There's a call for you...

This place isn't la-la land but it unquestionably has the ingredients of a fanciful fairy tale. Getting a telephone call late in the afternoon from your former physician tends to knock things back into perspective in short order. The call  - jarring me while bubbling in the volcanic, churning hot tub - was from the office of the chap who installed my pacemaker about a year ago after my heart stopped. The good news is that it wasn't a medical call. Instead it related to the failure of my insurers to respond to his latest emission. This alone would not have been conclusive evaporation of my sunshine glow.  What bothered me was that it reignited recollection of similar confusion and bureaucratic delays I have repeatedly endured from the insurers and which I had been informed were concluded. Apparently they are not.

It achieves nothing to dwell painfully upon the bumbledom except to confess its inordinate and patent disturbance.  One needn't be reminded of the realities of life when one has a carcass such as my own. Indeed I have expended a good deal of my capital in an attempt to forego violations of idealism.  Being dragged back down into the proverbial is not what I had accounted for. Even lapsing into the vernacular with the minions who authored the annoyance is no answer.  Rather than abuse them for their deficiency I have adopted instead the twitch of Inspector Clouseau's boss, Chief Inspector Dreyfus.

The object is to recover one's composure. Associated with the inutility of condemnation is the hard-won advantage of rising above a challenge. All that philosophical codswallop about ignoring the past and living for the present does however require a degree of constancy. I much preferred to revisit the very agreeable 18-mile bicycle ride this morning and the glittering sea afterwards. The ride was remarkably pleasant compared to yesterday when my energy was utterly depleted for some reason.  Today I was occupied with some foolish thoughts over the length of the entire distance, the perfect distraction which effectively sped the time along. Whether it is the punch of the late afternoon telephone call - or just my declining memory - I can't for the life of me recall what I was thinking about this morning or what could possibly have been so engrossing. Oh, I remember!  It was my "international debut" on stage tomorrow...when I am scheduled to play the piano in the lobby as part of the "Grand Opening" of the new social room. I was rehearsing my songs, singing them to myself, attempting to imagine what notes I would play and how I might improve the performance.  Really, a completely useless undertaking since I can never accurately repeat what notes I play, it's all by ear.  I barely know the difference between an arpeggio and a Dominant Seventh. But as I say it consumed me for the better part of 18 miles. I really think I was feeling more energetic today as well. Or maybe it was the Tylenol I took before my ride, that uplifting disguise of the humanity of pain.