Spine

    Yesterday my "day off" was a marathon of appointments. It started with the radical queer foot doc who barely stifled a curse as she looked at the new swelling in my left ankle. "That’s compensation," she said, "you’re making up for the right ankle." There wasn’t much she could do about it. I can’t even use topical anti-inflammatories right now because they add to the bleeding risk during surgery.  "You're going to have to take it easy for a couple of weeks because of the surgery," she said.  "Maybe that will give your ankles a chance to heal."

    From there I had to dash to an appointment near Grand Central and then I had a gap of a couple hours before the MRIs so I got on the crosstown bus to my office.  There’s construction on 42nd St. and the bus was packed and crawling in heavy traffic.  A woman with a cane and wild hair got on so the younger woman in nurses' aid uniform next to me got up to give her the seat. Sitting down, she looked at her, and then looked at the man standing next to her and said very loudly, "you two should get together."

    At first they ignored her but she persisted, telling them that they should give each other their numbers and talking about how she had been matching people up since she was 12 and how many weddings she had been to.  "I’m recently separated," said the woman by way of explaining her hesitation but the matchmaking lady waved it off and kept encouraging her. Eventually, maybe to shut her up, they did wind up exchanging numbers, and then they started talking to each other. 

    Sitting right there, I heard them discover that they were both of haitian descent and both had adult children. "You can share island recipes," the matchmaker, who was also ear hustling, interjected. "I do cook," said the woman. "I bet he does too," said the matchmaker and the man nodded. "You should have dinner," she said and by the time they got off the bus, the dinner was planned for tomorrow. 

    In desperation, the bus driver stopped mid-block and opened the doors and announced that anyone who wanted to could get off. The matchmaker with her cane and me with my bad ankle stayed on and she started telling me how she was injured in an attack by another woman.  As the story unfolded, it transpired that she lives in a shelter in a four woman room with a stinky dog that does not get bathed by its equally stinky and unbathed owner.  "After she left, I sprayed the room with Lysol," the matchmaker told me. "I thought about spraying her bed, but I didn’t because I thought she might notice and say something."

     After so long on the bus, I didn’t get much done at the office before I had to head to Union Square.  My appointment was at 5 PM so they were down to minimum staff and they were stretched thin. When one receptionist got up to show me back to the MRI,  told her I knew the way so she could take the next person.   I changed and put my clothes in the locker and the tech came and checked the lock.  "One time the nurse didn’t check and it didn’t lock properly and someone wandered in and things went missing," he said.

    The MRIs were looking for more tumors in my spine, so we were doing two at once - the middle and the lower spine- with and without contrast.  I knew I was in for long stretch in the machine, one more thing to endure.  Lying there, I found myself thinking about the spine, about how the development of the spine was a critical step in our evolution from the invertebrate creatures that climbed out of the primordial ooze.  Although we think of mammals in terms of being warm- blooded and how they raise their young, the spine is actually a defining characteristic that makes mammals mammals.

    

   The evolution of the spine is also what made it possible to transition from our quadripedal ancestors to our current bipedal state. There was a trade-off there though.  The quadrupedal form was well balanced and that was sacrificed in the interest of being able to stand up upright, look out at the environment, and use our arms and hands to reach and handle objects. Without those abilities, we would not have our civilization as it is, but being upright places a great deal of strain on the spine, which is in a constant battle against gravity and our own forward a momentum. This situation is exacerbated by our lack of a tail, which, like a tripod, would help with stability.  Tails would be a problem on the subway though, prone to getting stuck in the doors.  When I picture human tails, I picture them dressed in tail warmers in the winter or decked out with tail bracelets or piercings for the body modification crowd.

    Turning my thoughts back to the spine, I consider that as though the spine doesn’t carry enough of a load in physical reality, it also carries a weight culturally. Spines are associated with dependability, courage, and even integrity, and conversely with weakness and lack of principles.  Making the leap from the abstract to the mystical, in Jewish mythology, the luz is a bone in the spine that houses the soul of the body.  These connotations are especially interesting when compared to the root of the word, “spina” in Latin which has nothing to do with any of these- it means “thorn”- a completely utilitarian reference to the actual appearance of the bones.

    By the time I was done thinking about the spine it was time to slide out so that they could inject the contrast. When they slid me back in,  I was getting tired from the effort of remaining so still. I cleared my mind to let an image come. It has been at least 20 years since I’ve been in San Francisco, but the image that came was a street in San Francisco, looking up from the bottom of the hill, with cars is driving up the street and houses lining both sides.  I was concentrating on that image, setting my mind free from the machine encasing me, and I must’ve fallen asleep because the next thing I knew it was over and I was set free to stumble groggily into the bustle of early evening by Union Square.