Day 160: God buzzed in my ear, or maybe it was just a mosquito.

I’m trying my damnedest to think peaceful thoughts and find the zen of healing, reclining there at the community acupuncture place. I’m needled by the lack of privacy and by the sharp pricks of disapproval I feel for my fellow patients, who answer the practitioner’s hushed quiet queries in boisterous bowling-alley tones.

Should it surprise me that people are stupid?

But I digress.

The spoiled white-bread yuppie part of me resents not having a pristine room all to myself where I’m entitled to the undivided attention of a deferential professional ready to pretend that my feet are the most interesting body parts he’s ever serviced. He’d do it for free, even, is the implication. The $125/hour price tag is just a formality.

The aging hippie part of me applauds the brotherhood and informality of this community place, where Everyman comes searching for collective health at the rate of $25/hour. Everyman (and woman) likes a bargain.

The room holds six circled chairs, with doors opening on side areas with tables. Once pierced appropriately and publicly, one relaxes for 30 or 40 minutes, allowing all that Oriental healing energy to penetrate one’s thick Western hide. One is to imagine visiting the astral plane or a Bali beach or whatever sort of peace trips one’s trigger.

I try. Really, I do. But I’m an inveterate eavesdropper, and can’t help but hear the people around me snore and fart and reveal far too much personal truth.

“The vaginal dryness is what’s really bothering me,” brays some woman with a smoker’s cough and raspy voice from the side room. She’s already discussed her migraines and her ingrown toenail and her burning indigestion. She’s out to get her money’s worth.

There’s a gruff old boy with back issues in the other side room. He is boasting about the $750,000 house he just bought over there in Wretched Excess Acres. Wine cellar, indoor pool, outdoor gourmet kitchen, and special Dog Apartment where his poodle lives better than I do. Yet the schmuck is here taking advantage of the cheap clinic. I find myself hoping his back gets worse.

A woman my age settles in beside me and declares, “I know you don’t care, but I didn’t shave my legs and I didn’t put on make-up.”

The acupuncturist, a kind young man sporting a purple Mohawk, assures her that she’s beautiful just as she is.

She’s not. She looks like me. We’re both more beautiful if we make a little effort.

Finally, things quiet down and I’m able to hear music, some sort of jazzy lounge-lizard stuff, a departure from the clinic’s usual bamboo-and-chimes motif. I drift off into the ether only to hear a female voice whisper, “Hey, wake up!”

I startle upright. There’s only me and Stubble Woman in the circle, and she’s out like a light with her mouth agape. I lie back once more, communing with the universe.

Or maybe with God, who whispers again in my ear. “Hey, wake up!”

I know I’m unenlightened. I know I’m mired in complacency. And now God has (finally) singled me out for personal attention!

I wake up!

Those words were a pointless random voice-over on the soundtrack.

So I’m still waiting for divine revelation. You know, stuff like the meaning of life and my purpose therein and maybe tonight’s winning lottery numbers.