I went back to Durham today to finish the research program I signed up for. I only had a vague idea of what was going to happen. I knew the nurse/technician was going to insert an IV in my left arm at the elbow and take some blood for a DNA research program. They assured me it only be labeled with a number and nobody but the technician would know whose DNA it originally was. I thought that was naive of them, but shined it on because I ain't got that much of a future to ruin. They can kill me, but they can't eat me, because that's against the law.
The nurse got the IV in first try, and though it stung a little more because it was a large needle we quickly settled in for a long winter's night. Sorry, we sat there together for three hours while she was drawing blood. The two women (my doctor and her nurse) I was with on Wednesday told her all about me after I left, and so she was loaded for bear when I walked down the hall. Capricorn. I never made another decision until I left. Fine with me.
She told me about her life and how she believed in angels and how spirits helped her every day in her work. I'm listening intently. After all, she's got a huge needle in my arm and injecting me first with sugar water, and then insulin, and eventually filling 20-30 vials with my blood at specified times during those three hours to measure my reaction to the sugar water and insulin. I making myself very easy to get along with. I asked all the right questions to help her fill in the blanks, and we seemed to enjoy our brief encounter in life, and shared a brief hug before I split.
I could have been acting like a decent human being all these years, but I honestly didn't know how to just be nice and polite as much as possible. It didn't get the responses I wanted from people. I've used shock and awe to catch people off guard and get them to tell me something significant. I don't ask permission, usually, and I'm very good at it. Sometime people tell me what they need to know about themselves only after our enduring rituals that practically amount to me uttering their last rites. I literally used to dance and clap while I did this, but I never used the death rattles. They're not easy to tote around without attracting attention.
Death and the fear of it is a big deal in healing people. Shamans may use tools like hideous death masks, drums, and the aforementioned death rattles to scare the evil spirits out of their patient's bodies. This never made much sense to me until I realized that the medical profession may use chemotherapy and radiation in the same manner to scare people into getting their bodies to heal themselves. Botanists prune fruit trees to scarify them into producing their best fruit because new fruit grows on new wood.
People seem to have difficulty saying what happened to them out loud. Certain situations they are loath to speak of that they have tenaciously avoided saying aloud. Even though if they did say what they saw it would heal them of the shame they still harbor. When and if they do "tell it all, brothers and sisters, before the fall...", it's sometime told begrudgingly like a death bed confession, and sometimes when that happens, they go into a brief state of shock when they realize they've actually said what they've dreaded seeing in their imagination out loud. In a way they are dying. The person they once were is no more to be. I'm not sure why, but I seem absolutely convinced they have to say it themselves out loud, in front of God and everybody, for the transformation to take place. Admittedly, not everybody agrees with what they think I'm doing, but no matter what, I'm not doing that.
On my way home I took every exit ramp on the west side of Raleigh trying to find this restaurant I stumbled on to on my way home from my first Durham VA Hospital appointment. I ordered a turkey club sandwich, and it was delicious. Club sandwiches might be my most favorite food or was when I had more teeth. I wanted another one of those sandwiches. The only thing I remembered about where the restaurant was located, was that it was just off the Interstate when I turned right, and it was located in the first group of building on my left. I figured I'd just whip in and out of each intersection on the west side of town to see if I could find it again.
It should have been a simple process because I didn't have to drive along the intersecting road but for a block to see if this was the right off ramp. I wasn't in a hurry. I had all afternoon to do it, but after about the 6th or 7th intersection I exited to find the restaurant, I'd had a bait of looking for it and headed home. I knew of several intersections south of the outer loop that had good enough restaurants there. I have to return to Durham every four months for blood tests because of the prescription drug I'm taking, so over the long haul I'm certain to locate it.
I can be tenacious about some asinine, but sometime joyful quest like looking for the perfect club sandwich. I'll find that restaurant if they're still open and I live long enough. They'll probably be still open, but with new management, and they're now selling Western clothing and cowboy hats. With the economic situation the way it is, it's hard to leave my house to shop for something without one of the stores I've patronized in the past being closed up and outta business.
The Wal-Mart strip mall near my house used to have four fairly large clothing and office supply stores there. This is a small southern town on the coastal plains, and the Wal-Mart is Saks Fifth Avenue around here. Country folk from all around the county put on their best bib overalls to come shop at Wal-Mart. The empty storefronts and the half-empty parking lots is odd. Some of the smaller shops are holding on okay it seems, but Wal-Mart is the only large store left there.
At least it's less crowded when I go walking on the wide sidewalks in front of the shuttered stores. The sad thing is that it never was all that crowded in the first place. The investors over-estimated how many shops they'd be able to rent in this rural area in the first place. A lot of the local entrepreneurs have tried and failed to succeed in that relatively high-dollar rental area. The threat of depression has been on the back burner that nobody wanted to see for a long time ere now.
I do not attempt to tell the God's own truth here because I don't know what the truth is or hardly ever. I try to capture the drifting thoughts that randomly appear in my imagination for reasons I may not understand. I don't know if the content I capture with these words is true or false. The Comments settings are turned off to prevent me from having to defend what amounts to little more than fanciful, sometime crude speculation. Great moments in our lives never return.
