013

For those who see the earth, but never see the world.

You luster like the sunny gold

Muster pain of twenty fold

Your eyes are eyes of pirate…

Seek all that which calls to you

Sorry souls to fall for you

Your heart a heart of pirate…

Your rapture knows no ethic

Condescendingly poetic

Your tongue a tongue of pirate

But one day comes…

All the joy you’ve felt was empty

Wasted on yourself

All the candor fills the ocean

Instead of the pictures on your shelf

You may have fooled the world

For fools come cheaply sold

The price was just your life

Your life a life of pyrite

Spatter

012

Hello, my name is Andrew Zywiec, and I'm going to change the world. The process through which I obtain information is highly exergonic, indicative of the spontaneity by which I become inspired. My mind operates and condenses data at 7.31E14 Hz, and the entropy reduction can only be substantiated by reviewing the enthalpic effects of that which is brilliant, not to mention it explains the electric blue color of my eyes. You see, greatness is achieved through great sacrifice. At the expense of every shred of happiness you would have ever fostered, greatness will wring you dry and you will know what it means to endure. But the feeling is analogous with the sun in the sky. It seems small relative to the horizon, but up close its magnitude is nearly incomprehensible. Speaking in the definitive, let truth be told; My smile carries the weight of heavy years, but the light of promising tomorrows. Seldom is the moment when concise and Socratic vernacular can wield its infinite character and escape my invasive disposition, but when I fall victim to the shallow throes of mediocrity I rise with unparalleled force. I protract with an effervescence that transcends the common grasps of comprehension. The pages of my book will emanate the musty smell of knowledge and bourbon. I heard that Hemingway liked his whiskey, and Poe was hooked on ope. I heard that Einstein fancied a lady, and Cobain shot up dope. I heard that Arnold juiced his pro-card, and that Jesus was a hoax. We all have a ghost in our history. But how I learn...

Faccio le ore piccole. Sto studiando, ma non perche' a devo, perche' IO VOGLIO. Ho venuto, ho visto, HO IMPARATO. Uno giorno, molti anni di adesso, tu dirai "io ho letto le parole nel libro di Andrea, e loro sono state come i leoni nel mio cuore."


Live long my Dearest Friend,

Spatter

011

To live in the shade for fear of sunburn is almost like not living at all.  You can stand outside of the fire; and the warmth will feel as a blanket on your being.  Step closer and it becomes hot...closer and it becomes pain...closer and it burns.  Still closer yet, you go up in flames.  Stay, and you will be consumed, go and you will be scarred.  There is another side of this story, however.  The fire needs fuel, or it will slowly burn, and the embers will turn to ash.  No one will feel the warmth of its glow, no one will see the beauty of its dance, nor hear the sound of its song.  It will not bring heat to the cold and weary; light to the dark and lost.  It will never live again.  People must give their lives so that we may benefit as a whole.  Find a fire that you believe must continue, and give yourself.  Maybe it's a person, maybe it's an instrument, or maybe it's an idea.  Be it as it may, when you give freely of yourself, you will find great peace, and you will find great love.  The kind of love that transcends our language and exists beyond this place of Aristotelian thisness.  It will draw wonderful people into your life, and it will lift you up.  You will live long, and you will know joy.

Spatter

010

I don't sleep so well these days.  Sometimes I feel like the weight of the entire world is crushing down on me.  Don't we all?  I rested my tired bones on a bench just off the shore; watched the sun rise over the islands.  That was my morning.  Sometimes the world is so beautiful I think I might break, and sometimes it hurts so much that I think I'll never make it.  It's perspective.  You can spend your whole life living, or you can spend your whole life dying.  Time will weather your soul no matter which you choose.  Sometimes it wears away the rougher edges, sometimes it just wears away the edges...Here are a few pennies, please keep them in your thoughts.  This is the skewed perspective of an aspiring doctor, if only one.

Shackled to this paradise,
Prisoner to a dream.
Enact the part of sacrifice,
Pretend it's pure and clean.

I do it for the passion,
That which compels me so.
I do it for the glory,
It tells me how to go:

A leader first must follow.
Does that make my righteous path but hollow?

