COMMON AS A FIELD DAISY

 52 of #100daychallenge

My general melancholy (that sounds like it could be a character in a children's book or a fantasy novel) continues. I am not in a bona fide depression, but continue to be just on the vaguely alert side of vacant. I am tired. 

Today I went to the dentist to get my broken tooth looked at. There is enough tooth so that I won't need a root canal. Because I have some dental insurance, I will only have to pay $1000 to get a crown instead of the $2500 retail price. The first step was accomplished and I go back in two weeks to be fitted for an actual crown.

Historically, I have had a very hard time responding to oral anesthesia, to the point that I had been drilled on without being fully numbed. My current dentist remembered this, the only dentist I have ever had to pay real attention, and she went to a strong anesthetic right out of the gate. So, I had no pain to speak of, but it is so stressful to keep your mouth open for that long and get drilled on and so forth. I think some of my exhaustion is due to that stress, although I did get a mid-afternoon doze.

I did have some time while in the chair, waiting for various things, to read my Ulysses companion books which were quite quite interesting.

"Stephen Dedalus's struggle is with a Proteus of the intellect. ... His mind is tussling with the problem of the changing face of the world in relation to the reality behind it."

I am with you on that one. 

WHEN DEATH COMES

When death comes

like the hungry bear in autumn;

when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse

to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;

when death comes 

like the measle-pox;

when death comes

like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:

what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

And therefore I look on everything

as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,

and I look upon time as no more than an idea,

and I consider eternity as another possibility,

and I think of each life as a flower, as common

as a field daisy, and as singular,

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth,

tending, as all music does, toward silence,

and each body a lion of courage, and something

precious to the earth.

When it is over, I want to say: all my life

I was a bride married to amazement.

I was a bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it’s over, I don’t want to wonder

if I have made of my life something particular, and real.

I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened,

or full of argument.

I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.

— Mary Oliver, New and Selected Poems, Beacon Press, Boston, 1992