Philosophy

My sister-in-law, the graphic design major, was saying that the bookcase in the dining room interrupts the flow and gives the area a cluttered look.  Annette, who is definitely a less-is-more decorator, nodded ominously.

Yes we have books in the dining room; we have them all over.  I find it pleasant to look at them, even if I’m not likely to read them in the near future.  When you’re recovering from a cardiac event, the distant future is cloudy and hard to see. 

Issues of feng shui may increase this summer’s contributions to the book table at the Antiquarian Fair, and among the possible losses to my home library is Plato Selections, a paperback left over from my college days. In it there’s a passage I marked with the intention of having it read at my funeral.  In those happy days I was an insufferable intellectual snob and imagined how impressed mourners would be to listen to Socrates’ ruminations on the nature of death.

When you're about to undergo cardiac catheterization, you sign a document that mentions rather bluntly that you just might die.  Although fantasies of proclaiming to my friends and relatives that I was a reader of Plato have passed away, I had some vestigial idea of facing the situation philosophically. 

Before the catheterization I was to undergo an echocardiogram, and a man who introduced himself as George arrived to wheel me on a gurney to a place where this would be done.  He was furious with the Republicans, who he thought might cut Medicare, causing the hospital to close and he and his fellow staff members to be thrown out of work, and he was angry at the Democrats for failing to oppose this disaster with sufficient toughness. 

He wheeled me to an elevator that was indicated to be out of service and reached under the paper taped over the button and summoned the car.  The stainless steel interior was scarred from collisions with gurneys like mine, but above and below the point of contact it looked as though it had been distressed with flailing chains.  The car baulked a little, then rumbled and rattled downward in its shaft.  Finally the door opened and we emerged.       

We were traveling down a long, empty corridor, and I began suffering chest pains, which grew alarmingly worse.  I interrupted George’s political observations. “I need a nitroglycerine pill,” I told him. 

“I don’t have one,” he said.

“Then take me someplace where they do,” I said. 

“Do you want to go back to your floor?” he asked. 

It had seemed like a long journey, and I remembered the elevator.  “Just take me to the nearest place where they have nitroglycerine,” I said. 

We entered a room where a crowd of people gathered around to stare at me as a person who didn’t belong.  George explained my need.  Someone took my blood pressure, which was alarmingly high.  A woman, who I later found was a physician’s assistant, saw the frightened look on my face.  “Don’t worry,” she said kindly, “you’re in the right place.”  So much for being Socrates calmly quaffing the hemlock. 

Plato Selections will be available for 50¢ at the book table of the Antiquarian Fair August 27^th at Hedge House on Water Street.  It has given me all it can.  I hope to be there to sell it to you, myself.

I still believe in philosophy, and when Death comes for me, I’ll do my best, but I’m not promising anything.