Monday, December 29, 2008

Things not to be at while alone in the house

Dark night, by myself, savouring solitude. Catch up on The X-Files, season two on DVD, yeah, something I never got to watch regularly when it was broadcast. Take neuralgia meds and a tiny Ativan to aid sleep despite pain ... hmm, not falling asleep, just feeling, well, held ... mildly unpleasant ... the screen rattles against the big door, tap-tap-tapping -- but the damn raven's already tattooed onto my chest, so I control the visitation of memory, right? Right? Watch Duane Barry and get deliciously scared. Watch Ascension and get quite unsettled -- stakes and motives and what's held dear. Tap-tap-tap. Must doze -- come to, mouth dry and tasting bitter, as though my throat's just been numbed with that bitter, bitter spray that suppresses the gag reflex just before endoscopy or, even more interestingly, ERCP ... tap-tap-tap ... drugged to the hilt once for an ERCP, including Valium, Versed, the throat spray and perhaps something else to concot "milk of amnesia" so that the patient forgets the procedure; this particular exam hits a snag when the doctor in charge of shoving endoscopic cameras into my stomach, bile and pancreatic ducts observes: --I'm stuck. Just need to push ... I heard that. I remember that. I remember sitting upright, choking on that damn hose and some fluid to see only professional backs as they all studied the X-ray image of the endoscope and my ducts ... immense sympathy for alien abductees at that moment, for the terror they suffer, whatever its explanation ... a nurse notices I'm up and choking, someone hauls out the hose -- but I remember it all -- tap-tap-tap ...

One Breath, with comatose Scully voyaging back after mysterious visits from her dead father and a non-existent nurse -- soothing. (And comical from another point of view, as Gillian Anderson had just given birth; in some takes her breasts are enormous with milk.) But I'm still awake.

Tap-tap-tap.

No comments:

Spark-gap transmission / Michelle Butler Hallett

Spark-gap transmission / Michelle Butler Hallett
in progress