This evening I stopped by the doc-in-a-box to get checked out to see if I'm really sick or merely sick. I am merely sick. The boxed doctor showed particular kindness, and it was good to know that I do not have strep. I got a few things done today, but I have that "need to work Saturday" feeling coming hard upon the "wish I could take the weekend off and heal" feeling. I like any doctor who gives me a prescription, but suggests I wait a day or two to see if the virus will pass on its own.
When I headed home, I stopped in the photo shop to pick up the photos from two throwaway cameras. To my surprise, one camera proved to have only three pictures on it. How did I manage to turn in an unfinished camera in?, I mentioned to the nice woman who persons the desk. She shook her long, brown hair, and said she cranked and cranked but the pictures were all blank but three.
I saw the first picture, which proved not to be a picture of pear trees, as I thought, but instead a picture of my niece. The second picture was of my late mother, a picture I took during the viewing, as she lay in the casket. The three pictures with all the emptiness acquired a kind of metaphoric rightness.
I know that in Victorian times, pictures of passed relations in the state of having passed on were considered a proper memorial. I like that I got this one picture, which I will frame. I think of things I wish to say, sometimes, to my mother, but I say them to her in the ether, or say them to myself, and I do not get to say them to her by telephone any more.
In times when the climate changes, I do not get pollen allergy--but I do get dryness, which causes nosebleeds. There is something about a nosebleed like a silent movie farce, so inappropriate and mannered and yet vaguely jaunty fun. But I do not recommend nosebleeds to anyone anyway. I loved the desert winds in winter in California--boiling hot, sweeping in from the East, dry and forceful. I also love doing laundry at laundromats with huge dryers that soak up everything around them in the atmosphere. I don't do it anymore, but there's something about a good sci fi book and the sound and smell of those huge machines--it's comforting, a home at 75 cents a spin.
My other camera has tons of shots of dogwood, and a few fuzzy butterflies. So many times the experience is so crystalline, but the memories are gauzy and from a distance outside the accuracy of the lens.