That still sounds like a pretty good option. Mainly, I'm wondering if this is the only way to avoid aggressively crazy neighbors. Before it was the harpy woman; now it's the pushy dog lady. Always it's the long-term renters who've been around for the better part of a decade.
Dog Lady seemed all right to begin with. I mean, she had a dog. I love dogs. She offered to let us play with it any time we want. Fun, great. What I didn't realize was that by saying I like dogs I was agreeing to a verbal contract to somehow be responsible for the dog when she's not around. She gave us a set of her keys. Naively, I assumed she was just asking us to be good neighbors and keep an eye on her place, keep a set of keys in case anything ever happened. Then the phone calls started. The day I was waiting for the cable guy to show up and install service, Dog Lady called me and asked if I had her dog. I said no, and she got all huffy saying, "I thought you were going to take him." Well, I explained that the cable man had just arrived and I didn't think it would be a good idea to have the dog running around while he's trying to install things. That seemed to calm her. I later felt guilty (why??) and played with the dog in the afternoon. After that it turned into a game of surprise, here's my dog!
Whenever my roommate or I got home and were standing there unlocking our door, her dog would be barking and going nuts. (It's one of those little white yippy dogs.) So Dog Lady yells out, "Who's that? Is that Omi?" And she would open her door, which is across from ours, and send the dog out. She coaxes it saying, "Go on, Baby, go see the girls." Then she shuts her door and yells for us to send him back when we're done. The dog is so badly trained, he bolts into our apartment and jumps on the couch.
Now it's gotten to the point where both my roommate and I park on the street as often as possible so it doesn't look like we're home. We have done speed tests to see how quickly we can unlock the front door. We keep the drapes drawn and pretty much hide out when we're here. I make sure to be out when she pops home for lunch every day. I'm not proud of this. I know I should confront this woman, but we've only been here about a month and a half and I didn't want to cause trouble right off the bat like we did with the harpy neighbor. But I know I need to give her her keys back and tell her I can't worry about her dog.
. . . Or do I? Yesterday something interesting happened. I was working at the dining room table and Dog Lady arrived back early for lunch. Damn, I thought. I was in the middle of doing laundry and now she was going to know I was home. But then something amazing happened. I heard the building manager outside (let's call her Rose) and Dog Lady said to her, "Rose, I think your son wants me out of the building." Dog Lady was spitting nails she was so mad. Rose's son is our landlord. Rose said something I couldn't make out. Then Dog Lady (whose nasal voice carries like a smoke alarm) said that the landlord had sent her an email saying he was going to take action with an attorney. Something about her not paying rent on time! Then Rose said something about the "young people" being able to do it, and Dog Lady replied, "Well, I told him I can only do what I can do." Then I heard a door slam and the dog was barking his head off and the gardeners were working so that was the end of that.
So maybe she won't be our neighbor much longer? I know that's a pretty terrible thing to hope for. I don't wish her ill or anything but having the issue resolve itself would be fantastic. (Yes, I am a coward.)
In the Waiting Room
In Worcester, Massachusetts,
I went with Aunt Consuelo
to keep her dentist's appointment
and sat and waited for her
in the dentist's waiting room.
It was winter. It got dark
early. The waiting room
was full of grown-up people,
arctics and overcoats,
lamps and magazines.
My aunt was inside
what seemed like a long time
and while I waited I read
the National Geographic
(I could read) and carefully
studied the photographs:
the inside of a volcano,
black, and full of ashes;
then it was spilling over
in rivulets of fire.
Osa and Martin Johnson
dressed in riding breeches,
laced boots, and pith helmets.
A dead man slung on a pole
--"Long Pig," the caption said.
Babies with pointed heads
wound round and round with string;
black, naked women with necks
wound round and round with wire
like the necks of light bulbs.
Their breasts were horrifying.
I read it right straight through.
I was too shy to stop.
And then I looked at the cover:
the yellow margins, the date.
Suddenly, from inside,
came an oh! of pain
--Aunt Consuelo's voice--
not very loud or long.
I wasn't at all surprised;
even then I knew she was
a foolish, timid woman.
I might have been embarrassed,
but wasn't. What took me
completely by surprise
was that it was me:
my voice, in my mouth.
Without thinking at all
I was my foolish aunt,
I--we--were falling, falling,
our eyes glued to the cover
of the National Geographic,
February, 1918.
