hands clasped snugly
stubby fingers entwined
encircling ancient ceramic mugs
eerie fluorescents cast
muted grey undertones
emphasize the dark orbs of blue and brown
peering through hazy panes
a hurried passerby
still curious momentarily
diverts eyes
to business sections, political diatribe, gossip columns
diverts minds
from bills past due, negligent wives, insecurities
neon flashing hands flag the start
race to the finish of this day
Going “home”, or more aptly, visiting my parents for sporadic weekends and holidays invariably induces nostalgia for the things that once were, and ponderings over if I in fact relished in those moments or only now, in retrospect, see their value.
Above all else that occurred over the span of the extended weekend, going to Melissa’s bridal shower was the most “real” in terms of an indicating sign of adulthood. Watching everyone’s face aglow, basking in the luminescent light of love in the air, I felt the burgeoning gap between childish innocence and mature sensibility widen. There was so much excitement and happiness in my own heart for her and Matt that it was hard to be able to envision their caliber of sentiment and affectivity at that moment. Maybe one day I’ll too happily stumble upon the devotion and friendship that the two of them share, and hopefully I’ll be sentient enough to cherish it. But for now, it’s quite enough to hold all my best wishes and good intentions for these two wonderful people to share in and live a life that they both deserve.
I've now experienced the effects and aftermath of withdrawl symptoms... e-mail withdrawl that is. My hands are shaky and fumble nervously, awaiting the sleekly smooth plastic keys underneath my fingertips, I dream about hearing the "you've got mail" voice emitted from speakers and I crave the communication and alleviation from confidants in which I'm able to share my neurosis. Alas, a trip to the library has ameliorated my condition some. Though, I'm not sure if I'll be able to handle the time until my next fix. Until my return home to the sanctity and solace that is my studio in St. Louis (how I love alliteration), I bid you adieu my faithful readers.
Mission(s) unaccomplished for today, I regretfully report- I have just as many places of employment as I did this morning, and am still two recommendation letters shy of sending out my completed school applications. Sigh...
There's such a dynamic balance of power and between people. It's somewhere between a web of connection and a pulley system; one good hard tug will cause irreversible momentum throughout, not ceasing until every last fibrous strand has died out under its own rhythm of oscillation . We need others in our lives, whether it be a social, emotional, or even functional dependence. It's simply a certainty.
The reality of social reliance came in these two aforementioned items on my list of priorities today. However, much to my chagrin, neither were actualized even with weeks of incitement and deliberation, though finally I can state that this was through no fault of my own. A much dreaded trip to the med school library in order to officiate my resignation came to no avail, as the person I needed to see quite simply wasn't there. To further frustration that would seem to envelope today, I needed to inquire about the status of my recommendation forms (the last two of six) from my professor, who I thought had been given an adequate time frame of almost a month to complete them. But the issue of social courtesy invariably hindered my willingness and or motivation to ask him straightforward. I couldn't formulate a truly polite way of rushing someone who is technically doing me a favor. But, in my defense, there was a mutual agreement of time and a rather important educational stake at hand. I suppose I now have one of two options: wait for an undisclosed period and risk bypassing deadlines, or throwing caution to the wind by sending out the completed application sans one possibly minor letter of reference, being that it is now too late to find another source.
And thus the conjured image of webs is envisioned, because as much as the ambition to be self-reliant empowers and innervates many of my actions, I do realize that these subsurface as well as surface relationships are crucial within every walk of life. But sometimes, as in the case of today, they seem to unnerve and rattle more than form a cohesive foundation. The cracks aren't wide enough to fall through quite just yet, so here's to clinging to that lifeline of hope.
Reflecting on a recent conversation as well as something I've been thinking about lately, I wonder how well we ever truly know anyone, whether it be the person who shares an office with us for eight hours a day, or even so much as members of our own family. We only expose the parts of ourselves that we want seen, but that varies in different situations. How much we let other people see the vulnerability, the fear that is intrinsic in all of us, is ultimately what connects us. But sometimes it's also the wedge that drives people apart. For the better you know someone, the greater the power you have to hurt them- to shatter disillusions, to dissolve dreams. The question then becomes twofold: is it for the greater good to live life in a complacent manner and consequently not form emotional attachments, therefore never inducing pain or grief (and is this possible), or to expose the inner core of your being and welcome the flood of accompanying passions of love, sadness, longing or suffering? Within the greater sequence of time, we pass through each others lives incredibly quickly, leaving just glimpses of who we are, and sometimes a trail of what we could have become if we stayed for longer. The interconnectedness of it all formulates this reality of past, present, and future.
