The Morphine Problem, The Little-Kid Fistfight, The All-Empty Cup
When I came out onto the street, there was an empty and withered-looking old man, crookedly slouched and fiercely expositing from one side of a wheelchair, "you'll kill anyone who's in your line of sight, I don't care if it's your own mother," and across the street a young woman exhorting two children to fight, "put her in a headlock, Daniel!"
The tremendous storm looming over the entire northwest corner of the sky since sunset ground steadily closer over the next two hours, sparking bolts of lighting from its shadowy base as it went, low over slumping ridges and the scattered steeples.
I drank tea and looked down into the empty cup for a long time. I spend a lot of time, lately, just looking at things. Just standing, and looking. Or, just walking, and looking, not doing anything else at all. The storm was nearly upon the town when I finally realized that over an hour had passed.
Here, when I could be catching up with my reading, or spending time with Microblaze in the old radiology clinic, now that we've figured out how it handles exceptions and why the development tools act up. Or I could even just go home early and try to go to bed at a reasonable hour. But no. Late at night I go from place to place and just look at things.
Something in me is taking its gradual time to heal. This seems to be how I do it. Sometimes, I admit, I wish it was not so slow. But there's no use feeling sorry, or impatient.
In contrast to so many other ailments, for which sleep is the prescribed remedy, this feels frustratingly like a sickness that heals when you don't sleep.
In the park this evening, there was a mysterious cardboard box, and a glass angel ornament on one of the young pine trees. There were fresh lawnmower tracks spiraling lazily through the grass, like cartoon winds, or cartoon waves.
I woke up very late today and took a long, slow, meandering walk through the University campus before I arrived at work. When I got there, I proceeded to solve our morphine problem. Our morphine problem, in contrast to most, was purely abstract and logical, not a chemical dependence. The curious thing about morphine is that, unlike the vast preponderance of organic molecules, it contains a bond that is mutually shared by three different rings in the compound. This feature of the chemical structure confused KLOTHO greatly, and it took three days, some swearing, and a wall-size flowchart until the subtle logical flaw in the code that failed to account for the eccentricity became apparent. I realized only now how much fun I could have had making annoying jokes and clever remarks about "our morphine problem", but now our morphine problem is solved and the opportunity is gone. It didn't seem to occur to anyone else to make this joke, although on one afternoon Dr. K. went on a lengthy tangent about the biological features of the opium poppy and the various pharmacological aspects of opium derivatives.
Today I also had a fist-fight with a little kid. This was a first. At the school, Sifu came up to me and said "Mr. S______, when you're done stretching, go outside and do random blocks and strikes with C_____." I thought, "Surely he must mean someone else," and I looked around in puzzlement for anyone else closer to my age and size who appeared to be waiting on me, but he really was indicating C_____, who is just a kid, and who was earnestly fidgeting around and watching me. In fact, he is presently the only kid in the whole school. (Unlike many martial arts schools, we don't aim at teaching young children, but there have been occasional exceptions over the years.) "Um. Are you sure I'm not too tall for him?" I said. "No, no, it'll be good for him," Sifu said. So we took some padded gloves and the two of us walked out to the borrowed basketball court. I felt weirdly like a student teacher or a hired tutor helping with long division or fractions. At first I thought maybe I would have to get down and fight on one knee, but the little guy seemed to do just fine despite the rather large disparity in height (and corresponding arm length). In fact, after a few minutes, he said, "You can go faster if you want." I was fairly impressed. For someone so young, he seemed to have a good knack for mixing it up, even with a big person. (Which feels weird because I am, in no wise, an especially big person.) It's tough to be the only person around that's your size. He threw a well-timed kick, but his leg was so much shorter that it just bounced dumbly off my shin, scarcely after his foot came off the ground.
As people grow up, they seem to gain so many hesitations.
It's a particularly strange sensation to try to really, really attack someone (no faking) in a way that's also careful and gentle. I am oddly good at this.
My head has been cluttered with unwanted thoughts again. I find that I'm lonely, often, but not just for being alone. I began to sadly say to myself, "Of all the people I've known, I've never ... " but this stopped with, "well you've also never taken a crap on a gold toilet, but you don't spend your evenings quietly pining for one."
I spent a long while watching the storm come in. The squall line came in low enough to reflect the city lights, brightly. There was spectacular lightning, branching to every corner of the sky, and thunder echoing in every direction. Momentary veins of current ramifying the underside of the towering thunderheads, pulsing white-hot blood. The path of least resistance suddenly revealed with a great flash of light in the sky. Different heights, and different potentials. I found myself strangely unconcerned about the magnitude or the proximity of the lightning, despite the fact that I was watching from the top of a parking garage. Even so, as the storm rolled in, I kept thinking of all the tiny insects I find myself going out of the way to avoid stepping on or washing down the drain, and how even, despite the greatest care, I still accidentally crush or drown a few. And I felt very small, and very incidental.
