Etymologically, the apocalypse just means revealing something. Maybe it will be something nice?
On our woods run today, Miles was tense. He always is in the woods. You never know what is lurking in the trees, those towering Tolkienesque creakers who on a windy day sound like the sound effect they use for a door in a haunted house. The air carries scents of a multitude of dogs, past and present. Dogs who have trespassed on the kingdom Miles rules and that threaten our very existence. Sometimes a salamander darts by which is terrifying and confusing, and when the horses appear, God only knows if they are actually pestilence, war, famine and death with sneaky riders who say things like "good morning" or "thank you for having your dog on a leash."
Tomorrow being the last day of the year, I keep feeling like I have forgotten to do something. Going through the list:
-new calendar purchased? check
-a couple of scary goals set for 2019? check
-self-review of 2018 bringing new levels of concern about my adequacy as a human being? check
What if 2019 reveals itself to be the best season of Saturday Night Live ever known? I feel like that would directly correlate with End Times.
Lately many of my hospice patients have been younger than I am. Also lately, I keep trying to channel Wendell Berry and find peace in wild things when I worry about the fate of my children but instead I end up waking up, bolt upright in a cold sweat and wondering what I can do to fix everything for everybody including my children, the children at our border and the relative youngsters in hospice.
What if it turns out mindful meditation is the answer but I am too restless to sit still? What if God meets me on the other side and tells me I wasted much too much time worrying but He/She forgives me anyway and it turns out even poodles aren't anxious in heaven so all our runs are off leash?
I bailed on my January marathon but have signed up for one in April. It happens on my Mom's birthday. I will be running it with one of my best friends. Though truth be told he will always be one and one half steps ahead of me. I am not worried though.
Big goals: marathon, piano recital, don't worry so much.
What if I qualify for Boston but don't get in the race because it is so impacted? What if I forget where I am in the middle of my piano recital? I mean I won't forget where I am in terms of my place in space, as I will be very aware that I am sitting on a piano bench at the Morris Graves Museum of Art probably in some kind of fancy dress. But I might forget what comes next in the Beethoven Fugue or the slow movement of Barber, and then what will I do? On Christmas Eve I was playing in church and the veneer faux-ivory top of the A below middle C flew off during Scarlatti and hit me in the nose. True story.
I worry about racism. And misogyny. About government shutdowns, refugees being barred from entry to a safe haven and how on earth any of us will afford healthcare. I worry that people are too mean to each other and miss out on so many beautiful things. I worry that my piano will die and not be a good candidate for resuscitation. I worry that my son won't live through prison, and my daughters will never trust that the world can be a good place to be given that people like Brett Kavanaugh get to act as a life-appointed moral compass for our seriously off-the-rails country. I worry that pushing 50 I may be past all hope of a marathon PR. I am already worried about my next colonoscopy, which is in 5 years.
The weird thing about aging, besides colonoscopies and empty nests, is how the self shrinks but the spirit expands so that the sack I walk around in feels both less significant and more alive than it ever has before. Chrono-astrono-geographically I am but a blip. But what a blip it is/was/might be!
One way or another, the apocalypse is coming. Its a revelatory certainty, with a dash of hope. I am not worried. Tomorrow is the last day and
OH!!! I know what I was forgetting!
Designate a theme song for 2019.
Life may be unkind but I refuse to stay down.
When love walks in the room,
Everybody stand up.
Sunday, December 30, 2018
Tuesday, December 4, 2018
Professor Marathon B. Training's Ted Talk on the Purpose of Living in This Miserable World
My dog and I almost died when he ran through an electrified barbed wire fence and chased steers and was going to get shot and I ran onto the field and got charged, head butted and thrown by an angry steer. Three times.
I do not need a lecture on the idiocy of letting my dog get into this predicament. He got away from me before I could leash him. I should probably be shot and might well have been. I might still be depending on how people respond to my most recent editorial regarding the NRA and their command that doctors "stay in their lane", albeit soaked with the blood and paralysis and brain injuries of their shot up patients. But I digress like a cow digests.
This story is not meant to be funny or cute. I could not talk well for a few days from all the screaming taxing my larynx. I still have whiplash, my ribs hurt, my sternum hurts, my vertebrae hurt, my femurs hurt. I could not do much but cry for the first 36 hours after this event. And me being who I am I was really worried about the steers. Except that one who was taking absolutely no shit from anyone. He will be fine.
And it completely threw me off my planned long run this week. It was all I could do to drag myself to the kleenex box to mop my tears. A twenty plus miler was not going to happen. Runners crack me up. It becomes all about getting the miles in, logging it on Strava and not getting too far off course. We do special incantations to avoid injury, and read essentially the same three articles over and over again in Runner's World (inspirational runner story, how to run your best 5K/10K/marathon, the best shoes of the year). The gravity of near death is only heavier by its impact on the marathon training cycle. Though it might be said that racing around a field, screaming, being attacked by an enormous, muscled, angry animal while people with guns are telling you what a fuck-up you are is one heck of a workout.
Running the last couple of days, finally able to move and breathe and not feeling quite as traumatized, I find myself wondering if I should bag this planned marathon, COWL it quits, STEER myself in a different direction, and/or just take some time to stop and smell the manure.
Marathons are the best, beastly and blessed. They involve just the right number of layers, so that you can start without freezing and shed later to avoid heat delirium. At the end they give you inadequately sized reflective blankets that in my opinion should be replaced by cozy, footed onesies, especially when you have to walk seventeen thousand more miles to get to your gear. Seriously, at the NYC marathon, the volunteers have to cheer people on to keep moving AFTER they finish the marathon for the long walk to the UPS van holding their stuff, which seems to be parked in New Jersey. Marathons teach you patience. How to manage pain. When to push, when to hold back. How to time bodily functions. And how to bore your friends and family to death, talking about marathons.
Once upon a time a friend and I were running in the Palo Alto Hills, back before the trails were paved and highly populated by physically active Stanford polyglots. Back on the west side we encountered a herd of cattle. Every single one of them ceased cud-chewing to fix us in their freaky stare and it stopped us in our tracks. At the time we joked nervously about the danger, but I now know we could well have been stampeded and back then we would not even have been able to post about it on Face Book! Morally I remain neutral on the right of cows to intimidate and attack when you cross on to their territory. Like mountain lions on trail runs or sharks after paddling to the outside, it is just part of the deal. It is not something to like or hate or spend too much time thinking about.
Taking away the hubris of marathon training and the image of guns, human rage and bovine wrecking balls, I am left with what is our common Achilles heel. That is to say, vulnerability. If this was film noir, it is a small child standing alone in an empty place with no clear ground or sky or boundaries or beginning or end. Probably somewhere in Sweden.
If this were a dating website, our bios would all read "attempts to deny being vulnerable".
