, the flat sheet covered in sweat, exposing the mattress underneath at the edges. The continual smell of strong antibiotics. A tray of food with a jello fruit cup that never tasted so good yet was so difficult to swallow.
Those sugar packets are going in my milk, and once more, I will try and replicate the taste of that sweet milk I had as a child on some Pan Am 747 flight across the Atlantic. They used to give the children little captain’s wings. I had some of those. I used to have a lot of material things.
Things. It’s been interesting to see how this country lives. And it’s been interesting to see how, all across the land, it doesn’t live.
I saw a home today. It was in the middle of a forest, sitting on roughly ten acres. And on those ten acres, every tree that had stood there before was cut down. The land was barren except for this one house. Not a great house. A two-story, very plain (almost offensive) vinyl siding house. In gray. Only it was probably called something like Steel Gray or Gray Steel or Silver Lining Cloud Gray.
Eh. What do I care? It’s not my life they’re living. I didn’t mean that like it read. Listen, there’s no great shame in plodding through life, going through life being bland, just… existing from one day to the next. Buying things. Doing stuff. Collecting. Accomplishing. There isn’t. The world needs us. Rather, you. (Not you people, my friends; I’m talking to the ones who don’t read between the lines. Or in parentheses.) It’s just… it’s really not my bag, not living like that. And I’m not bitching about it. It’s fine. Like I said, it’s all part of some great balance. Or imbalance.
Or maybe not.
Ugh. Now Steven Segal is ruining my television viewing experience. At least there are 58 other sleepless channels to choose from, most of them in a language I can understand: the language of commerce. (And please, Tommy, should you read this, don’t think I’m just coming to some great awakening; I’m just delirious on Tylenol PM, for all your achy, stuffy night-time needs – or maybe that’s some other medicine.) Wait, what’s this? Two bikini-clad early 90s hotties in some dilapidated foreign prison?!?! Save them, Steven! Save them! Save them with your serious face(:|) and your fearless ninja skills(!) and your… an-and… are you wearing a girdle? Ugh.
Hospitals usually have a lot of channels on their televisions.
I’m sleepy now. I think I’ll go to bed.
…”Things. It’s been interesting to see how this country lives. And it’s been interesting to see how, all across the land, it doesn’t live.” -Branch
Sleepwalkers are incapable of such utterance. Great Awakening? I never thought you were asleep.
I’VE been lulled into the incessant, jaded, daydream of commerce that constitutes the murmuring heart beat of this nation. You knocked me on the head and woke me up. I’m selling everything and going back on the road.
And it’s a good thing you don’t have your commercials right! You’re thinking of Nyquil’s “catch”y little tune.