NEXT!

It’s just after 8 in the morning when I arrive, yet the door is already open.

Outside a chair stands under the fig tree and opposite the honeysuckle, which is both in bloom and still perfumed; the early morning sun has not yet dulled the sweet odour.

Chickens across the lane crow, the birds sing and a pigeon offers a baritone voice.

I’m at my doctor’s, of him there is no sign though clearly he has been here; the radio in the waiting room softly mummers if you choose to listen and I am sure this chair was not here at midnight.

On the wall of the waiting room new meditations have been posted since the last time I came. Written as they are in a doctor’s hand the words are sometimes difficult for me to read, and the language is not my own.

I translate one – “you are neither as bad as other people think you are nor as good as you think you are yourself. Sometimes the reverse is true.”

As I write this the sun finally moves from behind the neighbours cherry tree and I feel the heat burning the skin of my neck, the neighbour has climbed to his roof and is moving tiles so I decide it’s time to move into the softness of the waiting room.

The pigeon says goodbye.

A dog, far off, barks.

I hear the sounds of a bird’s wing.

Two flies circle lazily in the centre of the waiting room, the radio emits the notes of a recorded piano, a single lamp is lit in one corner and the sunlight from outside crosses the first tiles of the entrance.

A dog wanders past outside.

The house above, where I expect to lie pierced by acupuncture needles is quiet, I hear no footsteps, no whispers of consultation, the sofa in the corner – itself in need of consultation – is empty; I am alone.   

        

I read a quote from Nietzsche, scribed in strong black ink onto a clean white card and pinned to the fading cream wallpaper.

There is one word I cannot understand – “Don’t …… the meaning of life, it reduces existence to a simple accident.”

Something like that, I could look it up later.

I look at my watch, five minutes have passed past my appointment time; I wait for the sound of sandals on the gravel path.

As I write that, I hear them.

My doctor has arrived; he is carrying a notebook, a plastic bag and a bunch of wild flowers.

I rise, I say –“Thank you, it wasn’t necessary “, and pretend to take the flowers.

He laughs, we kiss and his phone rings from inside his office.

He unlocks the door and disappears.

He will return without the flowers, I think.

And invite me in.