One of the lab techs is dressed as a witch, black hood and black full length cloak over white scrubs, masked, black witchy boots. No one else seems to be in obvious costume, other than their regular rigs, but a gargantuan pizza delivery dude has just come into the waiting room carrying a stack of four extra large pizza boxes. Halloween pizza party at the lab. But I’m on a fast, preparatory to a blood test, so I probably won’t get a slice of pizza, even if offered. Meantime, waiting in waiting room, pull out the phone and start a Halloween post.
Mind-wandering. Outside, the last, forecast says, of a short string of sunny days, fall crisp and cool. Yesterday in morning sun south slant long walk in the park up and down trails around the rim during which I kept my phone running on a live Instagram video. The result was grainy and I’ve since deleted it, but a few viewers dialed in during the walk. I enjoy Instagram videos on location. In this week’s London Review of Books, an article mentions Albert Camus abhorred travel. I get that. But he did make a trip to New York one year. I’ve never been to New York. Maybe some day, if I ever get out of this lab.
A voice keeps calling out names, every 30 seconds or so, more names than waiters. I’m beginning to…my name just called! I was about to suggest they were fake names, called out to give the rest of us some piece of hope, if not a piece of pizza. Alas, all they’ve done is check me in, and now I’m back waiting, names still filling the relatively quiet waiting room air, a canned music piano falling from the ceiling, the only other sounds the intake clerks quizzing patients their birthdate, address, doctor’s name, and such, for form’s sake. Another Joseph just called and I start up, but wrong last name initial. Some of the clerks call out first names only, others first name and last initial. I’ve not heard a last name called out. Several calls repeated for patients who have apparently given up the wait, dare I say, this Halloween day, given up the ghost.
Should have brought a book with me to the lab. What am I reading? Natalia Ginzburg’s The Road to the City, one of the specialty ND books I bought awhile back – you’re supposed to be able to read them in a couple of hours, but my wandering mind disallows such taking it straight consumption, so I’ve been reading a short chapter each night before sleep. The new Dylan book, absurdly big heavy compilation of bits and pics and notes from the archives at the Bob Dylan Center in Tulsa along with heady new essays from solicited writers. I first heard of the book from Alex Ross’s blog, The Rest is Noise – Alex has an essay in the new huge Dylan book. Ah! They’ve called my name again, this time for the escort deep into the lab, into the land of vials and needles. And suddenly back home, the whole lab episode taking no longer than an hour or so. And here I am, breaking fast with a bowl of cereal, banana, and finishing off a bag of leftover potato chips. Also reading, typing while I eat (to finish this thread, started back at the lab), The Dinner Party, a book of short stories by Joshua Ferris, which I pulled out of the corner library box sometime ago but only recently opened, started reading, and found he’s pretty good – urbanely witty, reader friendly, realistic. His themes include relationships and communication and miscommunication – misunderstandings that lead one problem to another, a bit of slapstick thrown in. I’ve only a couple of stories to go to the end. Most of Ferris’s characters would probably have not read How to Know a Person, the new book just out by David Brooks, which I was inspired to give a chance after seeing Brooks on the PBS News Hour a week or so ago talking clearly about the Middle East quagmire (to give it a Vietnam era name, which refers to the politics, not to the human disaster, for which a name has not yet been invented), as was Jonathan Capehart, clear and articulate, that is, Brooks’s supposed opposing viewpoint, but not so much. Anyway, I’m in Part One of the Brooks book, titled “I See You.” Now you see me, now you don’t. A magician’s trick. And a half a dozen or so other readings lying around here there and everywhere, work in progress, if you can call it work, reading, it’s not, unfinished, it’s play.
Going to take a break from this writing now and work on my costume for tonight.
Still later. Was joking about the costume. No costume. The day is ending, the evening come and gone, night now. No trick-or-treaters this year. Left the porch light off and watched Game Four of the World Series. After the game walked outside to see the night sky. A car pulls up down the block, stops in the middle of the street, lights out and flashers come on, and a couple of costumed characters alight and walk up to the only house on the block with holiday lights on. I head back inside. Play some guitar. Solo Halloween night. Then I return to this post and come down to this point, consider deleting the whole thing, like I deleted that Instagram walk video, for the same reason, too grainy, but I didn’t, obviously, do that. I think I’ll take a book with me to the next lab work appointment. Stay off the prose. Still, there’s something positive about mind-wandering. It’s a good antidote to all this live in the moment and give it your full attention pressure, the mindfulness movement. Playing guitar earlier I even started a new song, tentatively titled “Mind-Wandering.”
The Coming of the Toads 