“Discreet Music” is the name of a Brian Eno album from 1975 and also a new blog series I’m running through January, prompted by a journal-writing theme I started in Germany over the holidays. It’s inspired by the David Sedaris book I’m reading that chronicles his journal entries from the late ’70s onward.

The photographs are taken from our flight from Germany over the north pole, late December.

I hadn’t seen my doctor in six years. I’d seen other doctors, but not this one. When he finally came in, he had a mohawk on. Then I noticed he was wearing Crocs (rubber clogs) with no socks, and I thought for a moment he sounded gay. Maybe things had changed, I don’t know, I didn’t care.

I remarked on his hair and he said he was trying to look young (and it worked). And we talked about cholesterol and lipids and he asked me to take my shirt off and then he asked if I was worried about any moles, and I said no. I really just wanted to get out of there. The last doctor gave me a stern talk about my drinking and I’d been honest on the questionnaire this time but this doctor didn’t seem to look at that or care and that felt legitimate, somehow. I got my blood drawn and looked sideways at the cartoons in the cubicle and then drove to the recreational cannabis shop nearby and bought a package of cannabinoid oil in honey capsules with colorful packaging and lots of warning statements. And then I cooked chicken cacciatore and ran a bath while Dawn took the kids to dance. And I got reminded of some dreams I had, waking up with that webby feeling of them on me still, sitting in our den in the morning in the dark contemplating things, re-entering the atmosphere, touching down. I’d told the nurse I was feeling a sense of breathlessness and she corrected me, shortness of breath. Maybe it’s just getting older, I said. I used to climb mountains and stuff, I said. And when they weighed me I was heavier than I thought I was and when they measured me, shorter.

Categories: Humor, Memoir

Tags: creative nonfiction, Discreet Music, humor, journal writing, Memoir, mid-life crisis, pacific northwest, postaday, William Pearse writer