Robert Beck, May 2014
Robert Beck maintains the Gallery of Robert Beck at 204 No. Union St., Lambertville, NJ
www.robertbeck.net (215) 982-0074
My Own Medicine
There are a lot of things I do often, and many that I do every day, but none of my routines are so exactly the same as when I go to bed. It starts when I open the mirror-backed medicine cabinet to grab the toothpaste and see a bald guy with bad eyes peering from behind the bottles, boxes and tubes. He’s there watching me every night. Not quite a lion in the Serengeti. More like a middle-age man in the weeds.
It is the one time that I really look at myself, or at least that part of myself. The blue eyes still clear and focused, with long lashes and dark, reddish lids, observing intently through the pharmacopeia.
The top shelf of the cabinet holds a cluster of eye-drop bottles with colored tops—souvenirs from five eye operations. I know I’m not supposed to keep old prescriptions around and I can’t think of any situation where I would actually have use for them but there is symmetry to looking at something that reminds me how fortunate I am to see anything at all. That puts me in a good frame of mind.
Other shelves hold an entourage of pill bottles that has grown in number over the years, but those don’t have the eye-drops’ symbolism. There is also a loving note from my wife suggesting I should wash the dog.
Since most of my meds are taken earlier in the day my prep for bed is pretty simple: brush my teeth and put drops in my eyes. Other drops. I’m proud of having discovered a better way to do that rather than looking up at the ceiling and squirting the medication onto my eyelashes or cheeks. I tilt my head to the side, ear to shoulder, and drop it in the side of my eye. Since I can watch myself do it in the mirror I score direct hits every time and each refill lasts three times longer. Try it.
Once I turn off the bathroom light I wonder if I left the shower door open so I turn the light back on long enough to look. The door is a sturdy sheet of glass that swings out into the flight path of a person in a hurry, and there have been some ugly moments. Always good to check.
Then I negotiate the bedroom in the dark. I give wide berth to Jack’s soft crate since he is in the habit of sleeping with his neck and head spilling out on the floor. I cross to where I can see the light from the alarm clock reflecting off the side of the bench at the foot of the bed and then plot a new course to avoid running into that. The bed sits in a clipped corner of the room and extends in toward the middle. Good feng shui. There is no headboard, just tall windows that face out into the woods. If there is a moon I’ll pause to gaze out at the fingers of silver-blue light stretching along the slope, between the trees. Then to bed.
The act of turning in is as different from getting up as ends are to beginnings. In the morning I’m always focused on what I’m going to do with my day, most often with a happy anticipation. It’s always new. Night is a closing down—a gentle slide into an alternative reality. One that’s not so gentle when I get there.
I always have bad dreams. I’m being pursued. I’m late. I’ve lost something. I’m naked in public. I’m naked on the toilet in public. Sometimes I wake up in a sweat, or I yelp in my sleep. It’s a drag. I have a theory about this.
I’m a person who is always weighing alternatives and consequences. I look when I cross the street because a car might be coming. I pat my pockets before I leave because I might have forgotten my keys. I try to avoid having bad things happen by projecting imagined bad scenarios. But in my dreams, which are entirely imagined, there is no filter—everything I think is what comes next. When I get to the part where I consider consequences, they happen. All those worst cases I’ve avoided during the day are waiting for me to fall into their nocturnal clutches.
I know, this doesn’t explain the toilet thing. That’s a little deeper. I think it has something to do with that guy in my medicine cabinet.