{"id":32376,"date":"2022-08-05T12:48:01","date_gmt":"2022-08-05T12:48:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/?p=32376"},"modified":"2022-08-05T09:03:16","modified_gmt":"2022-08-05T13:03:16","slug":"vomit-cleared","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/2022\/08\/05\/vomit-cleared.html","title":{"rendered":"Vomit cleared"},"content":{"rendered":"
Yesterday, exiting the Fulton Street station, I spotted a pool of vomit on the floor next to a homeless person I regularly see sleeping on the surface next to the vomit. It reminded me of an infamous\u00a0 incident which could still fester on the shelves of my college library.<\/p>\n

I had a copy of Brahms Clarinet Sonata #2 on the floor next to my bed. I drank way too much that night and, in a very collegiate move, vomited bedside without regaining consciousness. I don’t remember it happening.<\/p>\n

When I woke it was to the unmistakable stench and squall of a chunky pool of oral excrement. It had completely buried the protective cardboard cover that miraculously kept even one drop of the bile to get onto the actual printed score.\u00a0<\/p>\n

As I cleaned up the mess I made the discovery, extracting the mighty Brahms Sonata after carefully wiping it clean. I believe I sprayed it with some kind of air freshener or maybe an aerosol deodorant. Whatever I did worked. There was no olfactory evidence whatsoever to suggest this volume had been vomited upon, and I eventually returned the book to the library with no comment.<\/p>\n

I probably had the book for a couple of months after the incident, leaving time for any lingering scents of spew to air themselves out, or so I liked to think.<\/p>\n

The incident was for the ages among my peers. I don’t remember now if my roommate or anyone else actually witnessed any of this. But no one seemed alarmed or incredulous about my tale. I may have provided evidence of a slight and unnatural curl in the protective cardboard wrapper.<\/p>\n

As with my bedside pool of vomit, which was cleared away, the mass of puke next to the homeless person’s bedside was today cleared away, with a slight stain left on the ground. The person is also gone from that spot, having been a regular there for months.<\/p>\n

…<\/p>\n

I’ve reached a state of peace with the meds I take. 1mg of Lorazapam and 60mg of Nifedipine. Not so much at peace but certain that it has changed the way I work. I don’t feel oppressed by time, as has been my norm since I first became aware of its existence. Far from feeling like there will never be enough time I now pass the hours on this job feeling like hours do not exist.\u00a0<\/p>\n

That can change very quickly. Life can shift from serenity to solitary in an instant. Today I sit on this chair, a relatively free person, free to work, free to walk away and never return, just free to share this air with others around me.<\/p>\n

Something could happen, though. I could be hustled away, for good reason or on account of mistaken identity, and stuffed into a 6×9 cell left only to the resources of mind and masturbation to maintain something resembling sanity.<\/p>\n

I could travel to a inhospitable nation unaware that Lorazapam and Nifedipine are considered illegal narcotics, punishable by mandatory solitary confinement for the rest of my natural life.<\/p>\n

I could be caught masturbating in a church, at a playground, on a bus or subway, resulting in my next status as a convicted sex offender whose penis gets lightly electrocuted and my ejaculata measured by sex offender inspectors for the rest of my life.<\/p>\n

Things can change. I’m just happy where I am at this moment, and I hope you are too.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yesterday, exiting the Fulton Street station, I spotted a pool of vomit on the floor next to a homeless person I regularly see sleeping on the surface next to the vomit. It reminded me of an infamous\u00a0 incident which could still fester on the shelves of my college library. I had a copy of Brahms […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-32376","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-text","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paumAn-8qc","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32376","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32376"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32376\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32376"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32376"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32376"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}