Old Pain and New Science - Happy New Year, from My Heart

Tonight is New Years Eve, and aside from the terrible back pain that usually ails me, an old ailment has sprung up again--a sharp throbbing in my heart. If I didn't know any better, I'd assume the chest symptoms were nothing but stress from writing and studying and anxiety about the coming year and getting older and such.

Oh, but I do know better. And my best assumption is that it is linked to something from long ago--an event which I am not yet ready to write about even now. Perhaps I will soon. But on to more recent events.

When I described my symptoms to a very scientifically informed friend of mine, he told me of a new technological device called an electrocardiograph (a new device associated with galvanometry) that can detect and record electric currents made by my heart. I didn't even know my heart made electric currents! Maybe that was why I was in so much pain, I suggested, but he assured me that every heart conducts them.

How curious! I thought.

He gave me the address of a hospital "not too far from here" and told me the cardiologist there would be glad to use his electrocardiograph to diagnose my problem.

I felt both nervous and excited at once--nervous at the word "diagnose," because that always means something is wrong--but excited about being able to experience such a breakthrough in science.

I can't wait to see the electrocardiograph and come back to write about it!

As for tonight, though, Happy New Year!

My Extra Ribs

My doctor called me today to inform me of the X-Rae results Dr. Shtiva sent him. Apparently, I have a few extra ribs somewhere under my rib cage, which is weird, but not uncommon, and may or may not be linked to my back pain.

Instead of physical therapy, he is sending me to see a bone doctor, and once the bone doctor takes a look at me, we will decide where to go from there.

More doctors. Yayyyyy.

I will certainly keep you posted.

Sincerely,

Rosemary

Sleeping Under the Christmas Tree

My favourite part of Christmas is wrapping presents. It wasn't until I wrapped my first gift only a day before Christmas Eve that I felt like it was Christmas time, and I think that's because giving is such a vital part of the "Christmas Spirit." I stayed up with Sarkis, Aprilla, Alice, and Jak wrapping dozens and dozens of presents that we had bought for each other and the rest of the occupants of Sarkis and Aprilla's boarding house.

I love to admire all of the different patterns of paper, neatly wrap boxes, and find ribbons and bows to match them. We were all up very late doing so, and it was a good thing too, because around two o'clock, a visitor arrived at the boarding house who is a good friend of Sarkis's--a sailor, named John. He came just in time, because after greeting him, we continued to arrange gifts under the tree and hang stuffed stockings over the fireplace and as soon as all of the stockings were hung, the mantlepiece collapsed. Thankfully, John was present to help Sarkis fix it and rearrange all of the decorations.

Not long after that, the Christmas tree toppled over, making a big crashing sound followed by a lot of jingling.

"Oh, no!" I exclaimed. The bottom of the tree had torn.

"How will we ever get it to stand straight again?" Aprilla asked.

"Stand again? Nonsense," the sailor John answered. "We'll hang it, of course."

"Hang it?"

"Yes, hang it upside down!" he said, then added, "It'll leave more room for the presents," as if this wasn't at all a strange thing to do.

I'd never heard of such a thing, but I couldn't think of a reason why not to try it. That's the way Christmas trees were traditionally positioned, according to John. And we were, in fact, running out of room to arrange the presents.

John and Sarkis retrieved a ladder from the shed and screwed an eye hook into the ceiling and another hook through the trunk of the tree, and hung it from the ceiling by a chain. We had to rearrange some of the ornaments on the tree branches so that they would hang right, but once the tree stopped swaying and we arrayed all of the finely wrapped gifts around the tip of it, the whole arrangement looked pleasantly fitting.

I was the last one awake that night. (I stayed up until three-thirty in the morning and didn't go to sleep until well after four.) There were so many guests in the boarding house that Glorya, one of the imps, had to share the bed I normally shared with Alice, and the sailor John was sleeping on the sofa in the parlour, and by the time everyone was asleep, there was no room in any of the beds for me.

After wrapping the last gift, I turned around to set it in its place under the tip of the Christmas tree and realized there was still more space beneath it. Then looking at its twinkling lights turning red, yellow, green, and blue, I remembered every year as a child, wanting to sleep under the Christmas tree, and my mom and dad never letting me. But there was no one to stop me now.

I slipped into my bedroom where Alice and Glorya were sleeping to steal a blanket and pillow, crept back downstairs, curled up beneath the piny-smelling branches of the Christmas tree, and closed my eyes. Never had I slept more soundly on a night of Christmas Eve.

My Enchanted Keyboard

I have to type this entry on a separate computer so that my keyboard doesn't get offended. Really, he is quite sensitive. I don't know what ever could have possessed him to cut me, but that is exactly what he did. Even as I speak (write), I can only use two fingers on my right hand to type.

I never saw it coming; I was just writing a letter to a friend and minding my own business when the "U" key jumped out of its bed and cut a big chunk out of my longest finger, making it bleed; it took quite a bit of skin off too. Now I must hit the "I" key with either my index finger or my ring finger. It makes typing quite awkward.

