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had a mri today.
drove to the Long Beach VA, in the rain on a Saturday, to have my lower back and pelvis scanned.
so i lay down in this white tube for thirty minutes, as a rotund mexican pulled levers and pushed buttons behind a plexiglass wall.
he blasted jazz in the B.G.
it mighta been the blues.
muddy waters.
but i lay in this white tube and for a moment i became really tense.
extremely tense.
panic.
so i breathed deep. filling the aeolia with oxygen.
through the nose. out the mouth.
and i calmed down, started to think.
the mri buzzing, moaning, generating heat.
and i lay in this white tube, motionless. barely breathing. just dead and thinking...
maybe that's the afterlife. just dead and motionless and thinking about everything you've done.
everything you've seen.
everything you've thought.
and i got to thinking how fucked up that's gonna be for me.
how fucked up that's gonna be for many Vets.
and how great that's gonna be for the skim-milk jollies who've been loved and cherished and never taken a life or participated in questionable activities.
just lived a good life.
free of pain.
on a pale blue dot called Earth.
-been reading Carl Sagan...
anyway, the rotund mexican stopped the mri.
pulled me out.
smiled.
told me i did a good job - barely moved.
and i thanked him. shook his hand.
put my clothes back on and told the rotund mexican "adios amigo."
spilled into the VA - empty.
halls - empty.
smelling of bleach.
pine-sol and sloughed skin.
with those recruiting posters, memorials and American flags.
"freedom isn't free."
"the frozen chosin."
"all gave some, some gave all."
nevertheless, i walked for quite sometime.
it was raining like a sonofabitch outside.
walked all the way to the mental health ward - ghostly, vacant.
walked all the way to prosthetic wing - smelled like lubricating oil.
later, i drove home to san pedro, to my granddad's house, to my warm bedroom, and took some pills.
within a few minutes i began to nod off.
motionless. barely breathing. just dead and thinking.