Even if they are well-intentioned, I doubt the forces of nature are capable of perfect preservation. Sometimes you just have to walk down the sidewalk, or brush your teeth. Sometimes you just have to have thunder and lightning.
"... I don't care if it's your own mother!"
The tremendous storm looming over the entire northwest corner of the sky since sunset ground steadily closer over the next two hours, sparking bolts of lighting from its shadowy base as it went, low over slumping ridges and the scattered steeples.
I drank tea and looked down into the empty cup for a long time. I spend a lot of time, lately, just looking at things. Just standing, and looking. Or, just walking, and looking, not doing anything else at all. The storm was nearly upon the town when I finally realized that over an hour had passed.
Here, when I could be catching up with my reading, or spending time with Microblaze in the old radiology clinic, now that we've figured out how it handles exceptions and why the development tools act up. Or I could even just go home early and try to go to bed at a reasonable hour. But no. Late at night I go from place to place and just look at things.
Something in me is taking its gradual time to heal. This seems to be how I do it. Sometimes, I admit, I wish it was not so slow. But there's no use feeling sorry, or impatient.
In contrast to so many other ailments, for which sleep is the prescribed remedy, this feels frustratingly like a sickness that heals when you don't sleep.
In the park this evening, there was a mysterious cardboard box, and a glass angel ornament on one of the young pine trees. There were fresh lawnmower tracks spiraling lazily through the grass, like cartoon winds, or cartoon waves.
I woke up very late today and took a long, slow, meandering walk through the University campus before I arrived at work. When I got there, I proceeded to solve our morphine problem. Our morphine problem, in contrast to most, was purely abstract and logical, not a chemical dependence. The curious thing about morphine is that, unlike the vast preponderance of organic molecules, it contains a bond that is mutually shared by three different rings in the compound. This feature of the chemical structure confused KLOTHO greatly, and it took three days, some swearing, and a wall-size flowchart until the subtle logical flaw in the code that failed to account for the eccentricity became apparent. I realized only now how much fun I could have had making annoying jokes and clever remarks about "our morphine problem", but now our morphine problem is solved and the opportunity is gone. It didn't seem to occur to anyone else to make this joke, although on one afternoon Dr. K. went on a lengthy tangent about the biological features of the opium poppy and the various pharmacological aspects of opium derivatives.
Today I also had a fist-fight with a little kid. This was a first. At the school, Sifu came up to me and said "Mr. S______, when you're done stretching, go outside and do random blocks and strikes with C_____." I thought, "Surely he must mean someone else," and I looked around in puzzlement for anyone else closer to my age and size who appeared to be waiting on me, but he really was indicating C_____, who is just a kid, and who was earnestly fidgeting around and watching me. In fact, he is presently the only kid in the whole school. (Unlike many martial arts schools, we don't aim at teaching young children, but there have been occasional exceptions over the years.) "Um. Are you sure I'm not too tall for him?" I said. "No, no, it'll be good for him," Sifu said. So we took some padded gloves and the two of us walked out to the borrowed basketball court. I felt weirdly like a student teacher or a hired tutor helping with long division or fractions. At first I thought maybe I would have to get down and fight on one knee, but the little guy seemed to do just fine despite the rather large disparity in height (and corresponding arm length). In fact, after a few minutes, he said, "You can go faster if you want." I was fairly impressed. For someone so young, he seemed to have a good knack for mixing it up, even with a big person. (Which feels weird because I am, in no wise, an especially big person.) It's tough to be the only person around that's your size. He threw a well-timed kick, but his leg was so much shorter that it just bounced dumbly off my shin, scarcely after his foot came off the ground.
As people grow up, they seem to gain so many hesitations.
It's a particularly strange sensation to try to really, really attack someone (no faking) in a way that's also careful and gentle. I am oddly good at this.
My head has been cluttered with unwanted thoughts again. I find that I'm lonely, often, but not just for being alone. I began to sadly say to myself, "Of all the people I've known, I've never ... " but this stopped with, "well you've also never taken a crap on a gold toilet, but you don't spend your evenings quietly pining for one."
I spent a long while watching the storm come in. The squall line came in low enough to reflect the city lights, brightly. There was spectacular lightning, branching to every corner of the sky, and thunder echoing in every direction. Momentary veins of current ramifying the underside of the towering thunderheads, pulsing white-hot blood. The path of least resistance suddenly revealed with a great flash of light in the sky. Different heights, and different potentials. I found myself strangely unconcerned about the magnitude or the proximity of the lightning, despite the fact that I was watching from the top of a parking garage. Even so, as the storm rolled in, I kept thinking of all the tiny insects I find myself going out of the way to avoid stepping on or washing down the drain, and how even, despite the greatest care, I still accidentally crush or drown a few. And I felt very small, and very incidental.
Even if they are well-intentioned, I doubt the forces of nature are capable of perfect preservation. Sometimes you just have to walk down the sidewalk, or brush your teeth. Sometimes you just have to have thunder and lightning.
"... I don't care if it's your own mother!"