Diaphanous Wisps of Life

It is rather nice when someone offers you, as a small testimonial, those restaurant gift cards. One can live it up at little or no cost in a place one would not likely choose if it weren't for the free-o card. So today, off we went, with plastic meal tickets in my sweaty paw.

On the way the hugeness of a June afternoon was breathtaking. The trees swayed in the warm sunshine and cool breeze. Wildflowers were scattered across the landscape and the sky was a giant bowl of sapphire and the only clouds were a few diaphanous wisps of cotton. A daytime half-moon looked down upon the tender earth with great and motherly love and a small herd of cows grazed on the hill.

"My heart is like wax."

In the restaurant we were seated among the din of chatter, clanking china and beautiful women. Platters of fancy food were everywhere. Our waitress arrived.

She was young and her eyes were bright and innocent and gave off a glow of kindness. She was quick and modest and glided around silently on secret feet. Her hair was pulled back and as she bent to her task I noticed her small, fine earrings of pearl and the diaphanous wisps of hair on her cheek.

"My heart is like wax."

The meal proceeded in all its grandiosity and deserts were slung and hand clapping happy birthdays were sung and beautiful women shrieked and cackled with laughter. Outside the window summer blew by like a brass band.

Within the hugeness and grandiosity of life it is the diaphanous wisps that draw my attention. Innocent eyes, a lovely smile, a kind gesture or a cup of tea on a chilly night. For all the drudgery and trouble in life it is these tender moments that we must grab and allow their sad beauty to melt our hearts.

Hospitalization?

Today was a pleasant trip to the quaint enviorns and into the ivy covered Tudor cottage on which my old and trusted Psychiatrist has nailed her shingle. Among the Persian carpets and antique desks that befit the drawingroom of a European sensualist, my Doctor suggested that I go to the hospital. My psychosis had reached a level of great discomfort. When I revealed the type and content of my delusions and hallucinations she was disturbed. My irregular work schedual had deprived me of regular sleep and the opportunity to take as much psychiatric medicine as often as I needed and apparently it caught up with me. I briefly imagined a pleasant stay on a nice ward in Westchester and it was inticing: the food, the women and the drugs. But I shrugged if off as a willow-the-wisp of my imagination and also thought of: a strange roomate, group therapy and endless television. Throw in a Doctor or Nurse with a crappy attitude and the specter of hospitalization loomed on the horizon like a storm cloud at sea, and me in a very small dinghy! So I offered to dope myself up, at regular intervals with Perphenazine, the Dom Peringnon of older anti-psychotics, and call the Dr. on Thursday. A bargain was struck and my hospitalization will be honored in the breech, but now it is sink or swim. Work has been sporatic and the time off is welcomed by this wary-eyed mariner, now standing watch in the crow's nest of sanity. And at such a golden time of year, with sunshine, breezes and sudden thundershowers. The smell of wildflowers has adorned the atmosphere and the wind is love-sick with Spring. The goddess of nature, her long and lusterous hair bedecked in Daisies and Lavender, reclines on her starry charpoy, far up in heaven and wistfully sighs at her creation: the waving grass, the majestic trees and sapphire skys.