this all began as a perfectly logical straightforward historical philosophical inquest into the genealogy of perspective, the scheme represented above as it was codified in the early Renaissance (though it's I who here clarify its critical function as a bridge between word and world, so be sure you credit me when you spread this important breaking news). That inquest, however, happens to lead where no society has ever gone before, into the dark viscera of the collective, internal digestive system, a flashlight leading the expedition, as during a colonoscopy. Though we don't see it, we feel it within us -- that the microcosm is a mirror of the macrocosm, or vice versa. So whether you're yet aware of it or not, this as that procedure is awful, humiliating, disgusting, but it could save our life. Plus the prober at the instant of penetration forgets where she is and all those negative judgements to behold the wonder of being in all its strangeness, her attention focused by the hunt like a lioness stalking a predator keen to slurp up her babies. For the prober, the discontents of civilization have melted away. For her, having circled the whole game board, culture has returned to nature -- the wagon upheld by this wheel advancing -- AND she collects more than two hundred dollars, and now maybe can trade in her houses for a hotel. Thus do I deserve to be paid for these services in the current economy, but if I were a doctor I'd do colonoscopies for free if I had another source of income, which I most fortunately do.
Don't get me wrong, the mirror is cloudy, we see through a glass darkly. I'm still putting off my colonoscopy appointment though a timelier one might well have saved my mother's life. Yes, even after that, I'm still not sure it's worth the humiliation, however noble and sublime it is to be on the other side of the flashlight. Maybe I'd rather die than be saved that way. But as I woke up one day with a diploma in my drawer certifying me as a proctologist of the public body, as it were, so to speak, and as the public body had, as it were, so to speak, filled out all the forms verifying it had the insurance to cover it and was waiting in my office, the operating room and staff scrubbed and ready, I took a deep breath once again and sighed, okay, let's go.
Don't get me wrong, the mirror is cloudy, we see through a glass darkly. I'm still putting off my colonoscopy appointment though a timelier one might well have saved my mother's life. Yes, even after that, I'm still not sure it's worth the humiliation, however noble and sublime it is to be on the other side of the flashlight. Maybe I'd rather die than be saved that way. But as I woke up one day with a diploma in my drawer certifying me as a proctologist of the public body, as it were, so to speak, and as the public body had, as it were, so to speak, filled out all the forms verifying it had the insurance to cover it and was waiting in my office, the operating room and staff scrubbed and ready, I took a deep breath once again and sighed, okay, let's go.
