On the road to the endodontist

Gerringong-Sutherland-Kingsgrove

Last minute reminders to Katina; we need a new coffee machine; keep in mind to turn off the lights; one last check of the email; I should not have sent the last two; we can make the same mistake for a hundred years; One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967); Gabriel Garcia Márquez; Macondo; do not leave without directions; I must not get lost in Sutherland; on the road to the endodontist; do not lose sight of the metaphor; drive past the laundry at Kiama; the car is low on fuel; laminate the picture of the pelican; Princes Highway, Acacia Road; turn left into President Avenue; then right into Glencoe Street; will he take the tooth out; let the jaw, dear Lord, not be infected again; too soon since the last time; a physical pain difficult to decipher; maxilla; mandible; horseshoes in the mouth; Sutherland Library; restricted street parking; 24/7 external book-return chute; Saint Nicephorus the Leper (d. 1964); heal our hearts from their deformities; the beauty of the flesh invariably deceives; jaws which fly; jaws of the poets; jaws of life; I will probably lose another tooth; to go along with my diminishing sight; and the loss of hearing; each day closer to that binding perfection; the end of words; solitude in wait after the last sleep; Seamus Heaney (1939- 2013); Beowulf: A New Verse Translation (2000); “For every one of us, living in this world/ means waiting for our end”; in Corelli’s on King Street, Newtown; across the road from the Reno Café; now in another of its incarnations: ‘Veganism is Magic’; a big cup of hot chocolate; fig and coconut balls; a long glass of orange juice; playing with glass marbles on the streets with Theo; cat’s eyes; corkscrews; clearies; I have lost another friend; who is to blame; what does it matter when we are walking on bones; “If not for flesh’s pretty paint, we’re just a bunch of skeleton working hard to deny the fact of bones” (Christopher Kennedy); thank you Lord, for returning my little tribe from Arizona; it will be very difficult to be apart; the soul unites more truthfully than the flesh; Stefan Lochner (1410-1451); blue-winged angels; illuminated manuscripts; how I love this song; “Now you will see the colors change/ And the mountains come together one to one; Angels as mortals will be embracing you/ Your enemies will speak to you lovingly”; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kMixBIsHk0c; an  eager waiter behind the cake display pointing to the caramel slice; his ginger goatee curled up like an old manuscript; two young lovers to the right rubbing each other’s backs making a wish; a man with snowy hair is adjusting his headphones interpreting the white noise; the bubbly middle-aged waitress walking past with five red plates nestled on the crook of her left arm; outside an old man with a tweed flat cap pauses to smoke and to make signals; a woman dressed in blue with yellow socks is walking her well-informed mongrel; it pauses to take a [the] piss; a young man in a long brown coat is attempting to set sail; Italy at risk of new financial crisis; Israel and Gaza trade heavy fire; Cuba calls on US and Canada to investigate ‘sonic attack’ claims; peace comes with selective resignation; “Teacher, teach yourself” (St. John of Kronstadt); “Now is the day of Good Will/ Let us not be mean” (St. Isaac Syrian); Hesy-Re first known dental practitioner (2600 BCE); dental fillings in China (700 CE); the first book about dentistry published in Germany (1530); of the relationships of all forms of energy; thermodynamics; “Let there be light” (Gen. 1:3); Paco de Lucia; Al di Meola; John McLaughlin; mellifluous; ethereal; syzygy; “your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding”(Khalil Gibran); the right heel digging into the left ankle; my nose itches like a forgotten transgression; new shoes too tight, darn it; keep your letter, already it is He and not I, who can do the forgiving; it is enough I have let you have the last say; the untold beauty of endurance; distance cycling; raindrops hitting the pavement like lost poems; “Let the rain kiss you. Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops. Let the rain sing you a lullaby” (Langston Hughes); walking with my friend John C. Havens on the edges of the Pacific Ocean; Sailfish; Bigeye Tuna; Black Marlin; pigment; binder; solvent; Yayoi Kusama (b. 1929); Vija Celmins (b. 1938); Sonia Boyce (b. 1962); “Creativity takes courage” (Henri Matisse); my toes are cold; I can blow on my fingers; but I cannot blow on my toes; few actions are as awesome an improvisation; phenomenology; hermeneutics; perception; all songs take us back to the beginning; like a goodbye letter written on the keys of a piano; I remember you playing “Starry, Starry Night” in Tel Aviv; primordial light; cosmic dawn; dark matter; “They do not compete, the bird and the wind” (Margarita Michelena); synergistic phenomena; Oxpeckers and Zebras; MH 370 search to end on May 29; Dow drops nearly 400 points; Ebola outbreak in Equateur province, DRC; I will have to live with this ‘thorn in the flesh’; it is done now; too many trips downstream to smash the boat; hidden waters; springs underneath a tree; holy wells; each day I understand more of how ‘this’ could end; the one who ‘opposes’ and who goes by different names; is not in ‘place of’ but ‘against’; The Preaching of the Antichrist, Luca Signorelli (1450-1523); “Then I saw a second beast, coming out of the earth. It had two horns like a lamb, but it spoke like a dragon.” (Rev. 13:11); alphanumerics; we discern suffering and we hurt; mind and body are united; consider the implications of dualism and AI; Sutherland Library; restricted street parking; 24/7 external book-return chute; The Elephant Odes (1996); “I praise your strength, your ambulant/ astrologies”; Judith Beveridge (b. 1956); wood, rags, or grasses; pulp and the mulberry bark; a paper cut little envelopes on the fingers; Vasilis Tsitsanis; Manolis Chiotis; Giorgos Zampetas; to my left a family of three in a black sedan accelerating to their destiny; tap three times top right steering wheel; wheel; deal; Lucile; multiple points of entry; increasing vulnerability; uberveillance multiplying like a deadly virus; the space inside your head the ultimate poster; The Technological Society (1954), Jacques Ellul; I am sorry to say; all else is deception; disguised lies; or wishful thinking; and that’s okay, sometimes; home at Kingsgrove for the night, where I was born numerous times; getting up in the early hours of the morning; scratching the walls even now looking for the clues; Mother still folding ships from white paper napkins; they are multiplying next to the television set; surrounded by the ‘living’ and the ‘dead’; Codex Sinaiticus; Codex Alexandrinus; Codex Ephraemi Rescriptus; quantum mechanics; quantum field theory; quantum gravity; William Hartnell; Patrick Troughton; Jon Pertwee; before you go to bed for the last time; may this thought cross your mind; my life belonged to the land of miracles; let us swim in our neighbors’ pools;  The Swimmer (1968); Burt Lancaster; wings, everywhere I see wings; leaves dropping from citrus trees; the dusky knight butterfly; one of the great memoir titles; Give Dust a Tongue; John F. Deane (b. 1943); Tasawwuf, beyond reason; “God is love and God is the beloved”; Dikhr; cyclical movements; planetary cycles; whirling and spinning; Acacia irrorata; Eucalyptus eugenoides; Livistonia australis; there are times when light and darkness are indistinguishable; the electron gains energy; we glow, we are all bioluminescent; “Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy” (Matt. 5:7); bunji; unna; kaya; Albert Namatjira; Dorothy Napangardi; Rover Thomas; angels with huge quills; ink wells of cirrocumulus; thunderstorms of epic poetry; okay, till next time; fold the blood away, Michael; glorious cherry.