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