After taking the elevator up to the 5th floor of an aging office building in Quincy, MA, we stared through the glass door at what appeared to be a circle of women (faces over-tanned 25 years ago) playing tiny tambourines with reflex hammers. Behind them a boy of 16 or 17 with beautiful dreadlocks and perhaps a developmental disorder darted and yelped and occasionally played hand games with his caretaker at a small table.
We experienced the rare joy of the fully uninitiated. The foreigner. The child. The first-time church-goer. The new reader.
Which door should we enter? Where would we pay? Should we consult someone at the desk? Should we try to look serious choosing pamphlets and reading literature? Should we hang our coats and take M&M's? Should we greet people or respect their prayerfulness?
We sat in the back row ... and the baby, who was waking up from his nap, started to play with a telephone outlet near the seat. I left off reading about the Chi. (I have, in my life, began to read about the Chi hundreds of times and always faded out 5 lines in ...) I thought about the end of wired communications. My friend suggested that landlines might make a comeback, but I countered that they would likely stop being connected to telephones through wires. I imagined that the child would grow up to see telephone "jacks" as a mysterious antique, and then I remembered opening them up ... for a summer job in high school. Sheathing the colored wires with dikes and wondering why it mattered which tiny screw they were wound to.
We take networks on faith like terminals and interstates...
...Speaking of webs and rhizomes, the first patient and many others claimed to suffer from sarcoma.
The "doctor" asked questions. First time here? Feel better? Any news? Ah, what radiologist say? And he called out numbers on a map from the pamphlets. Letters and numbers from a grid. C23, Z7. Behind him a chorus of smiles pulled out taut yellow plastic dolls in the shape of Vituvian Men and hit them rhythmically with their mallets.
The doctor made a joke. You feel better, like my patient who got cleared up, he went home and have Budweiser. Laughter. This was the go-to punchline. At least 10 times, twice substituted with Heineken. I thought of a windmill powering a levee in Amersterdam. The doctor asked how the patient was and she said
Warm.
Yes, your face all red.
I guess her tissues were better.
A woman came to sit by me. She had a Spanish accent for sure but she looked very Eastern European. Romanian? She was the prettiest in the room and the most distressed. She was also the only one besides me and my friend who paid any attention to the baby, who definitely was red with heat. I realized the heat was turned up. I took off my sweater.
When he got to my friend, she searched her brain for something to say and explained that she was already warm, thanks, but that her baby doesn't sleep well and has mouth pain from teething. "Head fire," said the doctor, B17.
Thump thump thump thump thump thump.
I could only come up with stress, anxiety, and constipation. The first 2 should be true but aren't. The last was. I hadn't pooped since Philly. The doctor asked if I came in a car.
At home I had pad thai with a beautiful pair of artisan chopsticks that my friends bought in Hong Kong. And I saw the Phillies win the NLCS and I had my first cigarette in days and I went to the bathroom to check my hairline and I pooped.
1 comment:
In this entry, you surprised me by using the word "dike," failed to mention that your pooping might have been helped by the cigarette you smoked, and used "began" instead of "begun" as a past participle. You did not provide a crucial piece of information: did you learn more than five lines worth of chi this time around? (As my "brother in law" once said to his chiphile step-sister: "if you want people to take it seriously, you might want to name it something else than "chi"")
Keep up the entries, my friend.
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