dees decay and dees decay

9.12.14

I was returning from Maha market yesterday evening, ten minutes from my flat when lightening flashed in the east and then the wind picked up ferociously the sand and my head was down, eyes pinched open enough to see trash and dirt flying up.  Inside circular fans in the bathrooms and kitchen madly whirled, a sandstorm and strikes in the sky but no rain and thunder.  This morning I swept up the sand collected under the sliding window door, a fine layer on the coffee table, a film on the tv screen.  I’m always concerned about my eyes, the implanted staples in my corneas irritated and I can’t rub them hard, a punch, a large object hitting them would be a serious matter.  The doctor who put them in nine years ago is in Dubai, at least I think she is still there, and as far as I know, is the only one who does the intacs around here and she’d be getting a visit from me and how long would it take to reach her office, five hours, I should carry her number.

I am glad my colleague didn’t go to Muscat after we left school. I know I shouldn’t drink beer when I am on antibiotics and if I had gone well I would have ignored the sensible and had two or three pints.  I haven’t had a drink in two weeks back in the flat land of beer-free Oman. The pharmacy gave me Diclofenac Pottasium for pain relief and ibuprofen works better than these, nevertheless my stomach continues to trouble me and I’m not sure why.  I can usually trace discomfort back to food but if the food is the same I’ve been eating for a year I wonder what else is going on. 

Friday morning without a car in this city with temps already at a 100 by ten the routine is set; headline news, breakfast, a load of darks and settling in with a book until it’s time to eat lunch, then it’s back to the book until four or five and a surf through my seven channels until it’s seven and then a 15 minute walk to the Safeer market that carries Al-Ain mango yogurt and boxes of 2% milk and on the way back I stop and buy three schwarmas for 900 baisa.  Today though I will stop at the barber and get the one rial haircut and where I usually give the Bangladeshi a one rial tip.  This is not an exciting life.

9.13.14

I hope the dentist can pull this darn tooth then and there and I can return to the grotto and suffer in silence. 

I did not sleep good last night, indigestion at 3am which I predicted before I looked at my mobile and most annoying, the air conditioner on the third floor above my bedroom air conditioner drips onto the metal surface and I need ear plugs because wrapping a pillow around my head only muffles.  I am always thinking about what my ex would do if she were here.  She’d complain on and on.  It would take a huge ladder to reach my air conditioner outside and place a piece of foam on top of it, something to absorb the loud and constantly shrieking metallic pings.  Of course I see the ex confronting Fazoni, the Iranian teacher who resides above me, and telling her to keep the air conditioner off at night, a most absurd but expected request. 

I don’t know if this a temporary thing but cigarettes are leaving me sick.  I guess it’s good, right?  I’ll quit if it continues and then I’ll have no vice.  Nothing to alter my way of thinking, God forbid straight thinking is a bore.  Perhaps that is what I’d need to put together something, photos, writing, for a daring and completely surprising move to publication. 

I have been reading two stories and editing is the most demanding.  When I come across something I am unsure of, to delete it questions why I wrote it in the first place.  And to delete means it’s gone forever, a thought, however unsure, is forgotten. 

12.45pm

The Egyptian dentist used his halogen camera and chronicled each disaster and put the feared images on the monitor above me. “Deeses decay, the black, and dees decay between the teeth, and dees two also decay.  Dees tooth in the back right root canal and dees one root canal and behind lower front…you need remove…ok we extract dees remaining tooth” and for 67 Omani Rials including the x-ray dees wisdom tooth is gone.  Next Saturday Dr. Mohammed Abdullah Mohammad will remove the sutures and begin in each quadrant. “Four visits we finish.” 

With enough Novocain you could remove all my teeth and anything else and it wouldn’t hurt but without real painkillers this impaction surgery may hurt later on. Ibuprofen granules?  Just mix it up in a non-alcoholic malt?  I need whiskey.

In the waiting room I watched a baseball size goldfish suck up aquarium stones from the bottom and poof them elsewhere for 15 minutes.  I have no doubt incarcerated fish go crazy.  Tonight the fish will reverse his project and fill the hole.

Lord have mercy.