from Dancing Over the Rays of Light

​Eventually I located the men’s room. Though it was empty and equipped with an inside lock and showed no evidence of defilement, I found it too public for my taste and chose not to use it to its intended purpose.

Emerging from that room, I strolled farther down the hallway in a spirit of high adventure.

Peering through the narrow window of a door, I espied a large room filled with wheel-free bicycles. Many were being pedaled by senior citizens of European extraction. I chose not to enter that room, for several reasons: (1) I was apprehensive lest my hip suffer further injury; and (2) my earlier self-examination had shown me to be in excellent health, save for my hip.

​I continued my cane-aided stroll.

I passed the door of a study. Inside, several elderly Caucasian gentlemen were engaged in a spirited conversation touching on the probable outcome of an impending basketball game between two institutions of higher learning. I did not enter, reminding myself both (1) that I had a study in my own apartment, and (2) that I would presumably detest having my reading disturbed by banter on trivial subjects. In addition, my recent memory of the bookshelves in my library led me to suspect that my tastes did not run in the channel of popular magazines and what appeared to be condensed novels published by Reader’s Digest.