With each passing day in which I divide my time between the general medicine and stem cell transplant floors, I am stricken with a confounding sense of reality. Mostly, reality is synonymous with waiting. Waiting for a loved one to heal, waiting for the next med rounds to suppress pain, anxiety, or fear, waiting to be seen, to be heard, just waiting… How much of our individual lives revolve around this concept, even when we aren’t ill? We wait for both the expected and unexpected, for something to come and miraculously alter our everyday, for us to surmount an ordinary existence. How little of the vast “extraordinary” we miss when hopelessly ensnared in this paradigm. It’s this very moment, our presence at this precise snapshot in the infinite span of time that ultimately takes precedence. Whether it’s holding your wife of 46 years in your arms while she undergoes dialysis for renal failure, or it can simply be bending the rules a bit to let a son visit with his father before regular visiting hours. These acts of compassion are ones that I encounter almost every day, and hope that I never lose sight of their significance.
Based solely on the fact that I could probably use a dash more humility in my own ever-changing personal recipe for conscientiousness, I’ll have to recount a particularly embarrassing incident that occurred today. And so, for the thirty or so people who read this blog regularly, I encourage you to laugh at my misfortune. It builds character.
I had been running errands all morning, and thus had been in and out of my apartment most of the day. By late afternoon, I had assumed a rather lackadaisical demeanor, and was functioning on auto-pilot. It’s nothing that a tumble down the stairs won’t remedy. That’s right, I’m 23, and have apparently not yet learned to gain control over function in my lower extremities. To add salt to an open wound, of course there would be witnesses to this minor calamity. In applying the “tree falling in the forest” analogy to rectify an uncanny ability to be accident-prone; it never happened if no one saw it. Of course the only mature thing to do was callously laugh and brush myself off, leaving the bandaging of the bruised ego to much later. And thus the plight and bane of my life continues to (literally) be my downfall. Hopefully the satirical tone of this previous entry is evident, as I think that I’m almost mature enough to laugh at myself, and can openly accept disparagement in a variety of forms. There are events and situations much more serious and of concern than having a short encounter with the floor every once in awhile. I should know, we’ve become close acquaintances over the years. :-)
Just recently my group of close friends from high school started a discussion group on Yahoo. Forgive the tangent that is slightly askew from this line of thought, but I really dislike having to describe them as “friends from high school”, as we’ve been friends for much longer than that, and it transcends the definitive structure of K-5, 6-8, 9-12 school system. But back to my original non-thought, I really enjoy checking the message board to see what naively hilarious memories have been dredged up by forays into boredom while at work or school in our respective lives. We’re comically labeled as “Group o’ friends”, seemingly silly to me, as it conjures up a slightly redneck hick connotation (or I guess what they’d call here in ‘ole Mezzoura, ‘hoosier’), rather than what we were back then: higher than median tax bracket kids from demographically analogous suburbs. While I’ve kept updated on most of the major events in everyone’s lives; moving to different cities, starting school, engagements, etc., I felt that our lives were moving in parallel forward motion. That’s not necessarily true, I realize now. For the most part, we knew each other as the people we were in high school, which is (hopefully) not the primary indicator for the conscious individuals we are now and will be in the future. Back then, emerging identities clashed greatly with the social norm that called for us to fit into the homogenized populace at that particular school at that particular time. I believe wholeheartedly that that war was fairly won, with homogeneity sorely thwarted by the strong defender of self-identity. Still, it’s amusing to muse in recollection of the good times we spent together, when we were more idealistic and carefree, but I’m also looking forward to the years of events and shared memories ahead of us.
It's been exactly one week now since the fateful day that caused either extreme elation or disappointment, and to be perfectly fair, I should include indifference, in all of our hearts. It was the topic of every cubicle conversation between co-workers, of hushed chit-chat during class, and the subject of every single blog that I browsed through. The extremes were certainly something to comment on and write about- I saw tears and fury raging from beneath those swollen eyes, as well as expressions of moral triumph. This is a posting about how I chose not to post. Those who know me, know my steadfast stance on this particular election, and therefore I choose not to fill up this blank void of cyberdom with one more voice en masse, shouting to have their opinion heard. Instead, I choose to sing a little tune in my head as I look ahead to the next four years, "Que sera sera, whatever will be will be..."
