Ordered South

I have discovered, quite suddenly, not only the most efficacious treatment for MS, but perhaps even the cure--

Just say no.

It sounds simple, I know. Too simple? Well, it's like one of these things that's right under your nose, hiding in plain site--although given the size of my nose, and the ample darkness cast thereby, it is perhaps not so very surprising that something so close has remained so elusive.

Yes, just say no, just say fuck it--draw the line, set your boundaries--and then move to Bali. The tropics, after all, come with a well known history of being curative for pretty much any and every sort of malady (except for leprosy). We follow, therefore, in the footsteps of Robert Louis Stevenson, of Paul Gauguin, not to mention a lot of other people whose names I cannot think of.

Place is the key, not medicine. They have no medicine in Bali (that I know of anyway). They do have a witch doctor, who charges, I think, beads rather than bucks--whose office is the last palm tree on the right, and has no waiting line.

The promise is so great, and we are all so easily led away when hope and memory are both in one story, that I dare say the sick man is not very inconsolable when he receives sentence of banishment, and is inclined to regard his ill-health as not the least fortunate accident of his life. Nor is he immediately undeceived.

"Ordered South"
Robert Louis Stevenson