If this were a poem it would read
I could be dead
Having watched my mother puke up chemotherapy all night then go to work the next morning
And my father get his entire heart replaced like it was some rusty car part
And my son dive into a destructive vat of drugs and violence
And my patients struggle with diagnoses while trying to maintain some semblance of dignity
I sometimes wonder what the point of life is.
When my daughter asked me that very question I answered the only true thing:
To be kind to others.
Running marathons is nice too, mainly because it teaches you stuff, like any hard thing does.
It will be awhile before I can look a cow in the face again though.
I do not need a lecture on the idiocy of letting my dog get into this predicament. He got away from me before I could leash him. I should probably be shot and might well have been. I might still be depending on how people respond to my most recent editorial regarding the NRA and their command that doctors "stay in their lane", albeit soaked with the blood and paralysis and brain injuries of their shot up patients. But I digress like a cow digests.
This story is not meant to be funny or cute. I could not talk well for a few days from all the screaming taxing my larynx. I still have whiplash, my ribs hurt, my sternum hurts, my vertebrae hurt, my femurs hurt. I could not do much but cry for the first 36 hours after this event. And me being who I am I was really worried about the steers. Except that one who was taking absolutely no shit from anyone. He will be fine.
And it completely threw me off my planned long run this week. It was all I could do to drag myself to the kleenex box to mop my tears. A twenty plus miler was not going to happen. Runners crack me up. It becomes all about getting the miles in, logging it on Strava and not getting too far off course. We do special incantations to avoid injury, and read essentially the same three articles over and over again in Runner's World (inspirational runner story, how to run your best 5K/10K/marathon, the best shoes of the year). The gravity of near death is only heavier by its impact on the marathon training cycle. Though it might be said that racing around a field, screaming, being attacked by an enormous, muscled, angry animal while people with guns are telling you what a fuck-up you are is one heck of a workout.
Running the last couple of days, finally able to move and breathe and not feeling quite as traumatized, I find myself wondering if I should bag this planned marathon, COWL it quits, STEER myself in a different direction, and/or just take some time to stop and smell the manure.
Marathons are the best, beastly and blessed. They involve just the right number of layers, so that you can start without freezing and shed later to avoid heat delirium. At the end they give you inadequately sized reflective blankets that in my opinion should be replaced by cozy, footed onesies, especially when you have to walk seventeen thousand more miles to get to your gear. Seriously, at the NYC marathon, the volunteers have to cheer people on to keep moving AFTER they finish the marathon for the long walk to the UPS van holding their stuff, which seems to be parked in New Jersey. Marathons teach you patience. How to manage pain. When to push, when to hold back. How to time bodily functions. And how to bore your friends and family to death, talking about marathons.
Once upon a time a friend and I were running in the Palo Alto Hills, back before the trails were paved and highly populated by physically active Stanford polyglots. Back on the west side we encountered a herd of cattle. Every single one of them ceased cud-chewing to fix us in their freaky stare and it stopped us in our tracks. At the time we joked nervously about the danger, but I now know we could well have been stampeded and back then we would not even have been able to post about it on Face Book! Morally I remain neutral on the right of cows to intimidate and attack when you cross on to their territory. Like mountain lions on trail runs or sharks after paddling to the outside, it is just part of the deal. It is not something to like or hate or spend too much time thinking about.
Taking away the hubris of marathon training and the image of guns, human rage and bovine wrecking balls, I am left with what is our common Achilles heel. That is to say, vulnerability. If this was film noir, it is a small child standing alone in an empty place with no clear ground or sky or boundaries or beginning or end. Probably somewhere in Sweden.
If this were a dating website, our bios would all read "attempts to deny being vulnerable".
If this were a poem it would read
I could be dead
Having watched my mother puke up chemotherapy all night then go to work the next morning
And my father get his entire heart replaced like it was some rusty car part
And my son dive into a destructive vat of drugs and violence
And my patients struggle with diagnoses while trying to maintain some semblance of dignity
I sometimes wonder what the point of life is.
When my daughter asked me that very question I answered the only true thing:
To be kind to others.
Running marathons is nice too, mainly because it teaches you stuff, like any hard thing does.
It will be awhile before I can look a cow in the face again though.
Thursday, November 22, 2018
Thanksgiving Pantoum
There must be trash bags all across America filled with lettuce.
Escherichia coli has no place
Imagine a gram negative guest face to face
With grandma, head bowed saying grace.
Escherichia coli has no place
Let us pray they go away
With grandma, head bowed saying grace
Holy immunized.
Let us pray they go away
Gram's positive stuffing a turkey is Okay
Holy immunized
By tradition.
Gram's positive stuffing a turkey is Okay
Her daughter is strong and her granddaughter gay
By tradition
Macy's helium parade plays while giblets boil.
Her daughter is strong and her granddaughter gay
Obama served food with volunteers yesterday
Macy's helium parade plays while giblets boil
Kindness seems old-fashioned.
Obama served food with volunteers yesterday
While California dutifully raked its forest
Kindness seems old-fashioned
Like colored Christmas lights.
While California dutifully rakes its forest
Imagine seeing eye to eye
Like colored Christmas lights
Softly blinking.
Imagine seeing eye to eye
Welcoming strangers with no fuss
Except Escherichia coli
In trash bags all across America.
Escherichia coli has no place
Imagine a gram negative guest face to face
With grandma, head bowed saying grace.
Escherichia coli has no place
Let us pray they go away
With grandma, head bowed saying grace
Holy immunized.
Let us pray they go away
Gram's positive stuffing a turkey is Okay
Holy immunized
By tradition.
Gram's positive stuffing a turkey is Okay
Her daughter is strong and her granddaughter gay
By tradition
Macy's helium parade plays while giblets boil.
Her daughter is strong and her granddaughter gay
Obama served food with volunteers yesterday
Macy's helium parade plays while giblets boil
Kindness seems old-fashioned.
Obama served food with volunteers yesterday
While California dutifully raked its forest
Kindness seems old-fashioned
Like colored Christmas lights.
While California dutifully rakes its forest
Imagine seeing eye to eye
Like colored Christmas lights
Softly blinking.
Imagine seeing eye to eye
Welcoming strangers with no fuss
Except Escherichia coli
In trash bags all across America.
Monday, November 5, 2018
Mouses and Cookies
When you visit your son in prison, you are going to want to touch the electric fence.
You hope the jolt travels
up the tendons of your hands, gripping wire,
to the heart's pacemaker
converting the nauseating irregular flip-flops
to a beat more compatible with life.
You are going to want to know
where the thousands of men could be hidden
while you walk a path that could be
the surface of the moon
if the moon was silent and blazing with heat and smelled of cattle.
You'd want to have worn the right outfit;
it turns out blue jeans are not allowed.