Touch a life,
Save a life.
Lose a life,
Break a life.
To give your life,
It takes your life.
To live this life,
You must forsake your life.

Take it as you will.

As always, live long.

Spatter

009

This is the second letter I've ever written, and I truly hope it will be the last...For a Dear Friend; this is for you.

Dearest Friend,

Again.  I wake up.  The sheets damp from salt water.  You've not yet gone, but already I miss you so.  I miss the days that haven't come, the days that might never come.  It's not a feeling of the heart, it's a truth that buries itself deep in your guts, where it lives, and like cancer, it metastasizes.  It makes me want to leave this place; I want to go to where it doesn't snow, where it only rains.  The fleeting, sour sensation, it comes and goes less often now, but it resonates more.  Sometimes I think it's making me rotten, like the compost pile.  Sometimes I think it's eating my insides; I can feel maggots crawling in my chest, maggots wriggling in my mind.  We rake the leaves of the fallen; we pile it high and let it decompose, because its death brings life anew.  Maybe if you could just go far away, to a place where sunlight doesn't reach, a place where God's voice has never echoed, and my path will never find intersection.  My heart beats faster when I see you, I forget who I am, and I only know what I'm not.  Sometimes I wish I never met someone like you, like he wished he never met Will Hunting.  I can only ever wonder, wander in the shadow of your beauty; it shines brilliant like the raging nuclear fusion of the star.  I spend years searching for your answers.  You glow in ways that no chemistry has ever defined.  I don't think I'll ever understand.  You weren't meant for a mind like mine, I only ever thought I was awake until I knew your face, only ever dreaming until I witnessed your smile, and it shattered my world.  The ocean used to be so very big, I so very infinitesimal.  I am still so very small, but now the ocean grows smaller as well.  Do you see?  You've come to take up so much of the space, I can't love the ocean anymore, because I have spent it all on you.  I swim to the island where there is nothing; it has nothing for me, it is only a place to go when there is even less than nothing behind you.  The kind of less that rips your being into smaller pieces of yourself; the kind of less that lessens you.  Along the way I grow so very afraid; if I go there I'm never coming back.  The anchor drops from my chest to my abdomen, I can't breathe.  My stomach aches, I wretch and writhe, but I cannot escape you.  The sheets damp from the salt water.  I close my eyes, now this dream is the only dream I've ever had, so I don't know that it's a nightmare.  You seep into my veins, and I'm saturated by you; the air pours out my lungs.  There is no room for life in me.  Your Tiger iron eyes burn into my soul like molten gold off of the horizon, it envelops me, and I drown with a soft smile on my face; I am quiet because you have quieted me.  I cannot escape you.  I was born to love you, and I was born for that alone.  This I've come to know.  That's the end.  That's all that I remember from my life.  That is the only story I know.  I cannot tell you who I am, or from where I've come.  The first day of my life was the day that I learned who you are.  Before that is beyond the infinite lines that differentiate time.  It might exist, but if it does, I've long since left that place.  I learn that the universes are not parallel, but consecutive.  Again.  I wake up.  The thoughts race through my head.  I swim for my life.  The anchor drops from my chest to my abdomen.  I can't breathe...Can you see?  This is the first day; this is the last day; this day is my lifetime.  This place does not know the character of love and hate; they are the same.  I'll write you a letter if I ever make it to that island, Dearest Friend.  I'll write you a letter if I survive you.  People think that love is a feeling of the heart.  It's not a feeling of the heart, it's a truth, and it lasts into the longer days, where it lives, like a cancer.

Spatter 

008

I believe fully in the power of unconditional love.  My parents had it for me, and as a result, I am proud to be the man I am today.  I am a product of such selflessness.  Sometimes I cogitate on such things, I wonder how I will ever measure to the astounding bar that has been set before me.  Every day I attempt to spread that kindness; I smile at the stranger, say hello to the driver, spare my change for the beggar. These are the small things I can do. These are the small things we can all do.  We can only stand in the shadows of those who have cared so deeply for us, until some day, maybe, we will take it upon ourselves to care for another so.  Some will pass these acts on to lovers, some to children.  Some of us will find in our professions the opportunity to pass these acts on to strangers.  We will find magic again, as pure as it was when we were new.  There is still magic in the world. 

