ALL THAT I DO NOT KNOW

I'm frequently surprised by a kick in the ass, just about the time I believe I know what is going on. Something in my condition, leading me to figure I know what happened in the past, I'm clever enough to collect data on what has happened to other people and somehow, I'll magically pull all of that together and know what is coming up in  my life. An 'instant on' pseudo-clairvoyant suitable for children's parties or to amaze friends sitting around waiting for the beer. So frequently though, I'm reminded that I don't know anything about life and surely don't have any idea what is coming next.

I become most aware of that with illness. Illness is the thing that I never find myself planning into a schedule or setting aside a bit of time just in case it happens to appear.  Rather than a soft little rap at the door, after pausing on  the front porch like a shadow, illness has a way of sweeping me up and tossing me away. There was nothing to be done but all the while I'm feeling like I should be doing something. That I should have been preparing or conscious or more careful. That's a good one. More careful? I have no idea what I might have done to spot this sooner. I traveled through the past couple of months bearing a collection of symptoms, waiting for some unifying theme to put it all together; make sense of it.

And here it is. Everything, after the tests and the probes and the teams of specialists. Here it all is. Now we know. At least they do, and I know that I think they know. There is nothing else for me to do but lay back and become something of a self-monitoring side of beef. They roll me, twist me, pinch me and poke as they feel the need. I report the important things like bowel movements and chest pains and the fact that my hair is falling out.

We wait. Therre is nothing, so far as I'm able to see that either I or the doctors can do to speed this up. I have a habit of picking random dates and setting them as milestones.  I think, "okay. so this might take me three weeks before I recover. Three weeks would make that, ummmm  Sunday. So I should be back out and normal by Monday. Tuuesday at the latest."

The problem with that is I don't know what the fuck I'm talking about. I have no idea how I heal or do not. I have no clue about what this is I'm fighting or where I'm likely to be wrestling with it, next. I make these really big assumptions based on a modicum of information, only to be disappointed when it doesn't come through like I "planned:".

I didn't plan anything. I'm going to sit back and watch.

"Backward through my own days I see where I sweated through fog with linguists and contenders. I have no mockings or arguments. I witness and wait."

                                                                 Walt Whitman,  LEAVES OF GRASS