Acupuncture

Among the personal objects inside a 2100-year-old Chinese tomb, archaeologists found nine acupuncture needles, four gold and five silver. Long before knowing why, ancient doctors knew that pain must be fought with pain. It’s quite simple: an array of needles pricking your arm for a properly functioning heart and lungs. Needles in the feet to ease insomnia and stress. Needles between your eyes to fight infertility. A little pain here, and the effect is felt elsewhere Once, a group of explorers set out to plant a flag on the South Pole, a needle at the heel of the globe, in the middle of nowhere. But before the mission was completed a new world war had begun. The impact of the needle was felt in the world’s brain, in the lobe responsible for short-term memory. When Russia used ideology as acupuncture—a needle over the Urals— it impacted the pancreas and the control of blood sugar: America paid tenfold for whiskey during Prohibition, and at post offices, copies of Joyce’s “immoral”Ulysses were stored for burning. The universe functions as a single body. Stars form lines of needles carefully pinned to a broad hairy back. Their impact is felt in the digestive tract, each day a new beginning. How can you begin a new day not having fully absorbed yesterday’s protein? I was a child when my first teacher mispronounced my last name twice. That pricked me like a needle. A small needle in the earlobe. And suddenly, my vision cleared— I saw poetry, the perfect disguise.