Of the world at large, I knew nothing. I had no good reason for this, the second most significant choice of my lifetime. Certainly not a rational reason. But, then, rational decisions are made only in retrospect. Alas, some 30-odd years later, I still have no good reason.
Nothing can escape the pervasive imperialism of the medical experience.
Seated behind the desk of the great white healer, held captive before the endless, overwhelming cavalcade of human misery that goes by the polite name of consultation, it is difficult to imagine that there exists within the real world even an atom of contentment, of wisdom or of simple decency. Humanity, it appears, swims within a moral sewer, largely of its own making and always, doggedly, upstream. While the foregoing is demonstrably an exaggeration, it nevertheless represents the perception, the feeling one gets, day after relentless day, from behind that perpetual, immovable, ineluctable desk. It is this feeling, coupled with the lack of conviction that accompanied my original decision, that impels me to write. To see, hear and feel what a doctor sees, hears and feels and not to seek explication, exegesis and catharsis through writing defies comprehension.