Rivaroxaban

 

April 2 Word of the Day: Rivaroxaban

 this is the delicate balancing act the go-slow streaming service my body ingests after breakfast the tiny orange dot in the base of a japanese teacup a dot called rivaroxaban

 riveting riviera realistically rivaroxaban

 my haematologist I have one of those too held significantly airily eccentrically the forms where I ticked all the boxes my body that is ticked and yes I pass with colours, presumably the flush in my cheek, and he will see me again at ninety he said if I need to go off at that stage rivaroxaban

 the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog in command of all the letters for quite a time yet rivaroxaban

 appointments flowed easily major concerns were lowkey and operable I circulated without fuss from pillar to post popped the letter in the letterbox friends never asked anxiously and days passed without event in the days before rivaroxaban

 revealing revelling rivulets oh thankyou rivaroxaban

 let me repeat let me repeat my repute is a request to repeat and repeat what the doctor ordered for my own good and my pharmacist repeats matter-of-factly her eye keeping to the script rivaroxaban

 aches and pains lead to tests and diagnoses like everyone else our mortal flesh leads us to specialist referreds and dead certs pills and potions with top of the list once a day with food a sip of water rivaroxaban

 crossing the rubicon righto rivaroxaban

 imagine there’s no heaven it’s not easy if you try it’s a waste of time like thinking above us is only sky imagine a world without rivaroxaban

 thank god for small mercies cereal friendship without terms conversation in the kitchen lively and light a glass of fresh water breakfast and habit becoming habitual quick rivaroxaban

Cosy

 

April 1 Word of the Day: Cosy

 Reading the letters of Oliver Sacks, recently published in paperback. His friendship with Wystan Auden tracked via the index. Arriving at this signoff to a two-page letter dated New York, 31 March 1973, the year of Auden’s death. Sacks recalls Auden’s ultimate departure from America the year before: “I remember at the airport, on that painful Saturday, when a stranger came up and greeted you, I asked you whether you thought of the world as being a large or a small place; and you replied, “Neither. A cosy place.” So – the world being a cosy place – I am sure I will see you in England, Austria or New York within the next few months.”

 Knowing full well the abstract meanings behind a large place (immense, unmanageable, impossibly complex) and a small place (inhibited, claustrophobic, a dot in the universe), Auden instead personalises the world, affirms our experience of our world, accepts already that it is larger and smaller than anything in our experience, but that it is at the least and importantly, cosy.

 Sacks has memorised the word. It deserves our attention too, as used in their exchange, for surely Auden means cosy in all of its meanings. The world is comfortable. The world is pleasant. The world is snug. The world is a homely home. The world is sheltered. He also knows the opposites of all these adjectives.

 Readers of Auden’s biographies are familiar with his messy, even chaotic living arrangements – whether on socially sunny Ischia, regulation rundown New York, or ungarbling gemütlich Kirchstetten. This was always Auden at home and cosy. Humanity moved through the rooms and humanity’s need for belonging kept being copied by hand onto paper. It’s what we have, so make the most of it.

 His writing too, constantly sharing itself with a not always understanding world, moved towards someone who connects and somewhere that is cosy. Which is to say, where readers are at home, can recognise the place as their own, despite everything. This is done in full awareness of places that are not cosy. Sacks believes, in this worldview, that he and Auden will meet again in this world, soon. Instead, he is left with Auden’s message of faith, hope, and love.     

 

Seawall

 Seawall

Not of sufficient significance to have a name 

I am a seawall. The only way to see me is by looking up. My age is young but I am made of ancient stones that surrounded me. Their tawny or dark-grey colours have rested here for eons. Many are riddled with honeycomb bowls or slope smooth and black, even darker when saltwater washes over their surfaces daily. Returned diggers and laconic stoneworkers chipped the thin rectangles for placement. Their balancing act keeps the earth in place. The men had only bush, sea, and sky, while today I have softened into the landscape, their work done. Because I hold aloft the Great Ocean Road. Traffic is invisible from the rockpools. Surge rushes into the troughs with abrupt thunder, withdrawing only slowly as water particles dry on skin. And the nearby relay of closing waves on beach and reef is a gentle rhythm to the ear. Louder than the unseen traffic above, the random exhaust or macho shift of motorbike gears, occasional note of something else going on. Fine grains of mortar may be washed by the night tide or daytime’s finger grip of rockhoppers traversing to and from Separation Creek. New filler has been slapped into crevices here and there where crumble turned to gap. I am solid and resolute. Without me the Road would not exist. Erosion and hardest bracken would make the coast impassable. Forests of eucalypt would fall into the sea. I am the quietest outcome of engineering, no two blocks the same, with a steady blank look. I am warmest in the mornings when sun rises across the strait. Cockatoos make themselves known. A container on the horizon is an object lesson. White blond driftwood tangles with kelp bubbles and tree fern corpses submitted lately by the sea for someone’s consideration. Come midday my purpose stands in high relief. Chatting adults and fossicking kids step from boulder to boulder away from the spray. Their careful stepping in contrast to the rushing surge of water through the corridors of stone, each safe footing an assurance of confidence. Once every so often lately teenagers spraypaint the base with their cool logos. Their artwork sings of happy stealth, but does not outlast the roadsigns high above us, out of sight, on edge. Artwork that will fade to a fad. I am smooth, relatively speaking. I will outlast the afternoon. After the rockhoppers are home again, with their seashell and knotty stick. I shall stare into night as I have all my life, before the Southern Cross rising lopsided from the depths. The cold sets in and a whale passes by. Very rarely a seal still lumbers alive up the stones, for safety or bearings. Wallows in a pool spilling down to another pool, and so on, unfailing into the swirl and surge again. I keep separate the earth from the sea. My back holds the ground and my face is the closest reach of water’s tempestuous edge. Echidnas have nestled against my insider protection, burrowed at a moment’s notice. I imitate the cliffs that shadow the Road and determine its snaking. Through winter I am a forgotten fortress, when in spring storms cannot dislodge a single rectangle. Lately the Road services net the falling heights nearby, plunging silver bolts to hold geography in place. Bushfire wipes out grip, root systems have tentative starts. But I have a firm stand. Grass cannot find a niche nor acacia seed a gap to crack open. March is an interesting time. I rest from the long heat. Gannets pass by unexpectedly. And a few humans each day, to remind the world in particular of humanity. Waves against the reef reach stupendous heights and rain arrives in impressive black clouds.