You can't change on prison grounds so you'll use a mortuary parking lot,
anxious in a different way than the parking lot changes you've done
at the beach before surfing.
Your heat-swollen finger won't release your wedding ring,
but the guard lets you visit still.
You'll encounter impatience at your lack
of understanding
of procedure
while other prisoners' families seem to know
to remove their spiked heels and the sneakers of their children
and place them on the desk for inspection.
When you apologize and
tears spring to your eyes,
brown-clad guys with firearms like jewelry on belts
melt and soften. "Have a nice visit."
You'll be placed at a table
too low for legs to rest under.
A prisoner in blues moves three chairs in place.
All prisoners must face
the front.
You'll sit and watch lovers,
families and elderly parents visiting men.
You'll be too nervous to talk for long minutes.
And then he comes in.
You'll stand and raise a hand
like a hundred other times
at the park or the school yard
to show him where you are.
He'll walk to you
and when you embrace for the first time in two years,
the tears finally flow. He is solid
and real with those
same blue eyes.
When you walk across the hot, desolate moon
to see your son
they'll give you two hours.
You'll talk of small things
and he will express remorse and love.
You'll touch his hands
which is allowed
and buy him Gummy Bears
from the incarcerated vending machines.
You rake over him with a mother's eyes,
see the missing tooth and the body
that otherwise looks whole,
the face so young and the tattoos like armor.
One you notice when he turns his head,
nape of neck,
"Sorry Mama".
You'll wish tattoos were
something worth scolding him for. You'll implore
him to be safe. To brush teeth.
In your head you are screaming
"just don't die!"
but what you say is a tender good bye.
A slow walk back
across the moon's cattle-shit scented path.
You'd thought you'd go for a run
but the fatigue
is like that after a marathon
or the end of a forty eight hour shift as an intern in the ICU,
all cortisol and bile and deep aches.
Next day you will run
eighteen miles in a town you don't know,
past nice homes and fire orange trees and the
University's quad.
You'll listen to your book and then some music,
folding prison thoughts into the recesses of your mind.
Your water bottle electrolyte tablet
tastes of lemon-lime.
An old man will walk by you
and chastise you for running with an electronic device.
You'll smile at him
and feel your heart break into a million pieces.
You'll wonder if he'd have hurled righteous advice
or rather just locked eyes and nodded to a fellow traveler,
if he'd known your deep connection to the run,
each and every one.
And that you'd just been to prison
to visit your son.
You hope the jolt travels
up the tendons of your hands, gripping wire,
to the heart's pacemaker
converting the nauseating irregular flip-flops
to a beat more compatible with life.
You are going to want to know
where the thousands of men could be hidden
while you walk a path that could be
the surface of the moon
if the moon was silent and blazing with heat and smelled of cattle.
You'd want to have worn the right outfit;
it turns out blue jeans are not allowed.
You can't change on prison grounds so you'll use a mortuary parking lot,
anxious in a different way than the parking lot changes you've done
at the beach before surfing.
Your heat-swollen finger won't release your wedding ring,
but the guard lets you visit still.
You'll encounter impatience at your lack
of understanding
of procedure
while other prisoners' families seem to know
to remove their spiked heels and the sneakers of their children
and place them on the desk for inspection.
When you apologize and
tears spring to your eyes,
brown-clad guys with firearms like jewelry on belts
melt and soften. "Have a nice visit."
You'll be placed at a table
too low for legs to rest under.
A prisoner in blues moves three chairs in place.
All prisoners must face
the front.
You'll sit and watch lovers,
families and elderly parents visiting men.
You'll be too nervous to talk for long minutes.
And then he comes in.
You'll stand and raise a hand
like a hundred other times
at the park or the school yard
to show him where you are.
He'll walk to you
and when you embrace for the first time in two years,
the tears finally flow. He is solid
and real with those
same blue eyes.
When you walk across the hot, desolate moon
to see your son
they'll give you two hours.
You'll talk of small things
and he will express remorse and love.
You'll touch his hands
which is allowed
and buy him Gummy Bears
from the incarcerated vending machines.
You rake over him with a mother's eyes,
see the missing tooth and the body
that otherwise looks whole,
the face so young and the tattoos like armor.
One you notice when he turns his head,
nape of neck,
"Sorry Mama".
You'll wish tattoos were
something worth scolding him for. You'll implore
him to be safe. To brush teeth.
In your head you are screaming
"just don't die!"
but what you say is a tender good bye.
A slow walk back
across the moon's cattle-shit scented path.
You'd thought you'd go for a run
but the fatigue
is like that after a marathon
or the end of a forty eight hour shift as an intern in the ICU,
all cortisol and bile and deep aches.
Next day you will run
eighteen miles in a town you don't know,
past nice homes and fire orange trees and the
University's quad.
You'll listen to your book and then some music,
folding prison thoughts into the recesses of your mind.
Your water bottle electrolyte tablet
tastes of lemon-lime.
An old man will walk by you
and chastise you for running with an electronic device.
You'll smile at him
and feel your heart break into a million pieces.
You'll wonder if he'd have hurled righteous advice
or rather just locked eyes and nodded to a fellow traveler,
if he'd known your deep connection to the run,
each and every one.
And that you'd just been to prison
to visit your son.
Saturday, October 20, 2018
Hair of the Dog
I am scarfing down strawberry pancakes made from the best ingredients in my beautiful house after a run at the beach. My dog accidentally bit me today when I foolishly put my hand between his raging mouth and some fierce chihuahuas he had a serious problem with, apparently. It was foggy this morning but the sun is coming out. A good friend gets married today. Beyonce's Lemonade is playing on my retro turntable. The puncture in my finger is deep and I am on a couple of immune-suppressing drugs, so antibiotics it is. PSA: If you get bit by a dog and most especially a cat, take antibiotics. I rarely recommend antibiotics, as they are the devil's own work in many ways, but I have seen too many hospital stays and hand function loss from lack of attention to cat/dog bites before they become pus-filled disasters.
"Sorry human I was just trying to defend you from those chihuahuas"
As a physician, I know these things and so much more. I yield the power of diagnosis and prescribe drafts like herbalist healers of old. I get to wear a stethoscope and in fact feel naked without it. I am paid well and do not suffer hunger or fear that I won't have a roof over the head of my family. I will be paying off medical school loans till I die. I missed many moments of my children's lives. My son once called UCSF Hospital on Parnassus "Mommy's house". My son is in prison now, probably my fault. I am on call almost every day and night. I got called several times on my beach run today. I worry about my patients all the time. I cried at work the other day and I never cry. The flowers the nurses gave me continue to buoy my spirit.
