Thursday, June 23, 2011

next lifetime: doctor on a spaceship


and i've been accused so often of not thinking ahead! they say, you're singing your life away like a cicada. when are you going to start saving for old age? i'm tempted to thumb my nose at them and say, each lifetime a gamble. put your body on the table.

for example, i remember a picture book from those idyllic childhood days before i had to start paying my own bills. two adventurous kids sailed through the bloodstream, examining each part of the living human cadaver from inside. somehow that journey thrilled me more than a trip to tahiti.

and i'm blown away by the mri's of today, peeking into the brain's activity as people fall in love, out of love, are abandoned. see this video: http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/helen_fisher_studies_the_brain_in_love.html you will understand what i mean. our human-all-too-human future encourages us to find a cure for mortality.

as i see it, plenty of people have found it already. star-trek, the tibetan book of the dead, the vedas. i realized i could believe anything i wanted concerning death and delight. and speaking of space movies, one of those trek movies, the one about saving the whales, had an episode where the doctor reconstructed a body with a tiny instrument he ran over the victim's crumpled bones. i said to myself, next lifetime, that's for me.

medicine, finally, leaving the second middle ages, the belief pain and cruelty good for you, so let's drill those teeth and stick a needle in your spine. on a space craft, how interesting to deal with sex in weightlessness, kissing while really floating. and could diseases be controlled in this confined capsule?

maybe my androids one of those civilizations of the future. i keep finding more settlements and inhabitants: www.pbase.com/wwp/android

factoid: During a kiss up to 278 bacteria colonies may be exchanged between the kissers. On the bright side, kisses can be slimming. A kiss uses up 6.4 calories a minute.