Cut and burn

For a moment this afternoon as I sat in the dermatologist's office, my head felt as if it were outside and uncovered in the midst of one of our recent pelting storms. Pinpoint needles of terrible cold plunged into my scalp here, now there, now on my forehead, now at my temple. Once over, pause, then a second time. The skin gloving my skull throbbed with the raw liquid nitrogen experience.

'That should do it,' the doctor said smiling. 'They'll blister, then scab, then fall off, taking the problematic skin with it, but I'm afraid they'll be others.'

This skin, this envelope, my biologic alternative to 'paper or plastic' for keeping my guts from spilling out on the sidewalk, has a tendency to develop these crusty, or bleedy areas, and I'd gone to see about one. I had one on my arm which was removed quickly with equally quick recovery. I had another on my nose requiring 'pulling this from here to fill in that removed from there' which left my face black and blue and my nose bulbous for over a week, but finally resulted in a nose not much different than before--a pretty good trick, I think. 

So today was to confront something just above my collar bone. He sliced it away and sent it for biopsy and later, I guess, it'll be time to neatly trim the edges of the wound and sew me up.

Why, oh why, do you continue to do this, you skin cells? Am I not looking out for all of us, and you too? Don't I wash you, and soothe you, and clothe you, and... Okay, I don't use sunscreen but I do wear hats, and seldom do I expose my collar bone. Aren't we working together?

Even who I am divides into I and You with aims and agendas some consonant and some dissonant. Singularity is always multitudinous, in my experience. Justus Buchler's Ordinal Metaphysics says it all: everything that can be discriminated is a complex which is at once comprised of a variety of traits and is constituent trait to a number of other complexes.

You lowly squamous cells are sophisticated in the complexity of your own functions and structures. Still, it's disquieting to think of as many patches of incipient rebellion active at one time as the doctor said were there. Does nobody love me? Am I Lear wondering if there are any left who remember who the king once was?

 I'm just now emerging from war over my airways: just whose lungs are these anyway? The tenacity of the enemy is like glue. Do I have to be reminded of other areas chronically in revolt? As a walking shell of fly-away bacteria, perhaps it's just good sense to own up to the obvious.

Still, skin, baggy, saggy, wrinkled and crinkled as you are, I appreciate you even if though you periodically hint at prospective orgies of hyper-fecundity, getting almost ready to do something. Don't try, though; or I'll cut and burn; see if I don't..