Coffee break in the E.R.

Perhaps it is the fragility of the thing that makes us love it. We ride atop it, within, bleeding and feeling and breaking and dying, and all the time we convince ourselves of immortality. Divine, perfect, created in the image of. As if it's a right of man, we forget that anatomy and medicine was unknown to Western Europeans until the Crusades. Now we expect to never be sick, to never hurt, to never die. We want to look like this, move like that, perform just so. It's just balance, just gravity, just orbit. It's electron sharing, it's magnetism, it's water. And it's an incredible coincidence that it's happening at all. So we ride on, turning those pedals and pounding peanut butter pretzels. Coffee is the stay-up late and the get up early. Obligation is the make-it-through-the-day. Wind it up tight, keep it going, expect more. C'mon. With 10 billion dollars we will find a cure for cancer. Cells divide all the time in the body, and regulatory mechanisms turn that division on and off. With three changes- caused by mutation or damage or insertion- the cells can begin to divide without stopping, creating a tumor. Coffee and obligation keep me going, cranking the pedals, beyond the limits. But 10 billion dollars will find the cure so that the regulatory limits stay in place.