Iatrophobia approacheth. I note a new sensation in my physical being,
and feel a tightening in my mind, a twisting of my composure. It's
not the sensation, but what it represents, an unplanned break in my
daily schedule, a contact outside my normal circle of folks, as one
or more of those moments approach I KNOW will be whipped into
something that persists in memory, enclosed forever within, always
near enough to the surface that I won't have to issue a subpoena to
my deep banks to bring it to my witness stand. It is like a
freshwater stream that will always flow from a slightly shocking,
chill spring into the comfortably brackish backwaters of my mind. It
will stir up reservations about my choices, about the releasing of
certain relationships that may have led to discovering at least one
person who would stand by me in times like this. That stream, it is
flavored with bitter salts, yet it does clear the mind, seems to
alert me to the abyss that is always there but is usually hidden by
an opaque film, which permits me to pretend all is well. This could
be a definitive experience, this visit, bringing closure to a period
of repose in my life, a watershed, beyond which clouds gather. It is
like pulling those floppies I use to back up certain critical data,
and finding that the new millenium left the data unusable, archaic,
arcane, irrelevant, a now-bypassed station on the express line to my
future. And I cross roaring at 200 miles per hour past the threshhold
into the feared region, the chemically-treated room where my knees
tremble, my mind slides sideways into unreality. I work over the
parameters of what the doctor believes this pain reveals, and I want
to shoot the messenger. It's his starched coat, his steely tools of
intrusion, that cut the meadowgrass I have been hiding in, revealing
all the snakes and gopher holes that can bite and break my legs as I
crash into my tomorrow.

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