A (Scheduled) Visit to the Hospital

As the final installment of a complete mid-life physical, I went to the hospital this morning for a routine medical procedure that shall remain nameless. It's enough to say that after 36 or-so hours of fasting and after drinking a peculiarly obnoxious concoction (twice) it's good to be out of the bathroom and eating food again. Everything is fine and, but for my eyes, I'm good for another 50,000 miles.

The sedatives I was given (Demerol and something else, I forget what) left me with a sweet, stupid, happy glow.

I've been reading The Great Enigma: New Collected Poems (New Directions, 2006) by the Swedish poet Tomas Transtromer. The translation is by Robin Fulton and it's a good one, or seems to be––I don't know Swedish so my basis for judging the quality of the translation is the simple fact that I like the poems as rendered in English. Anyway, here are a couple nice lines from the poem "Allegro":

I play Haydn after a black day
and feel a simple warmth in my hands.

Note: Yes, I know that Transtromer's last name has an umlaut over the "o", and I know my computer can make that umlaut appear onscreen, but (i) I don't know how to make that happen and (ii) I am too sweet, stupid and happy right now to figure it out.