I don't know what I possibly could have said to offend the "U" key, but as soon as I finished washing my finger in Hydrogen Peroxide, I came back to the computer and placed the key back in its proper place on the board and it hasn't given me any trouble since.

Still, I thought it safer to tell the whole story on a separate computer so as not to provoke him again.

Red Grass

I saw my first lunar eclipse last night (or early this morning, depending on how you look at it). I stayed up until after two o'clock a.m. to see it, and it was worth it. I walked outside in the freezing cold without socks or shoes and the grass was red. Now how often is the grass red? It was pretty neat!

Christmas Nostalgia

I miss my old home in Hamilton Hill even more than usual at Christmas time. And Christmas time has kept a habit of creeping up on me more and more every year since I moved away from my home. I hardly realized the day is a week away until Aprilla came home with a skinny little pine tree and set it up in the parlor. All the stockings of the house's current guests are hung up on the mantlepiece. Even my stocking hangs over the fire among them, but it still doesn't feel like Christmas to me. Maybe it's because I'm too sick to smell the pine needles (I sniffed them very carefully, but could detect no piny-ness); or maybe it's because this will be my fourth Christmas without snow.

I remember the day after Thanksgiving, years ago, when Christmas time begins, standing in the freezing cold streets of Schenectady in the midst of the lights strong from all the trees and little buildings. The buildings looked like the little porcelain churches my mother used to decorate the house with when I was little. One of my favourite buildings was the theatre.

I performed there once for a ballet recital when I was little. So long ago...my sister and I dreamed of being famous ballerinas and performing The Nutcracker there. If only I never had to leave...there are so many things I wish I could have done in Hamilton Hill that I never had the chance to do. I think I'll compile a list of things I must do there while I wait for the day I can finally go back.

Doctor Shtiva and Her Mysterious X Machine

I still have not found my tengu friend, nor have I heard from him since the night we were separated in the forest. I didn't dare go back there alone when the healing flower blooms, but the pain in my back has worsened and my options have slimmed.

I had but one choice left--Dr. Shtiva.

I hadn't heard much about her, because I don't really know anyone whom she has treated. No one really goes to her unless they have to. As far as I know.

But I'd do anything to make the pain go away. So I went. I borrowed Aprilla's squeaky white van and drove up to the address I'd kept on a piece of paper. I drove through a long road that cut through a thick orange grove and found the clinic at the end of it.

Inside, it was small and cramped. A few minutes after signing in at the front desk, a stuffy voice called my name from around the corner and I followed it until I met a young nurse with a surgical mask.

"This way to see Doctor Shtiva," she said.

I followed her down a narrow hallway, and then down another; they got darker as we went. Tangled cords occupied the floors of the hall, and we even passed a few holes in the ceiling, with ladders beneath them. The nurse stopped at a half-open door, handed me a baggy gown, said "Change into this, please. Doctor Shtiva will be with you in a few minutes," and left.

The light resonating from inside the half-open door had a reddish tint. I stepped inside and shut the door behind me. A big clonky machine with different arms and legs hung down from the ceiling over a bed with a long piece of paper for a sheet. Connected to the machine were more cords, all tangled together. They looked like they were growing from a hole in the ceiling. There was a chair in the corner and in the corner across from it was a little booth with a little window. I pressed my nose against the glass of the window to look inside the little room. I saw what looked like a big keyboard and engine with lots of little switches and buttons. On one wall hung a big, thick pair of leather gloves and a huge lab coat. On the other wall was a big, shiny red button. I wondered what it did, and if Dr. Shtiva would push it while I was on the table under the machine.

The gown the nurse had given me looked like an oversized apron. It was heavy too. I took off my dress and boots and wrapped the heavy gown around myself and tied the strings together. The rest of the time I spent sitting in the chair in the corner and staring at the big mysterious machine and the red button.

Dr. Shtiva walked in a minute later, wearing a surgical mask just like the nurse's, although I didn't know why, since I had come for an x-ray and not a surgery. She had short, somewhat disheveled brown hair and a pair of big brown eyes that peaked over the mask covering the rest of her face.

"Um. I am here for an x-ray, right?" I said. "Not surgery?"

Dr. Shtiva rolled her eyes. "No, you're not here for an x-ray; you're here for an x-rae." She sounded annoyed.

"An...x...but you just said x-ray and x-ray...their the same thing."

"They don't have the same things, but they are the same things...so they're the same things. T-H-E-Y-apostrophy-R-E. You're not getting x-rays, though, you are getting an x-rae. Please, take a seat on the table."

I blinked a few times and felt a little uncomfortable about the mysterious machine hanging from the ceiling and very confused about Dr. Shtiva's strange words, but I left my pile of clothes on the chair in the corner and tip-toed to the table in my bare feet. Dr. Shtiva motioned to me to get onto the table, so I did, and tried to lie down without crinkling the paper too much.

