my hip is with Jesus

It's Holy Saturday, so according to tradition Jesus is in hell, doing his best to burn away the karma of our collective sins. My hip is also in hell, taking a flamethrower of pain to the side of my body, making it very difficult to walk.

Despite the agony, I succeeded in making one of my most delicious spaghetti sauces yesterday—an American-style quasi-Bolognese. I took a picture of the meal, but upon review I decided the image wasn't appetizing enough: the Parmesan cheese looked soaked-through, as did the very nice multi-grain garlic bread that I had prepped. The veggies that I had cooked up looked as though they'd come from a bad cafeteria (not far wrong: they came from a package of frozen vegetables that I had bought a couple months ago). In all, the image was a turn-off. Now, of course, I have enough spaghetti sauce and pasta to make several attempts at getting a better photo, so perhaps at some point soon you'll get to see the fruits of my recent labor.

Today, I and my hip from hell must limp over to the clinic to get "therapy" and a new supply of pills. I'm a little worried about the timing, as I have to be in Seoul this coming Friday, the 25th, to visit friends and to do something important (more on that later, if it bears fruit, but I have to be coy for the moment). I think that I'll run out of pills by Thursday, which means I can resupply before I leave for Seoul.

The doc saw me yesterday and expressed worry that I wasn't progressing. I mentioned to him that, earlier in the week, I had walked a lot, which was likely the cause of current pain. He once again talked about my getting the MRI; I mentioned that I probably wouldn't be able to afford it, to which he responded that we could just continue on the current therapeutic path. I nodded half-resignedly.

There was a bit of weirdness yesterday, too, as one of the clinic staffers on the third floor got chatty with me. She began asking me questions about my job—specifically about whether I was able to jump around from school to school while on contract. She also mentioned two of my colleagues by name, and I told her that one of those gents was the person who had recommended this clinic to me. This conversation was weird because my pants were halfway down my thighs while we were talking, and the attendant was lube-massaging the fold of my hip all the while, her hand veering dangerously close to my cojones.

At the end of the therapy, I asked the lady about the clinic's Saturday hours. I knew the place normally closed early on Saturdays, but I wondered aloud as to whether it would close even earlier because of Easter. "It's Easter?" she said, surprised. Then she laughed, embarrassed. "I didn't even know." "Are you Buddhist?" I asked her. "No—no religion," she said. "Ah—mugyo," I replied, using the word for a person who belongs to no particular tradition.*

So I limped out of the clinic, away from the person who knew nothing about Jesus' suffering in the flames for humanity's sake, my hip still screaming in harmony with our Lord.

---

*Mugyo is not the same as atheist. A person who is mugyo might well be an atheist, but what the word really refers to is one's belonging to an established religious community. So someone mugyo could in principle be an atheist, or she might be the Korean equivalent of "spiritual, not religious." (See here. Don't trust Google Translate, which renders mugyo as atheist. Also: technically, mugyo can serve as both a noun and an adjective, but a person of no religion can also be called a mugyo-in, a "no-religion person.")


_