Around Here

The night I returned from my recent, and so far most ambitious, kayak trip, I had a kidney stone attack . It must have got pried loose. Turns out there were two, my fourth and fifth, evil twins. My stones haven’t been analyzed, but are very likely, given my diet, oxylate. When doctor first saw me he asked if I drink a lot of tea. “All day long,” I said. “Chocolate?” “I’m a chocoholic.” “Nuts?” “Never met a nut I didn’t like.” He could tell, I suspect, by the look on my face that I probably wasn’t going to change. “You can mitigate it by drinking lots of water,” he said. I’m not crazy about water, but I’m making an effort. I’m more or less resigned to passing a stone every four or five years. The one saving grace about the stone is that once ejected, it carries itself clean off, leaving no residual ill-humors behind. “The stone does not meddle with the soul,” Montaigne said. It’s as if the demon seed takes all of one’s sins and rancor, precipitated and crystalized, along with it. At lea...