I am rambling through the main hall of the Traditional Chinese Medicine Hospital… this place of needles and the smell of odd herbs and burning moxa. It occurs to me that I am living a life way far from different. It is a thought I rarely have anymore, but there it is. I am carrying my little blue bag with the payment receipts from the “guo hou” on the second floor, my tube of acupuncture needles and a hospital-issue blue paper sheet to cover the hard, cracked leather gurney with its dull sheet and pillow.

The elevator deposits me on Floor Five. I smile and wave to the professor and his assistants in Room Number 3 to let them know I am here. The low light of the hall is dingy… the blue plastic chairs bolted to the wall, scuffed. An old man sitting next to me strikes up a conversation. He wants to know what language the foreign professors down the hall are speaking in. I tell him that some are using French, others English… that they are from Belgium and England. We pass the time talking about the differences in languages. Later, I complain to him that I am in a hurry today. He uses that excuse to go tell everyone in Number 3 to speed it up and, indeed, soon, I am stretched out on a gurney next to him with needles in my knee and the tiny teeth of contacts biting down on the thin shards of steel pulsing electric current through my sore tendon.

The sky is gray through the dirty window. The plants and plastic flowers someone has put in the window well to cheer us in our joint struggles toward pain-free health are dusty. Goldfish dart around in a glass bowl smudged with finger prints. In a half hour they awaken me to take out the needles. I’ve fallen asleep. I feel pretty good. Maybe later I’ll go swimming.

I skip down the front steps mindful that I am not yet fully recovered and go out into the bustling street to hail a cab. March winds blow whorls of dust around my feet. The budding treetops of the Sycamores along the street sway. I feel as if I am in a dream. Nothing I ever really did formally equipped me to live this life… only my dreams… fragments of thoughts let go… a progression to this next step… and then, the next. It was my dreams that brought me here (not my nightmares as some would say)… and it will be my dreams that take me away from here.