Samsara

     On Wednesday I leave work for my appointment as usual. The bus is full, though there are no colorful ex co-workers or anyone else of note. I roll up to the desk but before I reach the cute older woman’s spot, the woman next to her calls me over. I used to get her all the time; she is the only one here who still reads off a bewilderingly long list of COVID-related questions, and she always reads them carefully from the screen, looking a little confused, as if it’s her first time. I miss the big Black woman who worked here for a time. “I gotchoo, McCollum!”   

    I give her my birth date and name and she asks me to spell it and I spell it and she asks for my birth date and I give that to her and she asks me to spell my name again. I speak slowly and enunciate each letter clearly, as if I’m talking to a slow child.

    “What are you here for?” she asks. I say wound care.  “You’re not scheduled for anything,” she says. I tell her I come here every Wednesday at this time. She shakes her head. I ask if she can call upstairs and she says no. 

    “So I need to call myself? Even though I’m standing right here, and you have the number right there?” She says that’s right. 

    For years I tried to develop a daily meditation practice, but I always lacked the discipline. Earlier this summer, a coworker forwarded me a free trial of a wakefulness app. I always hate these things, but for some reason I instantly loved this one. For the first time, I am able to focus enough to sit and try to hone my awareness every day. I feel it affecting my moods throughout the day. I’ve noticed myself feeling more patient and slower to anger, and when I do get frustrated, I don’t cling to it the way I used to. I think it’s really helping me.

     “Thanks for all your fucking help,” I snarl, and wheel over to the side of the lobby to look up my chart. I can’t remember my password, so I give up and look up the wound care number.

    “Wound care,” says the receptionist. I’ve only called a few times and she always answers like this; no hello, no name, no “may I help you.” I take a deep breath and tell her who I am and that I’m here for my appointment. 

“    They’re in a meeting today, they canceled all their afternoon appointments. Didn’t anyone tell you?”

    I race to catch my bus and see it pull away just as I’m cresting the hill. I’m caked in sweat and I smell disgusting. Every day they say this heat wave is going to break and every day they’re wrong. It’s bad enough that I’ve wasted two hours of my precious sick time, bad enough that I’ve run across town in the blazing heat for nothing, but after all this I didn’t even get an interesting story out of it. Maybe some crazy person will shoot me on the bus, but more likely they’ll just shit their pants.

    I sit in the paltry shade of the bus shelter and try to pay attention to my ragged breath and racing thoughts and roiling emotions, try to do like the guide on the awareness app instructs and look try to see the one who is paying attention, and even though the point of the exercise is that when you look, you find that no one is really there, I find that there actually is, and he’s a vicious little bastard, screaming his grievances at the world. And I fear that no amount of mindfulness will ever shut him up.