exit left when i came to i didn't know where i was on the ground, prone, near the levee bottom—i blacked out while jogging, got up, walked home, still laboring a bit between deep gulps i told nia as much as i could remember my brother is a cardiologist, nia urged me to call him tuesday morning early i take an ekg and the results are so disturbing keith schedules me for a battery of tests an hour and a half later i still have a meeting to do in between, my blood pressure was normal i reappear, am radioactively injected, get wired up and climb on a treadmill, lay under a nuclear camera, chat as though nothing was wrong, submit to a sonargram, nia is there the whole time, the results are negative, acceptable, i did not have a heart attack keith can not determine the etiology of the alarming ekg but i know the hard truth: at fifty i am almost through i am dying and perhaps there is a metaphysical reason no physical break down showed up on the machines this time as the world unravels around me i coolly center the resulting chaos within the calm of my karma's core—this is how i exist: i dare to do all the good i can, i accept the uneveness of chance, i simply love life for what it is and when my time comes, i am not afraid to exit —kalamu ya salaam ____________________________________ Music—"Monk's Mood" by Thelonious Monk Kalamu ya Salaam – vocals Stephan Richter – clarinet Frank Bruckner – guitar Georg Janker - bass Recorded: June 14, 1998 – "ETA Theatre" Munich, Germany