I am training for a marathon. I love running. Today the fog at the beach was like something out of Edgar Allen Poe. Or Hitchcock. But I was not afraid. I am brave, fierce, the way women can be. When my family doesn't answer my texts, I assume they are dead. It is possible I read too many books. It is possible I have seen too much. Like the guy who got his arm run over by a 747, the gal who threw up blood and spattered the walls and ceilings like modern art, the gallons of ascitic fluid flowing through my catheter to a vacuum bottle while I chat with a bright yellow human being.
"Hey, did ya see how I chased those birds?"
I can play almost anything on the piano. It is, I suppose, "my gift." When it is flowing right, I can disappear into the music, letting it carry me. There is no effort. I look down at my fingers at these times and wonder how they are doing it. I once dreamed of being a great pianist. Music school had many blessings but it also crushed the soul out of me. Such hubris, such competition. There is only room for a few to use their gift as a profession. My piano is about 70 years old, and parts are not working. I cannot afford a new piano. I get jealous of people who have a lot of money and can barely play their instrument, which can sit gathering dust only it does not do that because the maid keeps it clean. I sometimes stun myself wth my ability to feel aggrieved. Like Melania, I might just be the most bullied person on the planet. Eye. Roll.
I love dogs. When Miles bit me today, it shocked me in the way that life always does. Each moment of life is filled with sharp fangs. Sharp fangs surrounded by golden curls, soft and comforting. And in the center a beating heart that while doing everything in its power to oxygenate you will eventually have to stop, leaving you cold and blue-lipped. Yet the world could end today and I would regret not a minute of it.
Yet the world could end today, and I would regret not a minute of it.
"What is this regret of which you speak?"
Thursday, October 11, 2018
Autumn Grrrrl
Morning Trail Run in Autumn
Dark bones rising
Redwood women line the path
Brown fronds crushed under foot
Releasing molecules
That travel up strong thighs
Along navel, over rise of breasts
Tracing neck and chin
Leaving a taste on parted lips
En route to nostrils and brain
Where the sweet, crisp, musty smell of autumn
Explodes into a trillion memories
Of October runs, but especially one-
A girl child flying through the air
Landing in the soft embrace of
Freshly raked leaves.
J Heidmann 10/11/18
#InternationalDayoftheGirl
Dark bones rising
Redwood women line the path
Brown fronds crushed under foot
Releasing molecules
That travel up strong thighs
Along navel, over rise of breasts
Tracing neck and chin
Leaving a taste on parted lips
En route to nostrils and brain
Where the sweet, crisp, musty smell of autumn
Explodes into a trillion memories
Of October runs, but especially one-
A girl child flying through the air
Landing in the soft embrace of
Freshly raked leaves.
J Heidmann 10/11/18
#InternationalDayoftheGirl
Autumn Grrrl circa 1973
Wednesday, September 26, 2018
Female Ambitions
Every good student of western classical music has read Charles Rosen. He grew up with a Juilliard shaped spoon in his mouth, opted not to major in music because he "already knew more" as a freshman teenager than most of the postgraduates in the music department at Princeton. He was a brilliant guy and wrote textbooks that sit on my shelves still.
In fact I pulled one off the shelf this week as I am preparing a recital of piano sonatas. His book Sonata Forms beckoned to me as I am trying to define in my own mind how Scarlatti, Berg, Beethoven, Barber and Mozart sonatas are all the same species. Like Poodles and Doberman Pinschers are both dogs, along with Shar Peis and Dalmatians, somehow a sonata is a sonata is a sonata.Which is a vague term at best, meaning "sounded"from the Italian sonare, I suppose to point out that there were no words. Which was kind of an interesting concept, that music could be abstract and still have something to say, with that something being up to the listener.
I am taking this week off of my paid work in order to practice for longer chunks of time than I am normally allowed. Ass to piano bench, I traverse the centuries, 18th to 20th. My dog Zoe prefers Mozart and Beethoven to Berg and Barber. But she is very critical of the Beethoven, often just staring at me while I play the fugue of opus 110, her cataract eyes boring into my soul. If she could write, she would write like Charles Rosen, one hundred percent sure she was the smartest Golden Doodle in the room.
I have been running this week too. My streak is over. The two days I took off after 366 in a row were harder than the streak itself. But I feel pretty much back to normal now. I can start obsessing about some unreachable PR in the half or marathon again, without the excuse of just running for the sake of running. Meditative spirituality is again shelved, the purity of my self-righteous daily run replaced by faster times on my Strava feed. I shall strive to drive my aging legs into submission without contrition.
Nah, I don't mean it. I am just a 49 year old woman trying to find my way in this world. I like running and playing piano an awful lot, and am fortunate enough to be able to take a week off to concentrate a bit more on my non-physician parts.
Charles Rosen notes that sonatas were really quite the thing for the female amateur musician. In fact I nearly choked on my coffee while reading this in Sonata Forms one early morning this week, while waiting for an appropriate time to start hammering the keys without completely destroying the lives of the teenagers in the house.
This is near the start of the book, and though I have read this book before as young music student, I somehow did not remember this part. Of course music school is full of male music professors mansplaining Mozart, Haydn behind their thick spectacles, their representative white maleness just the tip of the ice Berg. I imagine the footnote in the passage above was the result of some female in his life choking on her own coffee and saying, "really, Charles?"
Living while being female is problematic.
Sonatas are abstract, which means to "draw away, divert, detach." Wordless sounds that pull one away from whatever tethers. Scarlatti unmoors as completely as Berg, across the divide of two hundred years and under the fingers of quite a few kick-ass female amateur and professional pianists. We use our womanly powers to distract, to interpret the secrets of long dead composers and cast our spell on unsuspecting men who think the world is exclusively about them. They think I am entertaining myself in my parlor, playing simple sonatas, she said with an evil laugh.
If sonatas were dogs, my recital would jump start with a Jack Russell Terrier (Scarlatti), sashay to a Standard Poodle (Mozart), then proceed to a Pug (Berg). After a break, behold the Border Collie (Beethoven) and, at last, the All-American Mutt (Barber). Here is the program:
1. Busy and energetic
2. Prissy and intelligent
3. Weird and dramatic
*intermission-please take your sonata out for a walk*
4. Overly smart and obsessive
5. Will do anything to impress you and likes to kiss you square on the mouth
What I learned in music school is there is no way to perfection but ass on bench.
What I learned from medical school is to use all my senses to abstract disease.
What I learned from running for a year is to never leave the house without running gear.
What I learned from my dogs is we are less likely to get into trouble when we exercise every day.
What I learned from growing up as a woman in this miserable world is it would be better to be a man.
Nah, I don't mean it. I just hope Kavanaugh does not get confirmed.
Now excuse me while I go practice sonatas, an acceptable outlet for my female ambitions.
