Ten-Finger Exercises

slogging through the blogs

I'm re-writing my blog
To take out the fog
And hiding it back on the shelf
Where no one will go,
And so no one will know
That I'm not very sure of myself.

Have you ever been truly lost in a fog? I have twice, but neither time for long.

The first time was at in familiar surroundings. I had been called to the hospital for a man who was dying very suddently and violently from meningitis. It was nearly 3 a.m. when I was ready to leave, and the fog had descended. By the time I was a block away, I could no longer see what street I was on. I pulled up †o a street sign which I could barely read, parked and stayed there till the fog let up.

The second time I was on the highway, also at night coming home from a call to the hospital. In one spot I could only see the fog line at the edge of the road, and so I followed it. Soon I saw the sulpher lights that surround the penitentiary making their eerie orange glow in the fog, and I knew I'd gotten off the highway. Slowly retracing my route, I saw that the fog line had led me astray, but it led me back to the highway safely and then on home.

Figuratively, the way to progress safely through the fog is to know where you're headed, but I think it's equally easy to follow the wrong signs there.

***I've been hunting for a quotation from Alice and Wonderland that I can't find. Something about: if you don't know where you're going, it really doesn't matter which way you take to get there.