july 5

july 5, 2011

 a very long update follows.

“work” ended around 4:05pm today.  i charged my ipod so i could listen to it on the way home.  last week i listened to the beatles non-stop, so this week i wanted something different.  i went to “playlists” and then to “90s music” which is an automatic playlist itunes makes with my songs.  almost none of the songs in there are what i would classify as “90s music.”  For instance it lists all the songs from Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique.  and that is definitely not from the 90s.  Or at least from the 1990s. (I guess I should have remembered from music hum but i didnt, so i looked up the date.  internet tells me it was first composed in 1830.)  i found an arabic song Wala Wahed.  I dont remember who i got it from, but thank you.  i really like it.  although i have no idea what the song is about.  it reminded me of israel and so i went to my “Hebrew Music” playist, which has a mix of children songs to pop songs from 4 years ago when i was in israel.  i walked into a group of 100 school children rushing out of the school building and their parents and family greeting them to take them home.  i was stuck in the strangest traffic jam. most of the people around me only came up to my hip.  i felt like i was wading in a pool.  trying to get out without crushing anyone was difficult, but i made it through.  well my body did.  my mind was swept away by the waves of smiling faces.  i got lost thinking of something i cant remember and then the music reminded me of the western wall and i remembered how i stuck my most important wishes into those cracks and that those wishes never came true.  and how someone told me that so many papers are stuck into that wall that at the end of the day they have to empty it so there is space for more wishes the next day.  one wish was for bubby not to have alzheimers anymore.  and one wish was for my dad to be healthy again.  but i guess its hard to find your mind again once youve already lost it.

somehow at the same time i was thinking of that photo i found of him and my sister today.  its from a trip to scotland.  she is sitting in a sofa chair and my dad is sitting on the arm of it.  and he looks happy and healthy.  and i thought about how even though he looks happy and healthy, he wasn’t at the time.  and how a photograph taken either moments after or moments before is of the two of them in the exact same positions but my sister is looking quite sad and fed up and he is looking as though he’s just told an offensive joke that he thinks is funny but one that everyone else would just pretend they didn’t hear.  and then i thought of how the last time we went to scotland he didn’t come because he’d been banned from family outings because of his ridiculous behavior.

then i heard a horn and i looked up and realized i had somehow arrived at the middle of a 4 lane street and there was a green light for them to go.  Bad mind!  capturing me again and setting me on faulty autopilot.  it must be like what waking up from sleep walking is like.  i’ve never done that, but i’m sure it would be disorienting.  this hijacking of my mind from reality has definitely happened many times before.  my question is that when people are scared or shocked and they freeze when they should act, why do they do that?  you’d think that if you saw a tiger rushing towards you you’d wanted to run, not be frozen, so what mechanism is making us freeze?  maybe i will write to the q & a section of the new york (science) times.

other things: last week i had pink eye.  this week i have sinus pressure and a sneeze.  and a baby fever of 99.2.  next week i better have nothing because i’m going to embark on more travels. 

more on pink eye: i came in to work last Tuesday with pink eye.  the doctor i work with sent me down stairs with a referral for the eye doctor.  i went into a dark room with at least 10 eye inspecting machines and patients and doctors sitting at each one.  i met a nice doctor.  she looked in my eyes.  she handed me eye drops.  and i was back at work.  all within about 7 minutes.  that was very cool.

she gave me verbal directions of how to take the eye drops (4 times a day for about a week) and smiled a lot and was very friendly.  but that was it.  she didnt show me how to put eye drops in or ask if i knew how.  she didnt say i should use it at the same time every day or if that wasnt important.  she didnt say that there could be side effects.  she also didnt tell me that she was going to put eye drops in my eyes while she was inspecting them.  she just put eye drops in my eyes and then i had eye drops in my eyes.  and i had no idea what they were or why she was putting them in my eyes.  she also didnt say that when i put eye drops in later it will mix with the eye drops she already put in and turn the liquid yellow before it turned clear.

luckily i have been to many eye doctor appointments so i know how the light works and how to keep my eyes open properly and how not to freak out from drops and how to put my own eye drops in.  but i imagine it might be confusing if youve never done it before.  thats something i noticed here though.  they dont really explain to the patients what’s going on and the patients rarely ask.  here patients don’t know they have the right to ask questions.  and the doctors dont think they have to explain things.  this is especially strange to me during gynecological checkups.  they dont say “ok now i’m going to touch you” or “this might be a little cold”….i feel like patients would be a lot more comfortable if they knew what was going on.