the meaning is a shade different from "rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic", though both involve an activity that, at a time of moment, will affect the outcome not at all.
we know, though, that the Titanic is sinking.
in the doctor's office, we don't know whether the news will be bad news, or worse news, or no news, or news that there's nothing wrong.
parenthetically - I'm a stickler about the word "good" in medical situations. people have been telling me that my scar looks amazing! great! unbelievably good!
it really is amazing how minimal it looks. I'm very grateful. but, sorry, it never jumps into "good". a shirt, maybe, can look good. losing weight. some sun, a haircut.
but anyone my scar looks "good" to, I just don't share their taste.
so, end parentheses, there can be "good" news at the doctor's office. you wanted to become pregnant and he tells you you are.
but there is no gain when you didn't want to become pregnant and he tells you you are not. only continuance...and continuance can be a wonderful thing. but I feel "good news" implies some gain...not just a possible loss that, it turns out, will not be suffered.
waiting for that news in the doctor's office, you're totally helpless. you can't make, do, change anything.
which, to me, makes filling in the blanks in a crossword puzzle when you can't fill in the blank you are aching to fill quite a bit more rewarding. solving puzzling problems while waiting for medical resolution is like a dream that you can make things ok. a good dream.
these days, the Onion article that appeared in the 9/11 issue (which I believe to have been humor's finest moment) keeps coming up, wherein a housewife, hearing about the collapse of the towers, bakes a cake decorated like an American flag. "it was all I could think to do," she says.
that's crossword puzzles in the doctor's office.
I subscribe to the Sunday New York Times. part of it is the New York/ Broadway/ Sondheim thing. part of it is, the writing is just too damn good. I'll pul out the business section and read the first sentence on some financial thing I could care less about, and it will capture me and force me to read the whole damn exquisitely conceived and written thing.
most weeks, I throw the whole paper in my closet. who has the time?
these days, I do. and kathy will rummage around in the closet and pull out September 8, 2009, and we'll do the crossword puzzle.
Dr. Nemechek has not been in touch with me since last Wednesday, when he told me what I was facing with the second surgery. I've been in the doctor's office, waiting to have my questions answered, since then.
that he hasn't called isn't unusual. only unusual for him, what's unusual is the way he was always sure to call. he's reputed to be in some conference this weekend.
I'll fill in the blank by thinking he's doing more important stuff than tending to my questions, which were designed to trim back the edges of the Unknowable, and are probably not going to succeed. it helps me maintain a distinction between myself and all of the "really sick" people he must deal with.
I called his office last Monday, the 10th, and asked jeannette the receptionist if there was an appointment I could have with the doc before my surgery.
no.
what would be a good time for me to speak with him by phone?
a pause on the other end.
would it work best if I wrote the questions out and sent them to the office in email?
yes, that would probably work best.
I didn't do it in New York. Thursday day I had two gigs. but I did write the questions and send them Thursday night. anyone who wants to can see them...but even loquacious I stopped short of printing them here.
I called Friday. jeannette said he would look at them Monday, and then he'd decide on what response was possible for him.
as anyone who has worked with me knows, I tend to focus on what I am doing. on a day when I can either make the music or take the calls, I'll let the calls pile up. sometimes for awhile. it's always and only because I need to be doing what I'm doing.
karma's a bitch.
so the Sunday crossword puzzle sits on my front lawn.
people who don't understand the attraction of crossword puzzles don't get what an absolute peak of human experience the "aha!" moment is. Thomas Edison who for the thousand and first try uses tungsten in the light bulb. the songwriter who goes to the seven in the last verse; Sondheim when he realizes that the very first thing a guy would say to his buddy after a promising meeting - "I just met a girl named Maria" - scans in the music perfectly.
"Eureka! I have it!"
galaxies and planets and landforms and flowers and seeds and molecules and atoms are just so much white noise on a tv screen without sentient beings to organize them perceptually and ascribe meaning to the constellations they create.
"aha!" is the moment it happens.
and it will happen without fail three dozen times in every crossword puzzle.
"the road home", eight letters.
basepath.
"aha!"
not only that, but, "thought you'd fool me, did you!"
not only that, but, I dreamed I heard from the doctor, had the surgery, went through the radiation, figured out the trick, filled in the blanks, and at the end of it was able to sing, and play, and jump around onstage at least as well as I used to.
what a good dream.
and I do them in pen.
pens ready. if there's news tomorrow, you'll know.
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