Misfortunes of Imaginary Beings: 12/29/08

A blog formerly known as Bookishness / By Charles Matthews

"Dazzled by so many and such marvelous inventions, the people of Macondo ... became indignant over the living images that the prosperous merchant Bruno Crespi projected in the theater with the lion-head ticket windows, for a character who had died and was buried in one film and for whose misfortune tears had been shed would reappear alive and transformed into an Arab in the next one. The audience, who had paid two cents apiece to share the difficulties of the actors, would not tolerate that outlandish fraud and they broke up the seats. The mayor, at the urging of Bruno Crespi, explained in a proclamation that the cinema was a machine of illusions that did not merit the emotional outbursts of the audience. With that discouraging explanation many ... decided not to return to the movies, considering that they already had too many troubles of their own to weep over the acted-out misfortunes of imaginary beings."
--Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

Monday, December 29, 2008

That's a Load off My Mind

I saw Dr. B this morning, and the lesion has shrunk by half! Even he was surprised at the improvement. He wants me to continue the IV therapy and the pills, but for the first time he seemed almost ... happy. (He's not a very demonstrative type.)

My sight, I know, has improved slightly. Now it's almost like there's less of a blind spot than a sort of wrinkle in what my left eye sees. I told my daughter, as she was driving me back from the appointment, that I'm almost ready to try driving -- around the block. Neighbors beware!

Oh, and I got a haircut, my first in maybe five or six months. I had it shorn back to the No. 2 buzz cut that I had before. The only fault is that it makes the hole in my head -- a depression in the scalp about the size of a dime -- more visible. But he jests at scars who never felt a wound, right?