January 2009
24 posts
Memory
The summer after I turned ten years old my Dad bought my little brother and me a full sized, yellow inflatable raft. We were so excited we inflated it on our front lawn and carried it awkwardly above our heads a mile and a half to the boat launch on Lake Boren.
In retrospect, we must have been quite a sight: two rosy cheeked shrimps scampering down the lush, green Pipe Line trail with our corn...
Facebook ”Poking” features.
That is all.
It’s official: I have enemies that talk to me more than this.
Damn.
What can I do to grow from this heartache? I’d love to be able to pull a Dickinson: sequester myself in a shack, run around barefoot writing agoraphobic poetry which will eventually move the masses after my death. Good use of alone time.
...
“It scares me to know we will be this interesting for decades.”
– A text from Scott which had been locked on a phone that was crushed a few months ago.
Since then I’ve questioned the motive for why it was sent: all semblance of romantic messages like this has completely evaporated immediately after the first time we slept together.
This painful aftertaste...
Somnambulism Deux
It was dusk, the wind gusty and black. The memory of the cloudy sky still makes me melancholy.
There wasn’t a soul in sight to see me walking the sidewalk with my bare feet. Cracked and bloody I would step on shards of roadside glass too cold to feel anything. Stepping on remnants of other peoples’ terrible days.
I was walking along the bridge from downtown Portland to Burnside...
I’m so weary today. I’m a notorious flopper when I sleep. These days sleeping on my back makes me feel like I’m suffocating because of the rib fractures.
I don’t like the idea of taking narcs while I’m seeing patients.
I don’t like the idea of taking narcs when I’m in class.
I don’t like the idea of taking narcs when I’m on call.
So...
Until recently I had never been told by anyone I’ve been in their dreams.
When I look at that sentence, it’s strange to see. Not because I deserve to grace the REM cycles of people, but because I dream about everyone I know. Vividly. I just presumed everyone did, but the more I talk to people about my dreams, the less convinced I am.
I was recently told I was in some one’s...
Sidelined [Sugar Mama]. Crumbling.
I’m told last night: “I’m coming to see you for my birthday”. How can I articulate the tangent of emotion and thoughts which followed reading this message?
Damn: I’m elated. To see your face. To share space. Just the nearness of you.
Relief: Finally. I haven’t heard from you. I’ve been lonely and worried about...
01220901
The sudden knocking woke me
my soul has come to call.
In its ethereal majesty
She’s come to watch me fall.
Recoiled in deafening silence
she sighs a foregone exhale
and sees my futile choices
in conclusion as they fail.
So in her shadowed foresight
she sheds a single tear,
and departs in grace and dignity
as my defeat is drawing near.
Is there anything worse than having a person you despise be right about a person you love?
Dad * Karl * Dizzy * Jess
Steve * Bryan * Scott
I miss the humans I love and none of them give a shit.
WHERE has everybody GONE?
In my darkest and most painful hours I reach out from the deepest regions of my heart and cannot find a familiar friendly face I trust.
Damn. I need to go bird watching.
Bad, ancient habits last night.
I am feeling rather ashamed. I flushed the rest of the gram down my toilet.
It’s been five years.
I unloaded on Bert while he finished getting the rest of his stuff out of his room.
I was a great emotional quagmire. I don’t remember everything that happened, I ended up nodding off earlier than I would have anticipated, but I know I went on and on...
It was pointed out to me this weekend that I’m in the habit of taking trains to see people who aren’t willing to take trains to see me. I was asked if I was jealous that Scott takes the train up to see Whitney all the time but never to see me.
I hadn’t given the idea a thought to that point at all, and now that it was brought up to me, I don’t know how to feel about it....
Tonight it revolves around that ever winding road.
You know, the one that has the wall at the end.
It’s the wall that if you hit it just right, you’ll die peacefully, instead of burning up in agony. But of course, I could always swerve to miss a squirrel.
That’s been the story going through my head, the one to tell kids. You know, they wouldn’t think anything bad of...
I saw a patient this morning to follow up an orbital fracture repair we did on him a month ago.
Apart from the fact that I have a soft spot for anyone who’s had their face smashed without a good reason, Walter really cracks me up because he shares my flair for sardonic humor.
Case and point: he has a congenitally deformed hand. A stub with little more than one full sized finger, and the...
Yesterday was my mother’s birthday. I spent so many years not knowing for sure which day in January it was, that it’s odd to know now.
A mother’s birthday. The concept gives me pause: reflecting upon the birth of the woman who gave birth to me. I can’t figure out if this is a selfish mode of thinking.
How can I embrace a thought pattern which doesn’t ultimately...
What WAS it about oppression that first made man believe the more he could do it, the mightier he would be? When did the ability to crush another human being become the earmark of strength and capability as opposed to say, the ability to provide and nuture? We could blame evolution: survival of the fittest. Only the strong survive. Of course, this is strength measured in adaptability, intellect,...
I am not a bad person.
I am not a stupid person.
I don’t understand how I bring out the worst in people.
That drunk asshole put his hands on me for the last time last time last night. He’s out.
I’m developing bad habits. Chewing my nails, starving myself on surgery days, ignoring my dog.
Lately I’ve been longing to see my skin stretched across bony, sharp joints. The voice of reason I once had concerning this has grown quiet lately. Suddenly romance is fitting into a shoebox or a third of the seat instead of the half I occupy.
All the worn out places I visit each day remain...
I realized the price I pay for being someone like me is that they will never allow me to love them as openly as I desire. The curse of loving intelligent, steady, independent people. People more like myself I suppose. Damn. This is what my mother feels like.
I just want to hold you in my hands. We could comfort each other while you occupy my fingers.
Somnambulism
Dad. His skull is crushed but he doesn’t know it. He keeps following me, asking where his glasses are and why he can’t see. I run in the direction of the nearest emergency room so he will follow. I can see brain matter and glistening blood vessels fat and black like night crawlers. I can hear dogs yelping in agony somewhere but can’t see anything. There is the sound of a ban saw...
What the hell is so wrong with telling someone you miss them and wanting to hear it in return? Is it pride? I don’t want to hear it for hearing’s sake either; anything said by the people from whom I want to hear means so much. Just the notion that I’m given a second thought in someone’s day is one of those little creature comforts which helps me feel human.
When did the...
“I want to measure the many things I don’t know
and that’s how I...”
–
Pablo Neruda as translated by Alastair Reid
Je crois que j’ai un probleme au coeur: cela n’arrete pas de saigner.