My Mind Is A Nose

I wonder if any of you has ever had a text message argument. You know, the kind where you enter peeved little snippets into your cell phone keypad and before you know it the thing is buzzing you back again with a return barrage similar to your own. Wtf!

Maybe this is the perfect kind of argument for modern times, fitting to the character of our society. A communication style composed of abbreviations and cliches, epithets and acronyms.

How many of you have or have had a daughter or a son whose every other word was whatever? Or how about this alphabetical invention: This is an A and B conversation, C your way out.

We have compressed language and communication into a chattering of syllables and single letters, and what is finally communicated begins to adhere to the same format. Okay? Okay. :)

**

One thing you can count on from life, if you happen to be living mine anyway, is that it just gets a little more ironic all the time. As I approach the third anniversary of my marriage to a woman twenty-four years younger than I, who said on our wedding day that she hated me, which itself was because of a lemon meringue pie, I begin to appreciate, in this august moment, how odd a thing it is for my sense of humor, which often depends upon an intimacy with language, to have been dropped into association with people who either primarily or only speak Indonesian.

Here, for instance, is what one lovely girl stated in her Facebook share post:

It's time to work on my garden. Ohhh I miss home when I smell of dirt.

I kindly replied with a brief grammar lesion, explaining that what she had said in essence was that she smelled like dirt, and moreover had implied that Indonesians in a general sense smell like dirt, since it is this odoriferous quality (according to the sentence) that has caused her to miss home.

She took my word for it, and changed the sentence.

"You must be a very down to earth sort of person," I said.

"Yes, I am, " she answered. "But that's a good thing, don't you think?"

**

My mind is a nose. This is the point my head cold has come to, as there is little to differentiate the general stuffiness and congestion of my thought processes from the struggles of my nose toward breathing.

The onset of this cold was so swift that I thought (or dreamed) at first that it might leave just as swiftly as it came. Symptoms that more commonly would have been spread out over a period of days marched in one after another all in one night--sore throat, snuffly nose, fever, body aches, you know the drill.

Far from assembling, however, for a lightening blow, it soon became apparent that they had merely been settling in, getting comfortable, the way one might do on a winter's night in his easy chair before the fireplace, with a thick 19th century British novel at hand.

I would have the reader appreciate, therefore, that what has been written above has been accomplished all in fits and starts, by sentence, by word, during those periods wherein I would dribble miserably out of the bedroom to the dining room table and the laptop.

It's been about five days now, and I'm guessing that I'm about halfway through. Lets call it page 400 or so of Bleak House.

What We Have Here Is A Failure To Communicate

Given my current financial situation, I am hoping that the economy continues to slip (though dive would be preferable) such that we will find ourselves in a true Great Depression mode, prompting a return to the days when those who could not pay for services in cash were allowed by the individual philanthropist to pay in potatoes (or some such other potable good).

I have plenty that might be traded along these lines--bushels of apples in the summer, for instance (God knows I don't want the damn things), strawberries from my garden, zucchinis, green onions.

I also have two dogs that could be traded off for some small consideration. Well, the big one anyway. The small dog honestly ain't worth a pinch of snuff, and I have too much personal integrity to dishonor myself in an uneven transaction.

In addition, being an at least marginally able-bodied worker, on a good day, I might also make payment in labor--painting houses, mowing lawns, providing sexual favors, that sort of thing.

Here's the trouble: I have at present a neurologist, a dentist, and an ophthalmologist telling me that I must receive treatment if I want to maintain any sort of livable existence. The clear implication is that I would be stupid not to do so. My few remaining teeth will soon flee, my MS will relapse, my sight will grow dim. Within weeks I will transform to the likeness of the Hunchback of Notredame.

And I agree with these folks. I really do. I certainly do not mean to be recalcitrant or obtuse.

Yet we seem completely unable to communicate. Because they do not understand the the words No money. No matter how many times I say the words, no comprehension results. It is as if I were speaking in some rare dialect of Mandarin or Swahili. The words go in one ear and out the other. They are meaningless, impotent.

The doctors stare right through me, listening but not hearing. And then they say I very strongly advise you to do this. You will be very unhappy if you do not.

Of course I will. I know. I agree. But, you see, I HAVE NO MONEY!

Good Lord.

Nor do I have money for medications. Protonix, Lexapro, Baclofen, Provigil, Ropinoril. All have seen their final refill. Until that lottery ticket pans out.

What luxury, what comfort must reside in the ignorance of want.

No money? No money? What can it mean? No money? Why, the man is either mad or an idiot. Doesn't he know that it grows on trees?