Remedy

As I’ve been feeling faded and fatigued, I decided to visit the American College of Traditional Chinese Medicine a few blocks away from home. I always feel better after a good pricking. Acupuncture the feng shui for the soul. Since my original acupuncturist is on the other side of town, I thought I’d take advantage of the close proximity of the needle dome.

I couldn’t wait to lie down so they could pin point the exact cause of my unbalanced self. If I was lucky, maybe they would perform moxibustion to stimulate my blood circulation. I couldn’t wait to fall into deep relaxation with my body and my mind realigned.

There I sat against a panel of four students and a teacher. They probed me with questions of libido, regularity, stool solidity. They studied my pulse, tongue, and blood pressure. I was hoping they could put to rest this lethargic bomb. Deep in the shallow of my head, I knew my fatigue stemmed from accomodating sir Hunter in the middle of the night, causing great raucous with my R.E.M. Nothing less or nothing more. Instead, here I was explaining my menstrual cycle, blood clots, color and size with a bunch of students.

Because they were students I anticipated the lack of finesse with the sharp tip, “That’s H9,” the teacher reminded the student, “your looking for H6.” In the bright fluorescent lights, it suddenly hit me, I am an experiment. I am the lab rat. Oh my god, I am that fermaldehyde frog in biology class. My nervous system was tip top, because my heart rate kicked in high gear.

They left me for thirty minutes, steeping in the needle connection. Normally I fall into deep rest, but I was wide awake combating with my thoughts burning rubber on the parking lot of my mind. The minutes dragged by as I forced my eyes shut hoping for the needles to do their magic. Nope, not today. The frog that I placed on the bunson burner as a prank back in tenth grade had come full circle.

I left the college still exhausted and off keel. I walked up Connecticut street defeated like a pyre being lit inside me. Than my cell rang, it was a call from my best friend, “Hey do you wanna go to Gary Danko tomorrow night? Just me and you? I need to get rid of this two hundred and fifty dollar gift certificate. There’s no one else that I’d rather go with” I smiled and accepted her invitation.

Right then, right there, standing under the street light on 20th and Missouri Street -almost immediately- like a B12 injection, I was alive and warm. Hearing her voice and experiencing her white bubbling energy made it all worth while. It just brought more clarity to my theory, “Friends is a perfect remedy to feeling better.”

I would like to close with one of my favorites by a true favorite Oscar Wilde, “True friends stab you in the front.”