There’s absolutely no denying the double x chromosome factor now. I admit that I absolute love stereotypical things with that feminine flavor; ie, lace, flowers, and frills alike. And so a exercised imagination would necessarily draw the conclusion that formal dress shopping is the epitome of this little fetish. And it is. Skimming through silks, linen, the smooth stitch and hemlines, it’s all fabulous, especially when you have a place to wear this new object of fancy, say an upcoming wedding this weekend. If only this love of finery didn’t also accompany such an exorbitant price tag, the women of this world would make it a much happier place. Eh, so I can’t afford to eat or travel in any form of transportation requiring gasoline for about two weeks. We all must weigh our priorities, after all.
The magnitude of what people will do to satiate their addictions will never cease to amaze me. As typical of a weekday and sometimes weekend mornings, I was walking to work with various thoughts of agenda for the day, emotional issues that arose over the weekend, and a spectrum of other things. It’s amazing how microscopic interwoven neurons have the ability to multi-task. There was a man walking directly ahead of me, and as usual, I didn’t notice until he stopped to stare at the ground. Still, people are weird; people apparently stop to stare at cement. I am one of these people. So still proceeding along casually , I didn’t take much notice. As he bent down carefully to pick something up, I innately followed his path of concentration out of curiosity, only to see that he was in fact, picking up a half-smoked cigarette and adding it to the collection already in his calloused hand. This whole act was so completely and violently abhorrent to me that I was forced to look away. In lieu of emotional substance in our lives, how often do we rely on short-term physical remedies, even if they are detrimental to health, and ultimately to psyche? Obviously I’m in no position to judge others’ lifestyles and habits, as I have my own idiosyncrasies and quandaries to sort through, but nevertheless I couldn’t help but think of the tremendous sorrow and desolation that his actions reflected.
Who needs a self-help book when they have a caulking gun?
Being that I fancy myself to be a self-proclaimed life-long learner of completely useless and inane trivia and/or mildly mundane everyday comings and goings, it didn't come as a complete surprise that I left Home Depot two hours after I had initially come in. Who knew there were a hundred and twenty-eight different brands, varieties, consistencies, and uses for adhesive caulk? I do, that's who. As I scrutinized and meticulously perused my way down the aisle of foreign labels, I thought of how this all fit into the bigger picture of goals that I have long ago set for myself. Learning how to re-caulk a bathroom is only one small grain of sand within the long stretch of the shoreline of possibilities for proclaiming independence and self-empowerment. So as I rinse off the last visible residue on my hands and consequently, off everything else (messy messy project) I feel a sense of elation and self-construed pride in my abilities, however non-tasking or productive. Alright, I admit that maybe this induced high also has to do, in part, with the tiny un-ventilated area that is a cauldron of fumes that I've just spent considerable time in, but I'd like to think that it's a bit more than that. If only these short lived feelings of worth and industriousness did proliferate for a bit longer. It came and very quickly went, as I vehemently tried to open a very stubborn jar of peanut butter later this evening, and was left peanut-butterless, somewhat winded, and with a sore wrist. Next lofty long term goal: work on obtaining an unusually strong brachial radialis muscle in my forearm so that I won't be deprived of all the joys and wonders of things that come in impossibly airtight jars.
Somewhere along the path of searching for meaning, for hope and for solace, I couldn't help but think about the idea of faith, and what it truly encompasses in my life. For most of my childhood and adolescence, it was nothing more than a habitual routine that corresponded with Christian holidays and Sunday mornings. It was always a second thought, if that.
But then that abysmally bleak and wretched year and a half of my life began its fiery onset, and even now, if I don't catch myself quickly enough, it's entirely too easy to fall back into those depths of despair. I find that it is the outstretched, wiry arm of faith that always pulls me back into this reality, this world of semi-comfort and mostly complacency.
Although I tend to shirk the judgmental glances and avoid being stereotyped into one of those people who allots time each and every Sunday and occasionally a few days therein to church, I stand upright and defensively for what this means to me personally and symbolically. Interminably, and throughout the course of this existence, a considerable reason for this sacred praxis is repentance for all the things I have done and for all the things I should have done. But with increasing sheer magnitude is my knowledge of self within continuous time and space, and the emblem of spirituality I hold with highest importance. People will come and go, love you, hate you and hurt you, but each of us, as individual mortal entities endowed with both the immaterial and material, has a chance for beatitude, for a blissful life. It is only when thise sense of self-worth has been idealized and then accomplished that we can perchance endeavor to truly experience love and life.
~~It's the heart, afraid of breaking, that never learns to dance. It's the dream, afraid of waking, that never takes a chance. It's the one who won't be taken, who cannot seem to give. And the soul, afraid of dying, that never learns to live. ~~
