Last night I drove my roommate to a little place in Chattanooga, where we lounged in comfort and alternated watching a bottle fill up with our plasma and the evening's feature film, "Casino Royale." Thereafter, we exited the building with weighted pockets and lightened veins.
The only negative side to this little arrangement is the rather tender bruise that has taken up residence in the crook of my arm. A small price to pay. I haven't noticed if my humors have come unbalanced, but I've always had a surplus of sanguinity...a reduction this paltry would hardly be noticed.
I have recieved a significant amount of light-hearted criticism for "selling my plasma" (the center prefers to refer to it as a "donation"), but I cannot regard it as detrimental in any way. I get a free movie, an hour of condoned relaxation, and a small sum of money. And somewhere out there, children get vaccinated and burn victims get cured. My plasma is given opportunities that would never have been available to it during its placid existence in my own rather redundant circulatory system.
At the very least, it gives me a new thing to wonder about during the mundane routine of my day.
"Where might my plasma be at this very moment?" I muse, as I swipe off a bathroom counter or pull a bag of trash from a lobby.
How many people in the history of this good earth have ever been able to ask that question with such philosophical detachment?
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*For the curious...the inscription on the illustration reads thus:
The Aierie Sanguine, in whose youthfull cheeke
The (?) Rose, and Lilly doe contend:
By Nature is benigne, and gentlie meeke,
To Musick, and all merriment a friend;
As seemeth by his flowers, and girlondes gay,
Wherewith he deligtes him, all the merry May.
And by him browzing, of the climbing vine,
The lustful Goate is seene, which may import,
His pronenes both to Women and to wine,
Bold, bouteous, frend unto the learned sort;
For studies fit, bestloving, and belov'd,
Faire-spoken, bashfull, seld in anger moov'd.
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