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quiet invitations

I had to go to the doctor yesterday. I have been slogging through a personal health situation for the last several years, but in the last ten weeks I’ve been getting pounded on. I need a reprieve in a pretty big way. I’m not built for being infirm; it makes me too cranky, I have things to do. Time to get a handle on this business. I’ve made the concrete decision that I’d rather be in the hole financially for the sake of my health than in the hole physically and having no kind of life at all.

Up the road a piece between here and my (dipped in fabulous with an amazingly rad center) family practitioner’s office out there in the country there’s a big, well-manicured field with a tarp stretched out in it. Scattered on the yards-long tarp are pieces of broken china and pottery.

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There is a strange and disconnected loveliness about it. I mean, it was obviously placed there by someone, but it also has the feel of Supposed To Be about it.

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Something about it feels sacred. You know that air about something when you run all up on it, don’t you?

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I like it. I also like the feeling of a big, out-in-the-open secret. Sometimes the passcode just doesn’t concern you. It’s enough that you know there’s a special door lying in wait.

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I have a friend who, as it turns out, knows the story behind the tarp. She shared it with me earlier this year. There’s a farmer that lives on the back side of that property with his wife. He has a compulsion to not let good things fall by the wayside, so he spent many years gathering up pretties and geegaws. “Has a barn full of ‘em!” said Kris, when she was telling me all about the tarp runner.

A couple of years ago, around the time the tarp first appeared, the farmer started getting sick. His wife, in an attempt to stay on top of things, had started combing through his collections. The way I understand it, every few weeks she’ll take a few minutes and go out into the barn of fineries, inspecting the goods. She pulls the pieces with flaws a few at a time and throws them out there on that tarp.

I don’t know what she was hoping to accomplish with this. Could be that she wanted to respect her husband’s wishes and not see the things buried in a landfill. Could be that she, trusting in humanity’s innate nosiness curiosity, figured folks would come poking around, which is why the tarp starts so close to the county road it’s sitting near. Maybe she was issuing an open invitation: “I don’t have use of it, but if you do then have at it.”

That was the interpretation of Kris, at least, who does mosaic pieces and will stop from time to time to see what’s being offered up out there in the country by the farmer’s wife. She tells me that this has caught on with folks in the know: Someone needs bits for a windchime or an altar or a sculpture and they visit that tarp.

Normally it looks very crowded; yesterday it appeared picked over to me. No matter, I was there to observe. I have enough broken pieces of my own to sort and catalog; there is no wanting spot in my collections at present.

::: :: ::: :: ::: :: :::

After about four years of frustration and ten weeks of some pretty serious misery, I finally have a diagnosis: I have Meniere’s disease. It will never go away, but apparently once we get this major flare-up under control, there are things that I can do to manage it and keep serious attacks at bay.

The start of this entails getting rid of stress, caffeine and cheese, all of which I run on in turns so I don’t even know what the fuck, you people. Meniere’s is also heavily triggered by insomnia. It took me three tries to type that sentence because I am laughing hysterically.

Any number of things could have contributed to this being A Thing for me, ranging from genetic to environmental. I’ll talk more about it in time. It’s nice just having something to point to (finally) so that a plan can be established.

My doctor is the best. THE! BEST! I don’t know how, in a world of so many terrible ones, I got so fortunate to have him on my side where it comes to my care, but I’m infinitely thankful that I’m not having to slog through a pile of terrible docs in order to feel heard, partnered with, and attended to.

Also, it could have been a brain tumor, which was a very real thought for a minute there. Good Lord, brain tumors cost a lot. I would have chosen to be put down like an old cur had that been the case. But first I would have thrown a balls-out, expensive party and met all of you. There would have been lawn darts.

::: :: ::: :: ::: :: :::

This is my go-to feelgood song. It spoons out big dollops of hope all over everything just by its exuberance and intsy magic finger cymbal ting! sounds.

Every time I hear this it feels to me like Prince is throwing some sort of big cosmic party and this is his engraved invitation to all of us.


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