Upper Manhattan Medical Group

Off the train I hit the streets and start laughing. This is ridiculous, incomprehensible. How can innumerable bipeds have individual inner lives. Why are they doing what they’re doing? I have no answer New York City but to also go about my business in this case prepare for surgery, survival. But why survive with so many exact replicas to replace me? A swarm of ants or hive of bees, social organisms they’re called, climbing over each other, avoiding bumping and amazingly making way, anticipating the sudden turns and straight paths of others, strangers but brothers, sisters incubating, the cells of a small organ, nodes of a single semi-conscious organism. The concept of a higher power that cares for me is also risible yet how else can I explain the surgeon and his team, robots and magnetic resonance imaging machines, all primed and trained to save my life. They are not particularly interested in what I do with my time. I am immediately in love with the Irish brogue of the head nurse, the Indian skin of the physician’s assistant. The long extraordinarily thin fingers of the famous surgeon. All mine to savor (and the other cancer patients). Back on the streets, rush to the train. So many women to choose from! One in fishnet stockings stands out, tall calm, still, graceful. No cell, no hair, no hurry. Yesterday’s suicidal thoughts: the mind is a clever servant, insufferable master. Therefore, meditate on this: absolute need, dependence on the Other. I still like Hombre, The Shootist and Ulzana’s Raid but realize those dead heroes were subordinate to society: the gun manufacturers who armed them. Thus, I go for cancer tests, accepting, not predicting results. Hero accepting help. A torrential rain following five days of flooding, tornadoes out west busting up wooden towns all because too many of us are hoarding plastic, herding electrons. None of us know how it will end, what the outcome will be (of our surgery). The best that can be said is Don’t forget to breathe. And you might as well believe in that higher power.