Author: L.E. Hansen

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William

While I was in rehab (for the knee surgery) I met an incredible array of characters. Some of them haunt yet, especially a fellow bed bound and unable to move. His name is William. I imagine he is there yet, likely as long as funds or governments or insurances will allow. I never saw a visitor for him. Another patient down the hall told me that his family said they could not come as they could not stand to see him in that condition. I don’t know if that is true. William said his family did not come to visit as they did not like him.

William could not move and could do little but speak a bit, and could enunciate well enough to be understood. I didn’t ask him what happened to him but it looked as if it could have been a stroke. I visited with him a couple of times and he told me some things about myself and they are special so I keep them to myself. I think it falls into that realm of things that should not be shared. Like certain visions and such.

You could hear William at night throughout the ward. He’d cry out: “Help me. Help me. I can’t move. Please help me. Get me out of here.” Over and over he’d repeat his cries. When I spoke to him he asked me to call the police for him. To help him get out of there. He said he was being held against his will. I told him I was too, as I couldn’t leave for a couple more days. Rehab is not an easy place to get out of. And truly he could not move. Truly he was trapped not only in the bed in the ward in the place, but within his body. It had to be horrific.

I taught him how to chant so that he could say “Ommmmmmm…” rather than his repeated pleas for help. I also chanted “Om ma pad mi hum” with him although he could not repeat those sounds. That night, after he started with “Please help me…” I heard him move into an “Ommmmmmm…” I told him it would bring him peace. I hope it did.

Posted by Ferit Temur

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And Once Again

Blow me a song, Horatio, let it be long and messy and cling to the corners and echos of those who listen.

So once again again and the again. Back out of the hospital on Tuesday the 8th. Went in on Saturday and as it turned out unrelated to anything I knew about. Renal failure. I went in as I could not make any sense of myself even in the corners. And hallucinations. Some of them were rather grand and enjoyable. Nonetheless I was aware that this was not to be considered at all normal. Then some grand virus decided to slam me with an upper respiratory nonsense. Be that, I’ve been returned to the place where my plants and kittens live in a lovely splendor of simplicity. And where there is decent music. And where there is a supply of food having been delivered at midnight when I got home rather than the noon order for the next day as was my plan. Surprises just continue it seems.

If I were not so shaky I’d indeed get some writing done as it does play about in the mind. Focus however is just a bridge too far. Rather then I’ll content myself with music and meanderings.

And a lovely day to you, too. We are breathing after all, are we not?

Titled “I am not I.” Unknown post

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Yes And But Really

Now I’m in rehab. Not a plan I had in mind. The surgery went well (on Friday, July 14, left knee replacement). Going home went well. That was on Saturday. On Sunday on the way to the morning relief I fell. It was not a good fall as falls go. It was rather ungraceful and painful. I pulled a room screen over onto me as I reached for it to stabilize myself—for which of course it was incredibly ill-suited as a sturdy component in the dance, but sharp enough amongst the edges to take my face into account for the many bruises which would ensue. I do believe I screamed. Perhaps more than once while emitting some weak “help” noises. And so the story changed dramatically. This is the unexpected turn in the novel where the hero is wounded by the Griffin rather than slaying anything herself.

As a result I’ve been from emergency to hospital to now in rehab. This is not always a fun place to be though it has its moments. I certainly went down the rabbit hole for a while. That was an interesting place to visit. I can see why people do not want to live there. It is a matter of a great deal of pain or some fine pain pills. Neither a normal state, but the train you must take to get there. Of course you cannot know that in advance. You get a ticket but no destination.

It strikes me that that is the same with life, is it not? We really don’t know.

This was posted by Beauty of Nature. I do believe it is quite appropriate for today’s sentiment.

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Papa Hemingway

Yeah, death in the afternoon after all.

Ernest Hemingway shot himself on July 2, 1961. Though bent he was still a tall man so the gun fit nicely underneath his neck. It would have felt cool. He could reach the trigger with his toe. He knew there was nothing to wait for—shock treatments had wiped out the important parts, the discussion in his mind that could be written down, the stories. What is a writer without his stories? His memory?

“Death is like an old whore in a bar—I’ll buy her a drink but I won’t go upstairs with her.” Ernest Hemingway, “To Have and Have Not” Finally though, the old whore has her way. Every story has an ending writ in the stars.

 Posted by Subhadip Majumdar, Ernest Hemingway

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Journal Notes

The Man From Porlock

June 7, 2023 & making arrangements for my knee surgery. And I am hoping that is the last thing that I will remember.

I believe that everyone has a breaking point. Those who survive just haven’t met it yet. [I am not speaking of myself here. I’m not personally close to any sort of breaking point.]

When I am depression drunk and self-pitying I know the selected reality of things. What that means is that I hold onto the things that are true and meant to be the rocks that fill the backpack I carry or cause the heart-chest to be painful. I touch myself there without thought but feel nothing. That is strange of itself because I swear my heart actually hurts at times.

I thought we were a unit during the earlier days, that it was us together, my son and daughter and me. It was only much later that I learned that wasn’t true and I had been mistaken all those years.

I just heard a woman on TV say that heartache doesn’t last forever.  

When my second ex-husband was a foreman at a car factory in Flint, Michigan, there was a killing on the factory floor. It involved drugs and passion and betrayal. Her lover or husband or secondary lover stabbed her 27 times. That’s a lot of anger, or desperation. The foreman went down to the floor and held her in his arms so that she would not die alone on that cold-cement factory floor. He also told the shift people to go home. He did not know what else to do but it was the wrong thing. The police said he had to get them all back as they were witnesses. The police then kept him there for hours, and until enough people confirmed what had happened. The confusion was due to all of the blood that was on the floor. And on him.

I wonder how many people from their families—the black man who did the stabbing, and the black woman who had 27 stab wounds but didn’t die alone on the factory floor—I wonder if they have gotten on to the part where their hearts no longer ache.

June 17, 2023 It’s a Saturday here in Broadview Heights, OH, sunny and lovely at 720

And Zeus has fixed himself in front of the patio door.

More on words I don’t like and will never use: eponymous. It’s one of those words that I have to translate to meaning every time I read it. It is never automatic, always requires thought. (You’ll never hear anyone use it in conversation, at least in the circles wherein I travel.)

June 20, 2023 Nearer to the knee surgery. July 11. The rent is paid as well as the charge cards. I feel a success.

It occurs to me that I don’t recall Glenn Gould ever playing Chopin. I wonder why. Did he consider him a light weight as some do? And yet he (Chopin) developed the use of the whole keyboard as no other player had before him. I looked it up and Gould is quoted as saying Chopin was “probably the greatest composer for the piano” even if his music did not have much appeal to him. Gould also refused to play Schumann and Liszt, considering them undeserving of their fame; of Mozart, Gould said that the Austrian composer “died too late”, judging his late work not so much worth of praise. Yet I know that Gould played a great deal of Mozart even though he considered him “repetitive.” And he is.

June 27, 2023 Just from my recall and responses I wish I had given. I don’t know why but I just thought of this last night. Apropos of nothing:

Me:  John and I are going to get married!

Mo:  Well I want to wish you good luck because you are certainly going to need it.

Me: I guess that means you’re a no for the ceremony. A maybe on the reception?

Should there be room here for a picture now? I don’t know, why not! Below a photo of Philip Glass. I wonder what Glenn Gould would have thought of him? Posted by History of Music.