Ten-Finger Exercises

an abstract kind of day

What makes this an abstract kind of day? Well, I'm glad you asked.

I don't feel good, but I thought if I got out and did some things I'd feel better. I didn't.

I did visit one patient because I had a 10 o'clock appointment set up. He was hard to understand, due to neurological problems caused by a tumor on the cerebellum, but he smiled and was glad for company to break up his day. He's younger than I am, and I knew his wife when I worked at the hospital and like her very much. They are quiet people though, and I was having a difficult time keeping the conversation going. Antihistamines are keeping me out of mental focus.

Maybe calling this an abstract day says more about my poor understanding of the word than anything else.

If I picture an abstract painting, it has a background of yellow, with a large dark blue rhombus in the lower left corner, and some red and orange squares and parallelograms near the center, with a lighter blue triangle upper right. The dark blue figure represents my feeling crummy. The red and orange shapes were things I did get accomplished-- there aren't many of them. And the light blue triangle is my hopes for feeling better for the weekend. Ta-da!

I'll blame it on alfred booth, wanbli ska and his blog a few days ago about abstract poetry. I didn't do any research, but did let the idea play around in my head. Here's the result:

ambivalence

leaves wobbled by the wind
neither here nor there
tangential and uncertain
no safe harbor
only
lonely
circumstantial breath
comes and goes
continually chuffing, charging
chanting
insignificant song