I compose two reactants in the lab...The clear liquids quite unremarkable.  But the relationship they foster when married together is like seeing the face of Father Time when he was young.  One gives to the other; selflessly, altruistically.  The electromagnetic waves burst from the beaker like it did in the beginning.  The birth of light and heat, made possible by the simple mechanism of giving.  The beaker glows as the sun does, and the cones in my eyes convert that light to the image of world that I see.  How cyclically perfect. Chemiluminescence is not just chemistry, it's philosophy. It's been many years since that day, and how I've changed.  Give.  Give to lovers, give to friends, give to strangers.  Give, and you may be forever altered by what you see, what you feel, what you learn.  As always, live long.

Spatter

007

As I sit here and stare out across the ocean, I am, of course, reminded of my own frailty.  I am humbled by its magnificence, my busy mind quieted by its song.  To love, to care, to breathe one in as if it were your life source, your oxygen. There is but one task, one price. Never injure the object of your affection.  This I know.  Whether your love be medicine, or whether your love be the one who is intimately threaded into your soul, she must be touched with tenderness, held with strong and gentle hands.  So often we inadvertently claim to love that which makes us happy.  I suppose most of us never see the conflict with that ideology.  Like toy soldiers we must lead when required to lead, and follow when required to follow.  We must build when required to build, and above all, let go when required to let go.  I hope you live well, and I hope you live long.

Spatter

006

Sometimes, every once in a while, you're on top of the world.  Sometimes that's not enough.  

Spatter

005

Make no mistake:  You are alone in this endeavor.  If it is brilliance you seek, dare not look for companionship, because it will leave you lesser.  This is not for the faint of heart, this is for those of iron will and complete emotional independence.  All of that which you give of yourself to anything other than your profession you can no longer offer your profession.  If you fail your patient, you cannot in good faith state that you offered your best, because you have not offered your best.  This is not a condemnation towards those who split themselves, I do not have any ill feelings for those who do not share my views and opinions.  This is either my most logical approach towards independence, or my rationale for fear of engagement.  They say Einstein spent the better part of his life locked in his home, searching for the theory to unify it all.  He failed, but his failure was pure and unadulterated.  We come here alone, with nothing but a shred of who we will become, and we leave here with nothing but a shred of who we were.  Maybe it's sad, or maybe it's beautiful.

Spatter

004

Awake.  Ever awake.  It seems like an endless road, and how appropriate that is.  To walk a path without finality is to live within infinity.  I look around a sea of faces, all of them determined, if not destined, to change the world.  We will come to rejoice in the saving of a life, we will understand the truth behind despair as we lose a patient, and we will ride the highs and lows of all the most marvelous and lugubrious events of others' lives.  So we study.  We never quit.  We know what is expected of us, we know what we must do.  It is with no regret that I give my life for such, the most noble of professions.  It is not without great reward.  No monies can adulterate this endeavor, no price could enforce its worth.  So I study.  Awake.  Ever awake.  Live long,

Spatter

003

As we wander though this strangely beautiful life, we define our existence by what is, and what is not.  There is little room for anything in the space between.  We love with little regard for self preservation, we hate with perfected irony, and we rationalize our intrinsic properties with science.  We are the only creature that has transcended the biological laws by which we have built our understanding.  We are either the beginning of an entirely new era, or a simple dead end in a small corner of the cosmos.  Either way, this letter is for you.

