Articles of Incorporation

And the significance of the tiny words

Hospitals are mosaics - melting pots of individuals from everywhere on earth, shattered human lives, emerging microbes. Tunnels and hallways and stairwells. Secret scripts and language and ritual. Lists and protocols, ceremony and sorcery. A microcosm of the macrocosm, I sense deeply the interconnectedness of everything and everywhen as an interloping observer who has no real explicit role. The surgical staff wear green, the volunteers wear red, and nearly everyone wears practical footwear.

This custom is nearly essential, given the labrynthian passageways and the thousands of extra steps required to get from here to there. Small enclaves hide the cove of labor and delivery, which absolutely cannot be accessed from any elevator, and the ED is known as such - not ER like Neal Baer’s 90’s TV show taught us. You are not supposed to want to be here: you are summoned. By fate or fortune or circumstance, training or talent (or both), the hospital calls.

In the US, we say we are in the hospital. In the UK, you are in hospital.

The article feels important.

And wrong.

It’s more than the building, the kaleidoscopic way in which time bends around you, swallowing weeks with unending minutes. You are not simply in the building, you are riding the bhav - the energetic current as prominent as class three rapids.

Maybe more.

On this trip…