In fact I pulled one off the shelf this week as I am preparing a recital of piano sonatas. His book Sonata Forms beckoned to me as I am trying to define in my own mind how Scarlatti, Berg, Beethoven, Barber and Mozart sonatas are all the same species. Like Poodles and Doberman Pinschers are both dogs, along with Shar Peis and Dalmatians, somehow a sonata is a sonata is a sonata.Which is a vague term at best, meaning "sounded"from the Italian sonare, I suppose to point out that there were no words. Which was kind of an interesting concept, that music could be abstract and still have something to say, with that something being up to the listener.
I am taking this week off of my paid work in order to practice for longer chunks of time than I am normally allowed. Ass to piano bench, I traverse the centuries, 18th to 20th. My dog Zoe prefers Mozart and Beethoven to Berg and Barber. But she is very critical of the Beethoven, often just staring at me while I play the fugue of opus 110, her cataract eyes boring into my soul. If she could write, she would write like Charles Rosen, one hundred percent sure she was the smartest Golden Doodle in the room.
I have been running this week too. My streak is over. The two days I took off after 366 in a row were harder than the streak itself. But I feel pretty much back to normal now. I can start obsessing about some unreachable PR in the half or marathon again, without the excuse of just running for the sake of running. Meditative spirituality is again shelved, the purity of my self-righteous daily run replaced by faster times on my Strava feed. I shall strive to drive my aging legs into submission without contrition.
Nah, I don't mean it. I am just a 49 year old woman trying to find my way in this world. I like running and playing piano an awful lot, and am fortunate enough to be able to take a week off to concentrate a bit more on my non-physician parts.
Charles Rosen notes that sonatas were really quite the thing for the female amateur musician. In fact I nearly choked on my coffee while reading this in Sonata Forms one early morning this week, while waiting for an appropriate time to start hammering the keys without completely destroying the lives of the teenagers in the house.
This is near the start of the book, and though I have read this book before as young music student, I somehow did not remember this part. Of course music school is full of male music professors mansplaining Mozart, Haydn behind their thick spectacles, their representative white maleness just the tip of the ice Berg. I imagine the footnote in the passage above was the result of some female in his life choking on her own coffee and saying, "really, Charles?"
Living while being female is problematic.
Sonatas are abstract, which means to "draw away, divert, detach." Wordless sounds that pull one away from whatever tethers. Scarlatti unmoors as completely as Berg, across the divide of two hundred years and under the fingers of quite a few kick-ass female amateur and professional pianists. We use our womanly powers to distract, to interpret the secrets of long dead composers and cast our spell on unsuspecting men who think the world is exclusively about them. They think I am entertaining myself in my parlor, playing simple sonatas, she said with an evil laugh.
If sonatas were dogs, my recital would jump start with a Jack Russell Terrier (Scarlatti), sashay to a Standard Poodle (Mozart), then proceed to a Pug (Berg). After a break, behold the Border Collie (Beethoven) and, at last, the All-American Mutt (Barber). Here is the program:
1. Busy and energetic
2. Prissy and intelligent
3. Weird and dramatic
*intermission-please take your sonata out for a walk*
4. Overly smart and obsessive
5. Will do anything to impress you and likes to kiss you square on the mouth
What I learned in music school is there is no way to perfection but ass on bench.
What I learned from medical school is to use all my senses to abstract disease.
What I learned from running for a year is to never leave the house without running gear.
What I learned from my dogs is we are less likely to get into trouble when we exercise every day.
What I learned from growing up as a woman in this miserable world is it would be better to be a man.
Nah, I don't mean it. I just hope Kavanaugh does not get confirmed.
Now excuse me while I go practice sonatas, an acceptable outlet for my female ambitions.
Friday, September 14, 2018
I Want It Now
I have a recurring dream where my son is home for a visit from prison but has morphed into a toddler. This happened last night (in my dream, not literally) and husband and I were taking turns tending to his toddler needs. In my mind the entire time was "Will he grow up again before he has to return to prison? Because I am concerned about his ability to survive there as a toddler." I awake from these dreams with a combination of malaise and contentment. Spending some time with my son before prison, before meth, before dropping out of school, before he gave up on life is nice. Even if it is just a weirdo movie in my brain.
Speaking of "Lost Boys", I have a hankering to watch this movie again. The best viewing of this movie for me was with my eldest daughter on the Santa Cruz Boardwalk on the beach on a big screen with the smell sea water and cotton candy and corn dogs and piss and the roar of approval the crowd gave (SPOILER ALERT) when grandpa staked the vampire.
Speaking of vampires, when we were 12 or 13, one of my best girlfriends and I would use "vampire" as code for someone who sucked the life blood out of us. In retrospect, I no longer believe people do this on purpose. Maybe, like vampires, they had their own life blood sucked, then that person forced them to do some reciprocal life-force draining and then they transformed into demons who make life miserable for everyone. For introverts, vampires can be exhausting as we are always trying to fix their broken souls, only to have to send them violently to a hell dimension when they cross a line by trying to hurt someone else that we love.
Speaking of love, nothing really equals the love of parent for child. And by parent I mean the one who chooses to stay with that kid, biological or otherwise. I recently re-read Middlesex and was stopped in my tracks by this quote. Stopped in my tracks because by re-read I mean I was listening to it on Audible while on a run. The quote: "The anguish of having children. A vulnerability as astonishing as the capacity for love that parenthood brings." Now if any of my children are reading this, don't worry, I love you despite the vulnerability. Also, I know that being a parent is not the only source of love vulnerability. So many ways to love and be loved and to anguish and be anguished.
Speaking of sources of anguish, September 17 is National Physician Suicide Awareness Day. The first one, actually. Because physicians, especially women physicians, kill them selves more often and more efficiently than the general population.
Speaking of physicians, I lost a patient this week despite best efforts and my heart is broken. Vulnerability in love of any kind, whether filial or someone else's filiation, is a mixed bag.
Speaking of hearts, I have mentioned my resting heart rate in the 40's in prior posts. Mostly because I like to brag and think it is cool to have a heart rate lower than my age. Which will be 49 a week from now. Which will be my 365th day in a row of running (feet willing). The thought of this streak ending has me feeling off kilter. My daily running has a spiritual milieu, a blue streak of meditative sinew stretching. It is pounding beach and trail and pavement with focus or while spacing out, with elation or with grumpy pout, though my run usually turns my frown upside down around mile 2.8. I run in sun or rain or snow or wind or past dogs who threaten to eat me like on today's lunch run when I thought they were all fenced in but one was not and I used my best alpha voice to tell him to back the hell off. The daily run is a connection to my son, the one in prison, not a toddler, but still a kid really. I am emotionally mixed up about the end of this streak and it is freaking me out.
