The Jupiter Chronicles

Yesterday I took a trip to Jupiter. Don't snicker. I really did. While I was there, or so I am told, a doctor and his assistants probed the coiled conundrum of my colon, taking videos and screenshots just like a tourist capturing images of Fifth Avenue or the Champs-Elysees or Unter den Linden. The medical explorers even sent off a few polyp souvenirs for further study. When I perused the photo album presented after the journey, I winced. It wasn't my cup of tea. It wasn't my picture of a semicolon. But back to Jupiter. I was there. I certainly was not in the room where the "procedure" was performed (don't you just love that word, procedure? It's so tidy, so antiseptic, so pain-free-sounding). I have no recollection of the journey the video camera recorded, no memory of pain or discomfort or anxiety. Just before going to Jupiter, I do remember saying, "Should I watch the screen?" "Some do, some don't," came the reply. "I'm feeling a little light-headed," I reported. "Don't fight it," came the recommendation. That's the last thing I recall before my interplanetary journey. Funny thing is, I don't remember anything about Jupiter either. It was neither white nor black, neither colorful nor colorless, neither gauzy nor glaring. Well, yeah, it was kind of gauzy. By deduction, I take it to be a pleasant place where time passes without notice, a place without care or conflict. Much like Heaven, I guess, in our collective Hegelian-Jungian imagination. I'd go back in a heartbeat, if heartbeats even exist on Jupiter. I can only surmise about Jupiter after the fact. It was a very smooth ride going there and coming back. I think the airline was called Demoral Versed Express (or was it the De Moral Express Versed? What rhymes would be chanted to induce sleep on that orbiter?). Upon returning to Earth, so I am told, I queried the doctor repeatedly and persistently and heart-breakingly, saying things like, "I know you told me the scale of zero to five was for pain, but what about the polyps? Can you give them a scale of zero to five?" Over and over again, oblivious to anything the doctor would say. Upon reflection post-Jupiter, this sounded to me alarmingly like a besotted bar patron, or a patient in an Alzheimer's ward, or a vision of me fast-future-forward in a hospital ward or nursing home. Allegedly upon my descent from Jupiter I recited portions of the Hail Mary (likely fearing Final Exit from this Vale of Tears) and jabbered lovingly about the Boston Red Sox (beloved Major League Baseball team of my late friend Doug, who succumbed to cancer nearly two years ago), but inexplicably I reportedly said nothing about my San Francisco Giants. Looking back, I'm most grateful I didn't say anything at all about having sex with that ostrich at the Berlin Zoo. Whew.