that' s always been my problem. racing ahead to avoid falling behind. alas, the poor turtle is back there, panting for breath, while the hare zooms ahead to the frying pan.
to translate: my heart suddenly fluttering and fibrillating. what a drag. i'm all set to have a tendon sliced in my right hand so the middle finger can move freely again. one small problem, i have to have an ekg to measure my heart rhythms, necessary cause they have to completely knock me out and put a tourniquet on my arm, stopping the blood flow. the electrical chart discovers problem. no operation till i see a cardiologist.
a month, i have to wait a month? blood could pool, clots form, and my brain go into underdrive. quickly, i'm able to consult a second opinion. alas, the doctor comes up with the same conclusion. she tells me 'not to panic'. that's going to be a wicked fight. hanged tomorrow, what a judgment!
now it's a matter of calming down, or speeding up. have i done everything i wanted to do? three weeks in australia livened me up. true, at first i hated traveling. the first night i slept in a chinese airport, one of those hotel tubes. okay, i thought, this is an adventure. finally in sydney, the first night in a youth hostel next to the train station awful. what was i doing giving up my comfortable bed? why that guy in the bunk above me shaking? you can imagine what i did.
after a better night at bondi beach, thousands of people on the cliffs, awaiting the rise of a supermoon, i felt more comfortable. in general i could understand the language, though fast-taking kids might as well be speaking chinese. very dramatic evening. alas, clouds hid the moon till it rose high in the sky. ah, a bit of japanese m00n-viewing.
i took the train canberra. the lady next to me, a grey-haired grandmother, fascinating. she'd taken care of her kids' kids while the parent were in india, on her way to visit a new grandchild. she had to get back quick for church work, for voluteering with the demented. i felt like a black swan who'd never done anything for anybody. an inspiring person.
downtown in the australian capitol i began getting my feet on the ground, falling in love with its museums. true, the whole town new and many designed with buildings resembling a shopping mall. that said, i gained an over-view of australian history and art. one bookstore owner, originally from denmark, told me the NRA originally did not want everybody to have guns and then THE BLACK PANTHERS got them. and of course, all hell has broken since.
off to the blue mountains, only a couple of hours by train from sydney. gorgeous place, fantastic youth hostel. stayed a week and watched all kinds of groups come and go, a hot spot for chinese tourists, busload after busload. i loved the town, katoomba, and ache to go back. i've pictured the whole trip here: http://www.pbase.com/wwp/aus true, a lot of the pictures boring in themselves, but if you watch it as a slide-show and let it flow past.
okay, i did chicken out and skipped melbourne and the coral reefs, grabbed a plane back sooner than i had to. i had a couple of panic attacks, my heart jumping out of my chest. maybe that's where the trouble all started. and when i got back, everything seemed to go out of whack. i'd walked six hours a day with no problem. in Berkley my hands, right knee, and left foot crippled up.
fortuitously, perhaps, i cancelled a trip to Paris and lost big (for me) money. evidently i need to know about the heart bit. guess i'll chew my nails for awhile
and ask myself: have you done everything you wanted to do? actually, i have no regrets and enjoy classes in the history of photography and the cinema of the cohen brothers. if only the political scene were different! maybe i won't survive to see the mess.