I said to myself: three days
and you'll be seven years old.
I was saying it to stop
the sensation of falling off
the round, turning world.
into cold, blue-black space.
But I felt: you are an I,
you are an Elizabeth,
you are one of them.
Why should you be one, too?
I scarcely dared to look
to see what it was I was.
I gave a sidelong glance
--I couldn't look any higher--
at shadowy gray knees,
trousers and skirts and boots
and different pairs of hands
lying under the lamps.
I knew that nothing stranger
had ever happened, that nothing
stranger could ever happen.
Why should I be my aunt,
or me, or anyone?
What similarities--
boots, hands, the family voice
I felt in my throat, or even
the National Geographic
and those awful hanging breasts--
held us all together
or made us all just one?
How--I didn't know any
word for it--how "unlikely". . .
How had I come to be here,
like them, and overhear
a cry of pain that could have
got loud and worse but hadn't?
The waiting room was bright
and too hot. It was sliding
beneath a big black wave,
another, and another.
Then I was back in it.
The War was on. Outside,
in Worcester, Massachusetts,
were night and slush and cold,
and it was still the fifth
of February, 1918.
-Elizabeth Bishop
Showing posts with label Elizabeth Bishop. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Elizabeth Bishop. Show all posts
Thursday, February 10, 2011
Monday, November 8, 2010
The worst
For 30-some hours last week, I stayed in the hospital with a family member who was ill. I've never spent the night in a hospital before, at least not since I can remember. It struck me how much like a prison it is, not only in the sense of being trapped in the building but of being seized by fear and anxiety.
There is an old saying that you don't go to a hospital in order to get rest. This is true. Though you may arrive there at 4:30 in the morning, there is no sleep on the horizon. First you are worried about how soon you can be seen in the emergency room. If you are lucky, it could take less than an hour, but if it is busy, you could be there for four, five, six hours just waiting. In our situation, the next step was triage. Then you have to wait for a room to become available before you can even get treatment. Apparently the quickest way to secure a room is to uncontrollably vomit. This will bump you to the front of the line.
Once you are in a room, you have to wait for the doctor to come in. The nurses are in and out, they check your vitals, but they can't do anything really productive without the doctor signing off on it. Here is what I've discovered about ER doctors: their treatments are tentative at best. I don't know if they're scared of being sued for malpractice or if our doctor wasn't exactly grasping the problem, but things only got worse in the ER rather than better. This necessitated full admittance into the hospital and a move up to an actual room in the observation ward. What we thought was going to be a few hours was now turning into an overnight stay.
The observation nurses are amazing. I don't think this is something that every hospital has, but at this one they dedicate all their time to patients that just need to be monitored. They seem to have a better idea of what treatments are necessary and they contact the doctors and explain each case to them. Things started to turn around for us in this ward. At this hospital, family is encouraged to stay with the patient, so they very thoughtfully provided a chair/bed for me to sleep in. This makes a huge difference because you can be on constant alert for your family member and get the nurses really fast if you have to.
All through the night, they wake you up every few hours to change the saline bag for the IV or check your blood sugar. The main nurse assigned to us was really great about being quiet and just getting the job done, but sometimes you wonder how certain people fell into the line of work they're in. One nurse seemed to be in her 20s, and she was so loud. You could hear her voice all through the ward and at 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning, the last thing you want to hear is a shrill call about which room the beeping noise is coming from.
We were lucky that we were able to leave the next day. Of course you have to wait for the doctor to come and agree to discharge you. Naturally they are busy, so this could take hours. The worst feeling besides fear and anxiety is helplessness. At the hospital, these seem to be the trifecta of emotions. You are always waiting to react to some kind of news. You have no control over your body, over who prods at you, or what the test results are going to say. You can't get up without dragging an IV machine behind you, and you can't shower or brush your teeth- even after you vomit.
Hospitals. You're lucky if you get a good one, and the people working there make all the difference.
This is a poem written by Elizabeth Bishop about visiting the poet Ezra Pound in a mental hospital after he was arrested for treason and judged to be insane. The poem is modeled on the nursery rhyme "This is the house that Jack built," which gives it an eerie quality sort of fitting for a psychiatric hospital.
Visits to St. Elizabeths
[1950]
This is the house of Bedlam.