Dr. Shtiva directed me to lie down and sit up in different positions while she used the switches in the booth to make the machine take pictures of my bones. I think the weirdest position was the one that looked like this weird statue--

--and after that was over and done with, I had to have even more x-rays taken standing up while the arms of the machine moved around me, making threatening noises.

When it was all over, I asked Dr. Shtiva when I would be able to see the x-ray results.

"No, no, darling," she said. "Never will you see your x-ray results; this is my x-rae machine, named after me. Doctor Rae Shtiva. X-R-A-E. Yes?"

"Ohhh. Of course," I said, and she led me out of the room, leaving the red button untouched.

"In the Dark You Lie Awake" Comes Out in Print this January

Four or five years ago, I wrote a few lines of rhyme inspired by a small fragment of a scary movie I saw on television. It was just about a year ago that I decided to lengthen it into an actual poem, and just six months and ten days ago, I figured I might as well start sending it to different literary magazines, and just today I got an e-mail from the lovely editor of Midnight Screaming saying she wants to publish it in the January issue of the magazine (Vol. 3, No. 1). I'll be sure to update once the issue is available to order!

Love,

Rosemary

Misadventure in the Woods Last Night

My intentions were entirely innocent. Really, I went because I was desperate and in terrible pain. Takamatsu told me of a magical flower that grows in the forest near my house that would cure me (a pain in my back that has ailed me for many years has recently worsened). It blossoms only at night, he told me, and said that we would find it together.

We donned ourselves in black and met by a lake across from the forest (the constabulary like to arrest nighttime trespassers of the forest, so we had to be sneaky). We both walked into the forest and began searching for the legendary flower. We had to take a long, inconvenient road to avoid being seen by the constabulary (they hide everywhere, and are almost as good at it as I am!), but after only about half a mile of walking, we saw a faint lavender light on the ground. As I got closer to it, I recognized it as the flower the tengu had described to me. It was supported by one stem that stuck straight up out of the ground. The petals resembled those of a rose, except they were sharp and prickly and moved like the petals of a pin wheel. I had just moved my hand to pluck the flower from the ground when a brighter light shone into the forest.

"Go!" Takamatsu whispered. He dashed through the trees of the forest, leaving the flower behind, and I followed without looking back.

But my tengu friend is much better at disappearing then I am. As I ran behind him, trying to keep up and avoid tripping over roots and thorns, he vanished into the air before me and was gone. I felt the bright light of the constabulary shine through the trees and directly on me, but daring not to turn around, I dropped to the ground and onto my face.

My friend was long gone now; I knew I was alone in the forest...except for the constable in the car with his big shining lantern. Pressing my face into the piny ground as deep as I could bury myself, I tried to stay still and not breathe too hard. I remained stationary on the ground for many long minutes while the big lantern shone around the trees. Even with my face pressed down into the pine needles and thorns, I kept my eyes open and moving around. But my eyes had already adjusted to the darkness and when the light stopped moving, I couldn't tell if it came from the constable's lantern or from the moon. I had to rely on my other senses.

The ground smelled piny. I closed my eyes again, and only listened. I could still hear the engine of the constable's car. How many were they? Had they seen me already? They could have been parked with the lantern put out just waiting for me to move, and then they would have me. Then I will not budge, I thought to myself. I can wait here until morning.

And I did wait for a very long time. For a while I thought I heard footsteps and voices and more sounds of tires on the dirt roads paved around the forest. I waited, lying on the prickly forest floor until I almost fell asleep. When I opened my eyes once more, I saw no light but the translucent sort that only the moon provides. I heard no more of the constables' engine. Still, I moved verrrrrrrry carefully and slowly; I took about thirty seconds for every centimeter I moved to lift my head up and look around. There was no car, no lantern light, nothing but trees and streams of moonlight peaking through.

I ran.

I had to stay low and dodge in between tree trunks and keep an eye out for any more of the constabulary, but no one was in sight. Upon reaching the edge of the forest, I crossed over a small creek and onto another path which led back to the main road upon which I walked looking for the tengu.

I figured after disappearing, he would go back to the place where we had met earlier, but he wasn't there. I went back home to change my clothes into something completely different from what I was wearing so that, if caught by the constabulary, I would not be recognized.

I walked back to our original meeting place by the lake, and even walked quite close to the forest's edge to see if he was waiting there for me; I walked around singing "Jingle Bells" so that he would recognize my voice. But he never showed himself.

However, as I was walking back to my house once again, I heard a car engine behind me. I didn't dare turn around to see who it was because whoever was driving was doing it way too slowly to be up to any good. When the car passed me, I recognized it as the constabulary's car. I grew nervous, but kept walking at the same pace I had been keeping, and continued in song (under my breath) until they turned onto another road--the very road I took out of the forest--no doubt to continue looking for trespassers.

That was close, I thought to myself. And then, Oh, my aching back!

I haven't seen my tengu friend since last night. I do hope to find him again soon...