Speaking of mixed emotions, turning 49 is OK. It puts me one step closer to the next age group for road racing. Gold prospecting might be in my plans for the year. I won't be 50 for a little while yet. Numerologically speaking, 49 represents compassionate realism, focus, tolerance, and humanitarianism. 49 gets shit done, is reliable, sincere and, I am beginning to think, potentially somewhat annoying. I will always be a Packers fan though. Sorry 49ers. Not that I watch football. My current favorite footballer is Colin Kaepernick. Though I still have mixed emotions about Nike, with the whole sweatshop thing and a long history of misogyny.
Speaking of gun violence, blatant racism and hatred of women, I sure hope this next chapter in my life has a few more paragraphs filled with common sense, justice and love. The messy love, the one that is vulnerable. The one that, biblically speaking, involves love for the Other not because of what they can do for you but because it is the right thing to do. Starting on my 49th birthday, I plan to wake up to a world that would never elect a rapist to be president or a supreme court judge. I will wake up to a society that does not make my child practice hiding under her desk in case someone tries to shoot her at school. If I do not get instant world peace and a modicum of respect and some ability to string two sentences together in the people running our country, and the ability to run sub 7 miles again and ten thousand tons of ice cream....I'm going to scream!
I want it now.
Speaking of "Lost Boys", I have a hankering to watch this movie again. The best viewing of this movie for me was with my eldest daughter on the Santa Cruz Boardwalk on the beach on a big screen with the smell sea water and cotton candy and corn dogs and piss and the roar of approval the crowd gave (SPOILER ALERT) when grandpa staked the vampire.
Speaking of vampires, when we were 12 or 13, one of my best girlfriends and I would use "vampire" as code for someone who sucked the life blood out of us. In retrospect, I no longer believe people do this on purpose. Maybe, like vampires, they had their own life blood sucked, then that person forced them to do some reciprocal life-force draining and then they transformed into demons who make life miserable for everyone. For introverts, vampires can be exhausting as we are always trying to fix their broken souls, only to have to send them violently to a hell dimension when they cross a line by trying to hurt someone else that we love.
Speaking of love, nothing really equals the love of parent for child. And by parent I mean the one who chooses to stay with that kid, biological or otherwise. I recently re-read Middlesex and was stopped in my tracks by this quote. Stopped in my tracks because by re-read I mean I was listening to it on Audible while on a run. The quote: "The anguish of having children. A vulnerability as astonishing as the capacity for love that parenthood brings." Now if any of my children are reading this, don't worry, I love you despite the vulnerability. Also, I know that being a parent is not the only source of love vulnerability. So many ways to love and be loved and to anguish and be anguished.
Speaking of sources of anguish, September 17 is National Physician Suicide Awareness Day. The first one, actually. Because physicians, especially women physicians, kill them selves more often and more efficiently than the general population.
Speaking of physicians, I lost a patient this week despite best efforts and my heart is broken. Vulnerability in love of any kind, whether filial or someone else's filiation, is a mixed bag.
Speaking of hearts, I have mentioned my resting heart rate in the 40's in prior posts. Mostly because I like to brag and think it is cool to have a heart rate lower than my age. Which will be 49 a week from now. Which will be my 365th day in a row of running (feet willing). The thought of this streak ending has me feeling off kilter. My daily running has a spiritual milieu, a blue streak of meditative sinew stretching. It is pounding beach and trail and pavement with focus or while spacing out, with elation or with grumpy pout, though my run usually turns my frown upside down around mile 2.8. I run in sun or rain or snow or wind or past dogs who threaten to eat me like on today's lunch run when I thought they were all fenced in but one was not and I used my best alpha voice to tell him to back the hell off. The daily run is a connection to my son, the one in prison, not a toddler, but still a kid really. I am emotionally mixed up about the end of this streak and it is freaking me out.
Speaking of mixed emotions, turning 49 is OK. It puts me one step closer to the next age group for road racing. Gold prospecting might be in my plans for the year. I won't be 50 for a little while yet. Numerologically speaking, 49 represents compassionate realism, focus, tolerance, and humanitarianism. 49 gets shit done, is reliable, sincere and, I am beginning to think, potentially somewhat annoying. I will always be a Packers fan though. Sorry 49ers. Not that I watch football. My current favorite footballer is Colin Kaepernick. Though I still have mixed emotions about Nike, with the whole sweatshop thing and a long history of misogyny.
Speaking of gun violence, blatant racism and hatred of women, I sure hope this next chapter in my life has a few more paragraphs filled with common sense, justice and love. The messy love, the one that is vulnerable. The one that, biblically speaking, involves love for the Other not because of what they can do for you but because it is the right thing to do. Starting on my 49th birthday, I plan to wake up to a world that would never elect a rapist to be president or a supreme court judge. I will wake up to a society that does not make my child practice hiding under her desk in case someone tries to shoot her at school. If I do not get instant world peace and a modicum of respect and some ability to string two sentences together in the people running our country, and the ability to run sub 7 miles again and ten thousand tons of ice cream....I'm going to scream!
I want it now.
Friday, August 24, 2018
Mollie Tibbetts
I run every day. Sometimes in the dark. Often alone. Of course we are taught as girls/women from the start to be afraid. It is why we cross the street when approached by a stranger and the hairs on the back of our necks stand up. It is why my daughter called me while she was walking home from work over a bridge in Seattle because some creep was there too and she needed to make a human connection. It is why I call my husband when walking out of the hospital at night. Not that someone on the other end of an iPhone can intervene, but at least someone will know when the line goes dead to do something.
The other day I was running out on the Bottom. I was going to head on this back road I like because the traffic is light and it adds some miles but ahead of me were two guys and a loose big dog and it felt wrong so instead I took the highway shoulder home with cars whizzing by, thinking death by automobile was preferable.
I have had 3 or 4 close calls with creeps in my life, and most were in my teens and 20's, I suppose because I was a better target then in terms of my naivete and my looks. One advantage of growing older as a woman is the cat calls reduce, and the guys looking to hurt you are not as interested. So now I mainly worry about my daughters.
As I think about Mollie Tibetts, I think about her family. I think about her fear. I think about how pissed she must've been to have a nice solitary run destroyed, her young life taken, the confidence of women everywhere again shaken. I wonder how she would feel about becoming the justification for hate though?
Personally, I think what should outrage all of us is misogyny. And the fact that girls, women, mothers, wives, sisters face inequality in many realms, including safety from abuse and assault.
I wrote a poem about all this. It is a little angry, I admit. It comes from a place of heartbreak and fear and true concern for this country that I want to love. It comes from bewilderment that hate seems to elate rather than deflate our populace these days.
To the family of MT, peace and healing.
Mollie Tibbetts
When a white girl is killed by a Mexican
Boy who came here illegally
When a white girl is killed while out
For a run in Iowa
When a white girl is killed
My country shouts
"Ok now let's talk about separating families."
