Michael joked about the fact that Leta told him he might as well move his practice to Washington street. He’s in town only one day a week, and today he was treating Leta, MarÃa and myself. In fact, he added, at this moment his Santa Cruz patients boiled down to two groups of friends, one of them concentrated around our house. His practice is currently in a room in one of the older buildings on the main street, Pacific Ave. The room is in a corridor that could figure in a film noir set in the 1930s; each door could lead you into the world of a detective reading his newspaper and smoking a sigaret, or that of the lawyer smoking a sigar in the green light of the bankers lamp on his desk, both of them waiting for the rich client with a briefcase of money to arrive. Did i mention that some of the rooms have no windows? And in those that have, the blinds keep day light out. The door to the room Michael uses one day a week opens into a different world all together; one that for some bizarre reason invokes Russian-Mongolian memories in me, although the room is merely about trying to create some sober kind of Chinese atmosphere i guess.
(and the corridor is decorated with old images of Santa Cruz like these…)
The session last Friday had been particularly heavenly relaxing, still in a celebration mood, as Michael didn’t miss out on having two of his patients on the same day with the same birthday. We continued bear conversations and i ended up telling him stories from the Trans-Siberian and Mongolian express – so it seems that the things that go through my mind in that room eventually find their way to our conversations. He talked about this travels and longer stays in China. Just when i got eager to tell him my story of the mad goat at the monastry near Ulan Ude, he wanted to know about religious freedom for Buddhists in Russia and Mongolia – a subject i’m slightly less enthousiastic about than the mad goat.
Today was different. The music today was particularly insisting monotonous Chinese – Tibetian – Mongolian something. When he asked me how i was doing, i didn’t do the “fine and it’s getting better” routine. I don’t really know why i do that – something about not really wanting to engage, remain on the surface, avoiding lectures, etc. It probably defeats the purpose of a medical visit. Although in a medical context i somehow prefer to think: okay, do your technical stuff on my body, but leave me out it. Don’t ask me too much, don’t expect me to open my mouth too much, let’s get it over and done with. Although that’s a bit of an understatement, with some doctors i tend to sabotage the technical part as well, like indeed not opening my mouth at the dentist (the number of times my mother had to beg to open my mouth when i was in the dentist seat; she still pratically kidnaps me for dentist appointments…). Anyway, i tell Michael: frankly, the muscles in my shoulders do NOT feel any better than last time, maybe even WORSE. (Voilà , there you go.) He was sweet actually. First giving me some Buddhist wisdom. These things are not linear, you know, many steps forward are followed by steps back. And don’t get upset with not being relaxed, that doesn’t help at all. At this point he made me smile; okay, today my muscles and i are just bad and that’s it and we’ll get treated. Then he started feeling and decided that from his perspective the muscles actually felt better. At least i can distinguish the actual muscles, he said, it’s not one block of tension. (I decided on the spot that i would not visualise myself as a turtle this time.) He does his massage and this time there are no (animal) stories, we don’t speak. Apart from one moment when he says: “You’re fighting me today.” What can i say, don’t take it personally.
At the end of this session which felt quite different from the other ones he scrutinizes me and asks some questions. Then comes the verdict: blood deficiency. And an advice to eat meat and take “Ba Zhag San Women’s Precious” pills. Still bugged when i got home, where i was met with sheer enthousiasm by Leta. “I can get you the pills for half the price, you might just get full advantage of living with a licensed acupunturist, me too i’m blood deficient or at least i was and it took three years for it to go away, and i still think of myself as semi-blood deficient because i have the tendency, it’s because we use our brain a lot (oh… is that the place blood goes?…), let’s sit down and talk about this…” Hm, sounds like we’ll be having a blood deficiency party in the house. And more than that: Leta looked at me with sparkling eyes and a knowing smile and said: “Yes, i feel it, this is what brought you to Santa Cruz, to discover your blood deficiency and get rid of it.” Quite a new insight about what i’m doing here. I wonder if i should mention it in my Marie Curie report. Coming to think of it, i’m sure Marie Curie was blood deficient as well.