This is the man
that lies in the house of Bedlam.
This is the time
of the tragic man
that lies in the house of Bedlam.
This is a wristwatch
telling the time
of the talkative man
that lies in the house of Bedlam.
This is a sailor
wearing the watch
that tells the time
of the honored man
that lies in the house of Bedlam.
This is the roadstead all of board
reached by the sailor
wearing the watch
that tells the time
of the old, brave man
that lies in the house of Bedlam.
These are the years and the walls of the ward,
the winds and clouds of the sea of board
sailed by the sailor
wearing the watch
that tells the time
of the cranky man
that lies in the house of Bedlam.
This is a Jew in a newspaper hat
that dances weeping down the ward
over the creaking sea of board
beyond the sailor
winding his watch
that tells the time
of the cruel man
that lies in the house of Bedlam.
This is a world of books gone flat.
This is a Jew in a newspaper hat
that dances weeping down the ward
over the creaking sea of board
of the batty sailor
that winds his watch
that tells the time
of the busy man
that lies in the house of Bedlam.
This is a boy that pats the floor
to see if the world is there, is flat,
for the widowed Jew in the newspaper hat
that dances weeping down the ward
waltzing the length of a weaving board
by the silent sailor
that hears his watch
that ticks the time
of the tedious man
that lies in the house of Bedlam.
These are the years and the walls and the door
that shut on a boy that pats the floor
to feel if the world is there and flat.
This is a Jew in a newspaper hat
that dances joyfully down the ward
into the parting seas of board
past the staring sailor
that shakes his watch
that tells the time
of the poet, the man
that lies in the house of Bedlam.
This is the soldier home from the war.
These are the years and the walls and the door
that shut on a boy that pats the floor
to see if the world is round or flat.
This is a Jew in a newspaper hat
that dances carefully down the ward,
walking the plank of a coffin board
with the crazy sailor
that shows his watch
that tells the time
of the wretched man
that lies in the house of Bedlam.
There is an old saying that you don't go to a hospital in order to get rest. This is true. Though you may arrive there at 4:30 in the morning, there is no sleep on the horizon. First you are worried about how soon you can be seen in the emergency room. If you are lucky, it could take less than an hour, but if it is busy, you could be there for four, five, six hours just waiting. In our situation, the next step was triage. Then you have to wait for a room to become available before you can even get treatment. Apparently the quickest way to secure a room is to uncontrollably vomit. This will bump you to the front of the line.
Once you are in a room, you have to wait for the doctor to come in. The nurses are in and out, they check your vitals, but they can't do anything really productive without the doctor signing off on it. Here is what I've discovered about ER doctors: their treatments are tentative at best. I don't know if they're scared of being sued for malpractice or if our doctor wasn't exactly grasping the problem, but things only got worse in the ER rather than better. This necessitated full admittance into the hospital and a move up to an actual room in the observation ward. What we thought was going to be a few hours was now turning into an overnight stay.
The observation nurses are amazing. I don't think this is something that every hospital has, but at this one they dedicate all their time to patients that just need to be monitored. They seem to have a better idea of what treatments are necessary and they contact the doctors and explain each case to them. Things started to turn around for us in this ward. At this hospital, family is encouraged to stay with the patient, so they very thoughtfully provided a chair/bed for me to sleep in. This makes a huge difference because you can be on constant alert for your family member and get the nurses really fast if you have to.
All through the night, they wake you up every few hours to change the saline bag for the IV or check your blood sugar. The main nurse assigned to us was really great about being quiet and just getting the job done, but sometimes you wonder how certain people fell into the line of work they're in. One nurse seemed to be in her 20s, and she was so loud. You could hear her voice all through the ward and at 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning, the last thing you want to hear is a shrill call about which room the beeping noise is coming from.
We were lucky that we were able to leave the next day. Of course you have to wait for the doctor to come and agree to discharge you. Naturally they are busy, so this could take hours. The worst feeling besides fear and anxiety is helplessness. At the hospital, these seem to be the trifecta of emotions. You are always waiting to react to some kind of news. You have no control over your body, over who prods at you, or what the test results are going to say. You can't get up without dragging an IV machine behind you, and you can't shower or brush your teeth- even after you vomit.
Hospitals. You're lucky if you get a good one, and the people working there make all the difference.