When a white girl is killed, statistically
There is better than half a chance
Her boyfriend or husband
Or father or brother did it
When a white girl is killed on a run
My country suggests all us girls carry guns
Soon running holsters will sell
In every color
When a white girl is killed in Iowa
By a Mexican boy
My country shouts about an overdue wall
She was just trying to run
She was young
And he was an illegal alien so
My country's collective mouth contorts
And spits rage
At bleeding hearts like mine who
Still think children in cages out of line
With who we ought to be
Like lynching and Japanese internment
Slavery and smallpox blankets
Wrapped around unsuspecting original American babies
A white girl is killed
The white house seems thrilled
She could have been my daughter!
Or my other daughter who is brown
From another place
Her adopted country would be up in arms
Should any white girl born here come to harm but
A brown immigrant girl killed
Probably asked for it
Bad luck
And anyway who gives a fuck
8/23/18
The other day I was running out on the Bottom. I was going to head on this back road I like because the traffic is light and it adds some miles but ahead of me were two guys and a loose big dog and it felt wrong so instead I took the highway shoulder home with cars whizzing by, thinking death by automobile was preferable.
I have had 3 or 4 close calls with creeps in my life, and most were in my teens and 20's, I suppose because I was a better target then in terms of my naivete and my looks. One advantage of growing older as a woman is the cat calls reduce, and the guys looking to hurt you are not as interested. So now I mainly worry about my daughters.
As I think about Mollie Tibetts, I think about her family. I think about her fear. I think about how pissed she must've been to have a nice solitary run destroyed, her young life taken, the confidence of women everywhere again shaken. I wonder how she would feel about becoming the justification for hate though?
Personally, I think what should outrage all of us is misogyny. And the fact that girls, women, mothers, wives, sisters face inequality in many realms, including safety from abuse and assault.
I wrote a poem about all this. It is a little angry, I admit. It comes from a place of heartbreak and fear and true concern for this country that I want to love. It comes from bewilderment that hate seems to elate rather than deflate our populace these days.
To the family of MT, peace and healing.
Mollie Tibbetts
When a white girl is killed by a Mexican
Boy who came here illegally
When a white girl is killed while out
For a run in Iowa
When a white girl is killed
My country shouts
"Ok now let's talk about separating families."
When a white girl is killed, statistically
There is better than half a chance
Her boyfriend or husband
Or father or brother did it
When a white girl is killed on a run
My country suggests all us girls carry guns
Soon running holsters will sell
In every color
When a white girl is killed in Iowa
By a Mexican boy
My country shouts about an overdue wall
She was just trying to run
She was young
And he was an illegal alien so
My country's collective mouth contorts
And spits rage
At bleeding hearts like mine who
Still think children in cages out of line
With who we ought to be
Like lynching and Japanese internment
Slavery and smallpox blankets
Wrapped around unsuspecting original American babies
A white girl is killed
The white house seems thrilled
She could have been my daughter!
Or my other daughter who is brown
From another place
Her adopted country would be up in arms
Should any white girl born here come to harm but
A brown immigrant girl killed
Probably asked for it
Bad luck
And anyway who gives a fuck
8/23/18
Wednesday, August 15, 2018
Mussels
The day I knew this would be home
I met Norm. He carried a cauldron
Walking a path to the beach
With purpose, dog at his side.
We landed on the Lost Coast
My children ran wild.
Son found a pelican skull,
We flew kites. Whacking rocks
To dislodge mussels brought as
An offering to Norm, cauldron aflame,
Reflected in eyes, blue skies
A gathering tribe welcoming
My orphan soul, twenty years ago.
The other day I sat with Norm
On the window seat with the dog
We ate Good-N-Plenty’s.
Fog engulfed the expansive view
Anyhow our backs to the window
Two doctors shoulder to shoulder
Discussing how it feels to breathe today.
8/14/18
I met Norm. He carried a cauldron
Walking a path to the beach
With purpose, dog at his side.
We landed on the Lost Coast
My children ran wild.
Son found a pelican skull,
We flew kites. Whacking rocks
To dislodge mussels brought as
An offering to Norm, cauldron aflame,
Reflected in eyes, blue skies
A gathering tribe welcoming
My orphan soul, twenty years ago.
The other day I sat with Norm
On the window seat with the dog
We ate Good-N-Plenty’s.
Fog engulfed the expansive view
Anyhow our backs to the window
Two doctors shoulder to shoulder
Discussing how it feels to breathe today.
8/14/18
Monday, July 23, 2018
So Far
What I have learned so far in this running streak, today day 306, is to listen to what my body has to say, nod sagely, then run anyway.
So far, it is easier than I expected, and I think I am in love.
It is slowing me down. Recovery might be the key to speed. I feel strong though.
I get out into nature every day, rain or shine or fog or heat, even when my dog raises an eyebrow to the thought. Nature is an even better drug than running.
Do dogs have eyebrows?
Rotating shoes is keeping my feet happy, or maybe just keeping them on their proverbial toes, constantly confused by new surroundings so they cannot complain about 300+ days of running. Current foot clothes I prefer include Nike Terra Kiger, Asics GT something or another (whichever model Mike at Jogg'n Shoppe always gives me) and Hoka One One ATR. I do not have a sponsorship with any of these shoe companies for some reason. I keep waiting for the call. It is possible they are intimidated by my prowess.
I do not get backaches anymore.
I do get hamstring aches, butt aches, restless calves, sciatica, and gnarly wounds when I inevitably fall on some root during a downhill on a single track trail because my head is in the clouds and not looking at the ground.
I can plank like a motherfucker.
This streak has led to so much laundry. If I literally streaked, maybe that would be better.
My resting heart rate is not infrequently less than 40 beats per minute.
So far, I have learned that I am privileged. Some morning I might wake up with a stroke, or trip on my dog and break my neck, or find out the government has outlawed women running in public. I might have to be a refugee and think only about how to feed my children and keep them alive, without the time or energy for the folly of a run. I might meet that mountain lion in the forest and all that will be left are whichever shoes I wore that day, which I imagine he will spit out, because--gross.
I sometimes get disgusted that I cannot do a sub 7 pace anymore. Then I read the paragraph right before this and put my whining back in my back pocket. I doubt I will ever actually completely discard my whining. I have probably permanently discarded any hope of winning though. Oops, there I go whining again.
What I have yet to learn is what happens on day 366. I cannot picture it. So far, I am thinking I might try for a PR in the half marathon (doubtful, see above). Part of me thinks I would be a natural ultra marathoner, except for my nonexistent night vision and my tendency to fall spectacularly even in bright daylight. I sometimes think of doing a fast 5K. Or another marathon. Or or or
What I have learned from running over 300 days in a row is it is better not to plan too far ahead. Open the eyes, if lucky enough to do so, in the morning. Look outside and determine which clothes you will run in today. Then run. Or pack the clothes and run at lunch break. Or after work. Simple.
