Grey Is a Smell llemS a sI yreG
On the pain of others,
It’s 2:37 AM. The air is incredibly thick. Smell of piss everywhere. As I am trying to read the Dark Pool Party for the third time, Julia Roberts walks in pulling a cart. She asks my grandmother if she is feeling any pain. As I am translating the back and forth conversation between them, I get distracted by her hair clip. It glows in the dark. It is a stupid purple butterfly.
What is she doing? Mama Mia asks. I don’t know Mama, you should go to sleep. Others need the same privacy you ask for, I say, while thinking whether if I have a text from Boney M. or not. I check my phone, so many emails to read and to respond to.
Alicia Key, the neighbour lady who had a pelvis surgery keeps adjusting her bed. It is loud and annoying but whatever. I need to focus. Julia Roberts is harsh. Her way of moving in the space is aggressive, loud and serious. “Sometimes these things have the mind of their own” the white nurse tells Julia Roberts. She must have asked her to come and help her with something. Can’t see behind the curtain but I know for a fact that the person who just spoke is white. Julia Roberts is black, I saw her. She speaks a million years of blackness and the patient speaks no word of English. She is not white. Her way of expressing pain is not white.
Piss, cough, moaning, bells, announcements, lights on, light off. Shifts change. Vomitting, I thought vomiting has two Ts. I tend to repeat the letters that come before the “ing”. Julia Roberts out, Mikky Blanco in. Sniffing, farting, rolling, giggling, pissing, shushing. Lights on, lights off. Mikky Blanco in, Mikky Blanco out.
Back to reading Black: The character steals my thoughts, or I donate my thoughts to the character because what else am I going to do with them I don’t wear dresses I don’t wear baseball caps I don’t wear skin I don’t wear history.
I sanitize my hands once again. The dirty sick hands of the grey people who sat on these chairs before me touched these handles with no care to what comes after them. If someone died on this wheelchair I am sitting on, their bodies perhaps left invisible marks that say: It was a fucking pleasure. Peace.
My entire existence is irritated. Irritation is all over the history. All over this sick smelly place. The air is incredibly thick. My keyboard is starting to get louder and louder. I almost hear it echo back to the end of the hallway. My keyboard! what an irresponsible sentence. Passive as hell!
Last week, I met Sarah Rose Black. She is a witch. It must be the name. Imagine going to work knowing you are going to be watching a stranger die. Not only to watch, but to change the experience for them. Not for once, twice or even a few times, but for as long as you can hold. She is a music therapist.
Sarah-Rose Black, I keep thinking about what you do. How intense yet beautiful it is. Since last week that I have met you, I spoke about your talk and you as entangled as you can imagine, in every lecture, every class, with friends and my loved ones.
The night I saw your work was exactly eight days before my seventy-eight-year-old grandmother’s knee surgery. Having been excited about your work, I arrived home and immediately started explaining your work to her. Her tears started to run over her cheeks, and I realized that her connection to what I was saying had a different texture and intensity than mine. I started thinking about those who are called “a patient”. What is it like for them to be a patient?
pa·tient
/ˈpāSHənt/
adjective
1.
able to accept or tolerate delays, problems, or suffering without becoming annoyed or anxious.
"be patient, your time will come"
synonyms:
forbearing, uncomplaining, tolerant, resigned, stoical; More
noun
1.
a person receiving or registered to receive medical treatment.
synonyms:
sick person, case; More
2.
LINGUISTICS
the semantic role of a noun phrase denoting something that is affected or acted upon by the action of a verb.