The Peacock 37

 I want to see the peacock again.  I have to see it.  Otherwise it is just a hallucination. Another hallucination.  I was taken off the medication last month.  They wanted to see how I would do.  For the last year they were gradually decreasing the dosage, and I have done well.  But now, I wonder if it is happening again.  Like, forgetting my name.  I was already having memory lapses.  And now, who am I?  I still don't know where the name Cosme comes from.  It's just as well, I suppose.  Father Griffin said that overwork and burnout were affecting me.  I'm sure he's right.  It was on his recommendation that I enrolled in the palliative care training program.  I had already had some contact with death and dying in my work in home care.  I learned a lot on the job.  An awful lot.

It was that palliative care conference in London ten years ago that really framed everything for me.  Father Griffin, evidently a man of means, was not shy about funding me.  And now, to meet Carol again here.  The Great Carol Barlowe-Mead.  To hear her in the fusty Victorian opulence of the Royal Albert Hall, pounding out Rachmaninov's Third Piano Concerto.  With precision, with passion, with energy, with joy, with restraint.  It is hard to square the grumpy, crusty  Englishwoman in the parlour with such virtuosic genius.  The legend is merely human.

I really don't feel like going in for dinner, or not just yet.  I really wish I had my phone with me right now.  Carl mentioned that for an hour after dinner, we can all go on our phones and laptops, but only for an hour, and all in the same room, and we are also expected to share with everyone whatever we happen to be seeing or doing.  I asked why, and he said that it's because social media is really very antisocial, and for each of us, to gain the maximum benefit from being here, then we have to all participate, we all have to enter into a communal rhythm, as he calls it.  

This is also the very spot, Carl tells us, where his father died and his body disappeared.  I would like to know what really happened.  Are we being told the truth?  But there is something about this place, especially this little clearing with the southern magnolia.  I can't put my finger on it, but I feel compelled, that I have to be here, regularly, often. And now the light is melting all the foliage into a molten exaltation of gold, platinum and silver.  A molten exultation.  God, how purple can I get?  I almost can see someone standing in the foliage, wearing something white and shining.  I must be hallucinating.  And I am actually starting to feel hungry right now...