Bloglet, the gentleman's mock turtle soup -- Moss made it sweeter than myrrh ash and dhoup
I am sad and happy.
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09:50:02 PM,Thursday 27 November 2003
One of my clients died last night at midnight. I don't talk much about my clients here, because there are all these confidentiality rules that I haven't really learned, and so I don't want to break one without knowing it. But I don't care -- I'm going to talk about him. I won't use his name, so it shouldn't matter too much whatever the rules are.
On Saturday, I looked into his room to see how he was doing. He was sleeping; I didn't wake him up. He was fine. Friday morning he'd hopped right out of bed and into the shower, just the same as always -- better, actually, because most times it was kind of a struggle to get him out of his nice warm bed into the cold cold world. Tuesday night, I came into work and was told that he was in the hospital, dying. I drove to see him. He was sleeping then, too. I held his hand and put my head on his shoulder... he was warm and sweaty, just like he always was when he was sleeping. Then I left. He didn't wake up. It was renal failure, complicated by congestive heart failure. He was 43, which is a little above the average life expectancy for a man with Down Syndrome.
He had this incredible dignity. I mean a real solid sufficiency, a way of interacting with the world that was so concrete and deliberate and concerted that it didn't need speech. I don't think you can have that kind of dignity unless you don't talk. From what I could tell, he thought talking was beside the point. He would look at you. If you held out your hand, he would take it and hold it. He had enormous rough warm hands. He had the same solemn grave expression on his face no matter if he was happy or hurting or royally pissed off -- except if you made him laugh. Serious serious serious serious HUGESMILESNICKER serious serious HUGESMILESNICKER serious serious... just like two seconds of paralytic glee, and then back to his placid self. Cracked me up like crazy. Sometimes he used to pull the fire alarm, just to see people jump.
When I say dignity, I mean that it was there, and dominated, his features, which would have looked ridiculous on anyone else I know. His eyes were always crossed, and he had a great grooved tongue that projected halfway between his teeth, but his brow, and his cheeks, and even his figure -- like a lump of frozen bread dough -- all somehow harmonized with his nature. He loved order and neatness and doing things properly. He always straightened the garbage cans when I left them crooked, and gave me dirty, indulgent looks. I would put his plate in front of him at breakfast and fasten his bib around his neck, and he would lift the plate up carefully, set it over a few inches, put the end of the bib on the table, smooth it down, and put the plate back on it, dead center. It was satisfying just to watch him make things symmetrical, put his shoes on, stretch out his shoulders in the morning. He always did things right. Once, just for the hell of it, I saluted him. I dunno; I was always babbling stuff off the top of my head. He'd done something perfect again, and I said, "Good work, soldier." He looked me dead in the eye and saluted me back. I don't know if he'd ever done it before or not, but he knew what it meant. He looked like a General.
And another thing of his -- for him, a door was properly either shut or open all the way so that the knob touched the wall. Never ajar. I guess that applied just as well to his life. As long as he was able to do all the things he could do, he was the finest stoic philosopher I've known. As soon as he wasn't, he died. So quick. I only knew him for six months, but I knew every part of his body, and many glorious glimpses of his mind. I won't forget him.
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(8)
10:22:06 AM,Thursday 27 November 2003
{shambling mound}
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12:39:50 AM,Wednesday 26 November 2003
T.I.A.I.L.W:KAYA. (Slippery slope, slippery slope, but damn -- ain't she cute?)
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(12)
12:17:00 PM,Tuesday 25 November 2003
Do modern Britons still say "he-cat" and "she-cat"? Or do they say "boy cat" and "girl cat", like us?
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(2)
11:13:22 AM,Tuesday 25 November 2003
I think I want it just for the story.
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(4)
09:51:25 AM,Tuesday 25 November 2003
Ancient Roman Speaks Broken English.
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11:35:24 PM,Monday 24 November 2003
Rhymes with "porridge".
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(13)
08:33:08 PM,Monday 24 November 2003
Provocative? No, I just can't sew.
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01:42:27 PM,Sunday 23 November 2003
My mom found my SJC diploma! I was worried it had been lost.
"Probum et ingenuum Adolescentem humanioribus Litteris Philosophiae et Eloquentia"
"Ac postquam Curriculi sui Spatio peracto in Aula nostra"
"Curatoribus multisque aliis Civibus dignissimis ad Examen revocatus"
"Baccalaurei Artium"
{gulp}
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(2)
01:12:30 PM,Sunday 23 November 2003
"And that singular anomaly, the lady novelist-- I don't think she'd be missed--I'm
sure she'd not be missed!"
"Sir, a woman's preaching is like a dog's walking on his hind legs. It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all."
Musings on this subject to follow after I've done my 1667 words.
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(1)
09:33:04 AM,Sunday 23 November 2003
Just got back from tutoring a guy I know in Latin. It was actually really cool; I've known him since he was the kid brother of one of my friends growing up, but now he's in his first semester of college, which blows my mind. And I was pleased to learn that, though so much of the vocabulary is just -- whoosh -- freakin' gone out of my head after not studying it at all for going on four years now, my memory of the basic structure and look of things is still pretty much all there. Give me five minutes and a lexicon, and I can puzzle out Cicero. Feels good. And then, on the way home, "Ave Verum Corpus" came up on random shuffle, and a beautiful husky dog sang along with me for part of it, sitting straight up in the snow.
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10:05:49 PM,Saturday 22 November 2003
Nervous.
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01:00:45 PM,Saturday 22 November 2003
With a thrip'ny shock a trouverol, me darlin'.
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(2)
03:35:40 PM,Friday 21 November 2003
Everything about me is soft. Set me on to boil and come back in twenty minutes.
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03:14:53 PM,Friday 21 November 2003
What are the virtues of banality?
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(5)
01:09:14 PM,Friday 21 November 2003
I love Beethoven most when he does variations on Mozart. I think because that's when he's most loving.
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09:47:49 AM,Friday 21 November 2003
You know what word is most closely coupled with "homosexuality" in my mind? "Ingenuity". Yeah, ingenuity.
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(2)
09:53:41 AM,Thursday 20 November 2003