Catch Jim Reed’s Red Clay Diary podcast:  https://youtu.be/9AZCoJYdGUg

or read his transcript below: 

ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE RAGING IMAGINATION

Wild imaginings jotted down this very morning in my Deep South Red Clay Diary

Being incarcerated by a pandemic makes my brain rattle about at warp speed.

Every small happening assumes gigantic stature.

Maybe because the small happenings are all we have some days.

Exactly what day is it, anyhow?

For instance…

It’s a quarter to three, there’s no-one in the dental clinic parking lot but just me and me.

I’m waiting for an hour and fifteen minutes to see a dentist who may or may not spend another hour and a half doing things to me in a dental chair, things for which he will be reimbursed.

Not used to lingering, I do just about anything to avoid situations in which I must float helpless at the whim of strangers.

This means that little ol’ spoiled entitled me is whining while there are people lined up worldwide waiting for hours, days, weeks, simply hoping for food or medical care or escape…people who are on hold for 2 1/2 days on the phone attempting to complete a form for funds they will possibly never receive.

I fidget while the world is aflame. I feel guilty for fretting.

At times like this I search for solace by staring intensely at normally unstareable things.

I sit here in my automobile in the clinic parking lot, motor running, AC on, cold cola at hand, clumsily dealing with my fear of doctors, ranting to myself about how good life will be when I can get back to living it.

Is this pandemic or neurosis? Maybe both.

I focus straight ahead at the building before me. Venetian blinds–which are closed, of course–cover large windows originally made to allow view and sunshine to enter, allow those trapped indoors to see what the outside world is up to. But windows are immediately turned into blank walls by shades and blinds and curtains, causing me to wonder why windows exist at all.

My pandemic mind continues its race against slow mo’ time.

I see from this side of the windshield the red bricks on each side of the blinded window, arranged here and there in what somebody thought was a pleasant design.

In front of the brick view is a rather scraggly tree, poorly cropped, with saggy little blossoms and ratty leaves, pleading for attention and care. Most of us, the spaced-apart, are also pleading.

A dental assistant wanders about the parking lot, searching for me, the next victim, er, patient. I snap back to the present as she approaches the car, allow my touchless temperature to be taken, dutifully follow her into the cool and somber clinic. Soon I am dealing with a more immediate reality–the reality of science poking about in my mouth.

Nothing like the immediate gloved touch and metallic meanderings of a stranger to bring me up to the moment. I am distracted from these self-centered concerns by conversation and diagnosis and eventual release back into the rotating world of activity. I pay the smiling desk piper, escape to my car, get the heck out of dental world, and look forward to the routines of the socially-distanced day.

What was I so worried about, anyhow?

The post-dental city awaits my invisible presence. My pandemic brain continues to rant and wander

 © Jim Reed 2020 A.D.