Time Regained [Core Dump 6]

I walked into this room alone, looking, listening, speaking under my breath, took a cocktail. Must have been something tonic in it, to keep me going, and then someone listened, and stayed until I finished, and then introduced me to a partner, and we danced. That was lovely. She was blonde and had keen eyes. There was also a man, taller than me and - I thought, perhaps - even shyer, but he was kind and he put his arm around my shoulder and guided me to a bay of the great room where there was the most animated conversation. I was buzzed enough to join in - no one made me feel stupid.

I turned once and saw a man I knew enter the room - a grand welcome. I flushed, as I had met him before. and tried to hide it. He had a following - the girls ran to him in greeting, gowns like flowers gathering, separating. Kisses, and words, were exchanged, and the bouquet scattered again.

And what romantic bullshit. If only.

That was sort of my Berlioz version of opening the blogosphere. There are possible variations on Ben Hecht, on Almost Famous, maybe on Nicholas Nickleby and joining the Company of Mr. Vincent Crummles. Whatever the case, I didn't know what I was getting into, but I wanted to join the Circus. I won't let go now.

Looking back over this last year's posts, I'm surprised at how much I could write into the night not that many months ago. It's just a fact that the patient I look after has become markedly more fragile and less predictable over the last year, and so I can't count on as many secure and quiet hours to post - and I'm feeling very worn. This will only turn around when I move on from here, and that will not be dependent, I hope, on my patient's mortality. She'll be 98 in June, 2006, and I have every expectation that she'll make it. But, unlike new parents, the ward doesn't increase in affection and knowledge and powers, but diminishes and weakens and becomes ever more fey.

That's tough.

Right now, I just hope to get through the experience intact, and to be able to throw more weight to the crises we all face with our fucked-up government. I've tried not to add to the din I talked about in my very first posts - merely echoing positions and rhetoric I like. My impulse is to be wonkier than I have either the time or the energy to be, and it may not be such a good fit for my sensibility anyway. I still believe, however, that we are at a moment of crisis as a nation, and that we should bring everything we have to preserve and conserve the manifold, crazy, rude, snot-nosed, generous country we want to live in against those who pervert the language of liberty, democracy and freedom.

Fuck - I want to spit those last three out, they have become so debased in the mouths of Our Leaders; let's reclaim them before it is too late.