Edward Piercy

On the Boat of Ra

Tuesday, 17. April 2007, 07:01:51

As I mentioned on an earlier post, I went last Friday to have an MRI. I
had never had an MRI before. So it was a brand new experience.

Basically, they put me into a tube like a torpedo. You have to lay very
quiet and not move, otherwise it screws things up. You can't sleep, due
to the fact that they come onto the loudspeaker system inside the tube
every two minutes or so and tell you to hold your breath. And that goes
on for (in my case) two and a half hours.

As you might expect, I had to do something lying inside the tube for all
that time. So I went internal (mostly, in-between holding my breath).
And that much time going internal for me can lead to some pretty
interesting or unusual things sometimes.

So there I was in the tube. The MRI machine was making these low,
pulsing sounds. They were like drum beats, with two batteries of drums,
six each. They were drums that were used on ancient ships to keep the
rowers in synch. First there was one pitch and then, in the rhythm of a
heart beating in 2/4 time, another beat slightly lower: BOOM, boom /
BOOM, boom / BOOM, boom. It was hypnotic, and I felt the rowers on
each side of the boat pull their oars to the rhythm.

Up in front of the mast stood the god, Amen-Ra. In front of him, in two
lines, were the Unwearing Ones. They stood with their palms out and
facing forward, right hand slightly in front of the left, protecting the
god in his travels.

I was in the rear of the boat, a mere passenger. The boat headed down
into the underworld, hour one, hour two. After a while I felt my MRI
tube become a sarcophagus, I was laying inside of it, the whole placed
on an elevated bier at the rear of the ship.

Don't breathe, they told me. It was difficult to hold my breath for that
long. I began to imagine what it would be like to never have to breathe.
That became the boundary line between my dream-like state and reality --
I had to breathe.

As time passed my muscles began to ache and I began to long for dawn. I
pictured the boat moving into the 10th and then the 11th hour. The boat
of Ra rose up out of the east. Below was desert. Up ahead I saw the
river and all of its lush greenness. Ra rose over the land. The long
night was over. I was home again. I was alive, breathing.

The Awful AnimalRobespierre's Doll

Comments

Richard # 17. April 2007, 12:19

Yup - that's it exactly. I had an MRI some years ago when I took part in a brain study. It's an otherworldly experience.

Allan # 17. April 2007, 16:24

I never tried such a thing.

But I can imagine that I wouldn´t like it at all - therefore I respect the way you made a nice experience out of what would otherwise be something almost traumatic.