This is a poem written by Elizabeth Bishop about visiting the poet Ezra Pound in a mental hospital after he was arrested for treason and judged to be insane. The poem is modeled on the nursery rhyme "This is the house that Jack built," which gives it an eerie quality sort of fitting for a psychiatric hospital.
Visits to St. Elizabeths
[1950]
This is the house of Bedlam.
This is the man
that lies in the house of Bedlam.
This is the time
of the tragic man
that lies in the house of Bedlam.
This is a wristwatch
telling the time
of the talkative man
that lies in the house of Bedlam.
This is a sailor
wearing the watch
that tells the time
of the honored man
that lies in the house of Bedlam.
This is the roadstead all of board
reached by the sailor
wearing the watch
that tells the time
of the old, brave man
that lies in the house of Bedlam.
These are the years and the walls of the ward,
the winds and clouds of the sea of board
sailed by the sailor
wearing the watch
that tells the time
of the cranky man
that lies in the house of Bedlam.
This is a Jew in a newspaper hat
that dances weeping down the ward
over the creaking sea of board
beyond the sailor
winding his watch
that tells the time
of the cruel man
that lies in the house of Bedlam.
This is a world of books gone flat.
This is a Jew in a newspaper hat
that dances weeping down the ward
over the creaking sea of board
of the batty sailor
that winds his watch
that tells the time
of the busy man
that lies in the house of Bedlam.
This is a boy that pats the floor
to see if the world is there, is flat,
for the widowed Jew in the newspaper hat
that dances weeping down the ward
waltzing the length of a weaving board
by the silent sailor
that hears his watch
that ticks the time
of the tedious man
that lies in the house of Bedlam.
These are the years and the walls and the door
that shut on a boy that pats the floor
to feel if the world is there and flat.
This is a Jew in a newspaper hat
that dances joyfully down the ward
into the parting seas of board
past the staring sailor
that shakes his watch
that tells the time
of the poet, the man
that lies in the house of Bedlam.
This is the soldier home from the war.
These are the years and the walls and the door
that shut on a boy that pats the floor
to see if the world is round or flat.
This is a Jew in a newspaper hat
that dances carefully down the ward,
walking the plank of a coffin board
with the crazy sailor
that shows his watch
that tells the time
of the wretched man
that lies in the house of Bedlam.
Wednesday, September 15, 2010
Damn Thirsty
You know how you used to know something really well? You knew it like the back of your hand, then you grew up and you forgot about it. But suddenly something jostles that trunk where it's stored in the cobwebbiest corner of your mind, like under a tarp, and it pops open and you go, "Hey, I used to know that! Wow!" There must be a scientific name for this phenomenon. I even remember it occurring at the tender age of five when it consistently blew my mind to realize that bugs lived in the ground. Now I feel that way when I read about buffalo (i.e., "Buffalo? Aren't they extinct? Is that the same thing as a bison? Oh, they still exist? Phew, glad to hear it!").
Anyway, a friend of mine sent me something I feel like I read before. It's vaguely familiar, and all the time I'm reading it I'm kicking myself for ever forgetting it. It's about a fish:
First
The fish needs to say,
‘Something ain’t right about this
Camel ride-
And I’m
Feeling so damn
Thirsty.’
I didn't write this poem. Hafez did. But I am the fish. I know my friend feels like she is the fish. Maybe you are, too. And maybe you just woke up and you looked around and thought hmm something's . . . fishy. (Sorry, it wrote itself.) How did I get on this camel? Fish aren't supposed to go on camels! Who booked this ticket?
And also, why are some of the best poems about fish? (see: Elizabeth Bishop)
Anyway, a friend of mine sent me something I feel like I read before. It's vaguely familiar, and all the time I'm reading it I'm kicking myself for ever forgetting it. It's about a fish:
First
The fish needs to say,
‘Something ain’t right about this
Camel ride-
And I’m
Feeling so damn
Thirsty.’
I didn't write this poem. Hafez did. But I am the fish. I know my friend feels like she is the fish. Maybe you are, too. And maybe you just woke up and you looked around and thought hmm something's . . . fishy. (Sorry, it wrote itself.) How did I get on this camel? Fish aren't supposed to go on camels! Who booked this ticket?
And also, why are some of the best poems about fish? (see: Elizabeth Bishop)
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