(no subject)
A story from years ago:
The waiting room at UC Davis Medical Center.
Mom was in for a biopsy. Procedure: check in, get prepped. Wait, and wait longer: UCD is a Level 1 Trauma Center, and an accident with multiple casualties can divert theaters and staff, as it did that morning.
We watched a DVD on the laptop -- The Hours, because we’d heard it was good.
(What a gruesome film to watch before this procedure.)
Finally, they come, and the family - me - goes to the waiting room cum lobby with all the other families of the day. Or the hour.
I remember a tableau vivant. No sound in that I could not hear, with all the other conversations, and the in-and-out of the place. But I didn’t need to hear.
A surgeon called for the family of _________. They rose, a couple in their fifties at least. The surgeon explained:
They had found what they suspected,
They did what they could while there,
These are the options at this point.
They listened, they thanked graciously.
The surgeon apologized, stepped away, toward his next duties.
The family took several steps, then she fell to pieces, even though the body stood.
Years have passed and I can still see them. I can walk back to my seat. I can walk to the gift shop. All in memory.
(This is why the lessons about the present moment are essential: this present moment is passing fair. To remember so well taxes the heart, wrings the guts, brings tears.)
I don’t understand why people want to watch Grey’s Anatomy, or any thing of the kind.
Personally, I’m tired of being afraid:
It’s constantly implied that I am failing my failing students.
My daughter struggles in an education system stripped of art, stripped of movement other than the writing hand, with false friends and the spirit-vultures.
Many of my relations are suffering with health, or with redundancy.
There’s more: it seems that every fucking thing in my life is somehow threatened.
But you have your list -
and if you don’t…dance!
What keeps me going is Krishna’s admonition of Arjuna.
What keeps me going is the belief that one must see it through or start over from scratch.
What keeps me going is that there are some that would miss me as much as I miss some.
What keeps me going is knowing that if I cashed out, I’d be a hypocrite and water down everything that I’ve stood in front of near-two-thousand bodies and said.
Ahhhhhhh, a good shrug of the shoulders…
…the cervicals pop and crack, the shoulders still crack from the kendo…
…what was that bullshit I was saying?
Coffee, anyone?
French roast, strong to start with and brewed stronger...
The waiting room at UC Davis Medical Center.
Mom was in for a biopsy. Procedure: check in, get prepped. Wait, and wait longer: UCD is a Level 1 Trauma Center, and an accident with multiple casualties can divert theaters and staff, as it did that morning.
We watched a DVD on the laptop -- The Hours, because we’d heard it was good.
(What a gruesome film to watch before this procedure.)
Finally, they come, and the family - me - goes to the waiting room cum lobby with all the other families of the day. Or the hour.
I remember a tableau vivant. No sound in that I could not hear, with all the other conversations, and the in-and-out of the place. But I didn’t need to hear.
A surgeon called for the family of _________. They rose, a couple in their fifties at least. The surgeon explained:
They had found what they suspected,
They did what they could while there,
These are the options at this point.
They listened, they thanked graciously.
The surgeon apologized, stepped away, toward his next duties.
The family took several steps, then she fell to pieces, even though the body stood.
Years have passed and I can still see them. I can walk back to my seat. I can walk to the gift shop. All in memory.
(This is why the lessons about the present moment are essential: this present moment is passing fair. To remember so well taxes the heart, wrings the guts, brings tears.)
I don’t understand why people want to watch Grey’s Anatomy, or any thing of the kind.
Personally, I’m tired of being afraid:
It’s constantly implied that I am failing my failing students.
My daughter struggles in an education system stripped of art, stripped of movement other than the writing hand, with false friends and the spirit-vultures.
Many of my relations are suffering with health, or with redundancy.
There’s more: it seems that every fucking thing in my life is somehow threatened.
But you have your list -
and if you don’t…dance!
What keeps me going is Krishna’s admonition of Arjuna.
What keeps me going is the belief that one must see it through or start over from scratch.
What keeps me going is that there are some that would miss me as much as I miss some.
What keeps me going is knowing that if I cashed out, I’d be a hypocrite and water down everything that I’ve stood in front of near-two-thousand bodies and said.
Ahhhhhhh, a good shrug of the shoulders…
…the cervicals pop and crack, the shoulders still crack from the kendo…
…what was that bullshit I was saying?
Coffee, anyone?
French roast, strong to start with and brewed stronger...