Pool_1

more of oneself to this entire room than would ever be dared to any other confidant. There was no embarrassment here, just purpose. Healing. An invisible but perceived river of ancient temperament and purpose flowed, bathing all. That included the floor. Whoever took the floor was the floor. It was the floor who recognized one commentator or another from the gallery. The floor was never the person, a mere sampling of humanity. Position, hierarchy, the floor, it connoted disconnect from individual investment or bias in deference to process. That process was at the heart of the healing art of medicine. Embodied by history and procedure, the floor was not that fellow who was thrown out of his house by his wife the day before nor that sad sack who spent the last two hours lost in the bathroom mirror because of the unbearable grind that life had become. When process is old there is an inherent awe by way of connection with the past. Somehow place, by assignment, takes on that aura. Such time linked process does not mix spiritually with displays of individuality. For that reason, there would be no one on the alter on the third Wednesday of the month. This was the day for critique of process itself, self scrutiny, highly individualistic and even loosely conceived but primarily hypercritical review aimed at anything and everything - even at success born of luck. Today was M&M. Respect had no seat here. Besides there were aspects of this place quite unlike a real house of God. Although a podium placed off to the side did not distract from the alter, all the way to the front, well above the floor by easily ten feet, hung a huge projection screen. That wouldn't cut it in a church. And the gallery? It was steep, stee-eep, very nearly a wall, which is what it was often called, or the dam wall - three fourths encircling the floor below. Could you imagine some old lady clutching Rosary Beads doing a header, ass over end just