Illness is the night side of life, a more onerous citizenship. Everyone who is born holds dual citizenship, in the kingdom of the well and in the kingdom of the sick. Although we all prefer to use the good passport, sooner or later each of use is obliged, at least for a spell, to identify ourselves as citizens of that other place.” Susan Sontag The anaesthesia woman was from Lebanon. She scolded me for crying. I don't know anything about suffering. From a political point of view, I could not but agree with her. So much for politics. I comforted myself biting her pinkie finger off, very slowly, over at least several days, maybe a couple weeks, tantric pain slow enough to feel like its opposite the way frostbite feels hot. In my mindmouth I could taste her blood, a gift to teach her the value of her other fingers, be grateful for the time you had with the pinkie now swallowed gone by me, as if I could be a goddess of small deaths instead.