Dearest Friend,

                It seems like such long and tiresome periods exist to define the space between our hearts.  You don't really know who I am, and it stings like a dullness too deep to discriminate; you've never really known who I am. But I've known you.  With a smile on my face and with joy in my heart I have paid you attention, never losing a moment on you.  Like the child is fascinated by the penny, like the innocent soul plays in the imagination, I too have believed such things about you.  There are no words for that which you've inspired in me, just know that it's lovely.  You've been lovely.  You've been my muse.  When I think of you I fill with the bittersweet, and struggle to fight the wonderful tears that encompass a nature unrelenting; waves on the shores of my mind.  It knocks at my door; I stare out from behind the windowpane that becomes my allegory.  I suppose some would call me mad, but I've read stories about beautiful places, and those who inhabit these worlds are often mad as well, and I enjoy them so.  Maybe it's not such a bad thing, to be mad.  I thought I read about you in a Dickens novel, and then I thought I heard you in a song…I thought I touched you in a dream.  My waking hours are long; they reach into the smaller moments, where I spend my mind poor.  The bits and moments in between have been filled with you.  My dearest Friend, you haven't aged a day.  I've seen the Mona Lisa, but it was your smile that brought mystery to my life.  I've heard the Fur Elise, but it was your laugh that opened the windows of my soul.  The breeze flowed in, and it stole my heart away.  You were there, when I first saw Rome, and you were there, when I first felt love.  I'll never grow old, dearest Friend.  You taught me not to grow old.

The audience goes quiet now, the passers-by in the street.  No one needs to say it; no one needs to break the silence that comes for peace of mind.  It's been quiet for so long, and I miss you so very much.  I'm just a picture in your world, but this picture is mine and not yours.   Drawn on a simple piece of paper, you may not remember me at all. That was long ago, when you created, when you were small.  You were my artist; you splattered color on all of the white.  Like rain it all poured down, and like rain it helped life along.  I sense you everywhere I go.  Sunshine beams through the green of the trees, washing golden over the earth, sparkling on the riverbed; it’s your eyes.  Nature speaks with the flutter of wings and the buzz of the bees, the hummingbird drinks and the wooly bear crawls; it’s you breathing.  Shackled to this cold, bus stop bench, it’s bleak and gloomy, as the paper wrappers and wispy snow whisper down this road of concrete.  Seems I’ve come a long way from the place where I first knew you.  The road doesn’t end, and I see you less often now.  You’ve become less than real, and more than any dream.  It seems that such long and tiresome periods exist to define the space between our hearts.  You don't know me, but I’d like to believe I've known you.  I suppose I’ll never be sure, after all it’s been so long.   I’ll write it in a letter, one I’ve never meant to send.  The boy puts the firefly in a jar, with all the wonder in the world he watches until its light goes away.  If you knew what you were, you would no longer be what you are.  If only the boy knew that the price of his wonder would be the cost of a life.  No, you must never know, my dearest Friend.  I know who you are, and what you’ve been to me.  In relativity I find you, magnificent as the stones on Easter Island. There has been no sadness like this sadness you have touched me with.  The most vast and immeasurable feeling that I’ve ever had.  It spills when I move.  I love you, dearest Friend.  With all that I am, I love you. 

Spatter 

002

Excluding extreme circumstances, I have come to understand that opportunity is a mythical creature.  It will not come to knock on your door, you will not find it in your travels.  You may search far and wide, but it will not be hiding, waiting to be found.  Do not look for opportunity, rather look for yourself.  Ask not how the world will change you; change should be resolute and with purpose. Change is not manifested upon command, it comes slowly, after reflection and understanding. Instead, ask yourself how it is that you will alter the world, such that it will take a different, a better path. You are but a small quantum of energy; but you are the product of billions of years of cosmological and biological evolution, and what you do today, will certainly resonate into the billions of years ahead, and possibly, eternity.  This much must be true within the confines of logic.  There is, of course, the exception that proves the rule, the glaring contradiction.  You have but one opportunity, and it has already been given to you.  Make it count for something that you can be proud of.  These are just my thoughts on paper, so to speak.  As always, I remain excited to learn, prepared to change, and aware of my fallibility.  But until next time, please live long.  

Spatter

001

To sacrifice the greater hours of your life, and the smallest hours of your nights for a grand purpose: To heal those who are meant to stay, ease those who are meant to go, and to fight appropriately, within the confines of ethics and knowledge, for all those in between the great divide. To me, this is what it means to be a doctor. This privilege is a profound one; to observe life in its beginnings, its middles, and its ends.  This profession is one to be approached with outstanding humility, passion, and above all else, empathy.  The doctor stands between the patient and the vast unknown; the doctor must ameliorate the pain, both mental and physical, whilst maintaining perspective.  I've been in medical school for one week, and buried in these books, I feel alive.  Until next time, live long.