If I run too long at lunch break, the nurse at my clinic gets frustrated with me.
Forgetting your running bra is no big deal. That's what Coban is for.
I have learned to run every day. So far.
So far, it is easier than I expected, and I think I am in love.
It is slowing me down. Recovery might be the key to speed. I feel strong though.
I get out into nature every day, rain or shine or fog or heat, even when my dog raises an eyebrow to the thought. Nature is an even better drug than running.
Do dogs have eyebrows?
Rotating shoes is keeping my feet happy, or maybe just keeping them on their proverbial toes, constantly confused by new surroundings so they cannot complain about 300+ days of running. Current foot clothes I prefer include Nike Terra Kiger, Asics GT something or another (whichever model Mike at Jogg'n Shoppe always gives me) and Hoka One One ATR. I do not have a sponsorship with any of these shoe companies for some reason. I keep waiting for the call. It is possible they are intimidated by my prowess.
I do not get backaches anymore.
I do get hamstring aches, butt aches, restless calves, sciatica, and gnarly wounds when I inevitably fall on some root during a downhill on a single track trail because my head is in the clouds and not looking at the ground.
I can plank like a motherfucker.
This streak has led to so much laundry. If I literally streaked, maybe that would be better.
My resting heart rate is not infrequently less than 40 beats per minute.
So far, I have learned that I am privileged. Some morning I might wake up with a stroke, or trip on my dog and break my neck, or find out the government has outlawed women running in public. I might have to be a refugee and think only about how to feed my children and keep them alive, without the time or energy for the folly of a run. I might meet that mountain lion in the forest and all that will be left are whichever shoes I wore that day, which I imagine he will spit out, because--gross.
I sometimes get disgusted that I cannot do a sub 7 pace anymore. Then I read the paragraph right before this and put my whining back in my back pocket. I doubt I will ever actually completely discard my whining. I have probably permanently discarded any hope of winning though. Oops, there I go whining again.
What I have yet to learn is what happens on day 366. I cannot picture it. So far, I am thinking I might try for a PR in the half marathon (doubtful, see above). Part of me thinks I would be a natural ultra marathoner, except for my nonexistent night vision and my tendency to fall spectacularly even in bright daylight. I sometimes think of doing a fast 5K. Or another marathon. Or or or
What I have learned from running over 300 days in a row is it is better not to plan too far ahead. Open the eyes, if lucky enough to do so, in the morning. Look outside and determine which clothes you will run in today. Then run. Or pack the clothes and run at lunch break. Or after work. Simple.
If I run too long at lunch break, the nurse at my clinic gets frustrated with me.
Forgetting your running bra is no big deal. That's what Coban is for.
I have learned to run every day. So far.
Monday, July 16, 2018
Queens
Queens
Trump is in London, he makes me sick
Why did we elect a total prick
Stupid, evil, dangerous as hell.
Turned his back on the 90 year old queen,
Rudely ignored her, he looked mean
Does he treat his own Grandma like this as well?
More Londoners showed to protest his ass
Than came to his inauguration, alas,
"Fake news! Paid actors!" spewed the imbecile.
He'll take away our right to choose,
Our health care, gay rights, and science too-
Are you still perseverating on her email?
It will get worse, it will get real
Stolen children, Nazi apologists, tell me-how will we heal?
Pretend things are fine, then we shall fail.
Paralyzed by fear in this slow motion crash
My son is in prison and we have no cash
Best curl in a corner and moan and wail.
Get up! Stand up, America, and scream!
Do not let haters destroy our dream.
I propose we crown Ruth Bader Ginsburg our queen.
Let justice shine through and kindness prevail.
7/14/18
Trump is in London, he makes me sick
Why did we elect a total prick
Stupid, evil, dangerous as hell.
Turned his back on the 90 year old queen,
Rudely ignored her, he looked mean
Does he treat his own Grandma like this as well?
More Londoners showed to protest his ass
Than came to his inauguration, alas,
"Fake news! Paid actors!" spewed the imbecile.
He'll take away our right to choose,
Our health care, gay rights, and science too-
Are you still perseverating on her email?
It will get worse, it will get real
Stolen children, Nazi apologists, tell me-how will we heal?
Pretend things are fine, then we shall fail.
Paralyzed by fear in this slow motion crash
My son is in prison and we have no cash
Best curl in a corner and moan and wail.
Get up! Stand up, America, and scream!
Do not let haters destroy our dream.
I propose we crown Ruth Bader Ginsburg our queen.
Let justice shine through and kindness prevail.
7/14/18
Tuesday, July 3, 2018
Another Morning Run at the Beach
Another Morning Run at the Beach
Stretched together spine to spine,
vertebrae an old folk art wooden child's puzzle,
the kind you would get in Asheville, North Carolina,
dog to woman, as the sun creeps in.
Light's fingertips brush eyelids
inviting them to lift,
which, once done, introduces day's discomforts
to the fleeting night.
Her hand reaches, settling on his fur,
making his head lift, nose checking air.
And he follows her down the stairs
curling up nearby while coffee brews.
She charts last night's calls from worried patients
and studies poetry.
Maybe William Carlos Williams did this too.
Sun up, two cups drunk,
she moves into action,
into clothes and shoes, light t-shirt
brushing spine and ribs.
He already has his clothes on,
always prepared for this very moment,
uncurls like a spring released,
awake.
For the first time or seven hundredth time
or the last time.
A precious, mundane mystery,
how she can never fully get the sand out of her shoes,
or off of his tight curls.
7/3/18
Stretched together spine to spine,
vertebrae an old folk art wooden child's puzzle,
the kind you would get in Asheville, North Carolina,
dog to woman, as the sun creeps in.
Light's fingertips brush eyelids
inviting them to lift,
which, once done, introduces day's discomforts
to the fleeting night.
Her hand reaches, settling on his fur,
making his head lift, nose checking air.
And he follows her down the stairs
curling up nearby while coffee brews.
She charts last night's calls from worried patients
and studies poetry.
Maybe William Carlos Williams did this too.
Sun up, two cups drunk,
she moves into action,
into clothes and shoes, light t-shirt
brushing spine and ribs.
He already has his clothes on,
always prepared for this very moment,
uncurls like a spring released,
awake.
For the first time or seven hundredth time
or the last time.
A precious, mundane mystery,
how she can never fully get the sand out of her shoes,
or off of his tight curls.
7/3/18
Morning 7/3/18
Tuesday, June 26, 2018
Museum of Anthropology, Vancouver, BC
Totems, weather-worn, and potlach bowls in the shape of humans and seals and several different creatures at once. Baskets by a woman's great-great grandmother, with her name and picture right next to her work there, great-great granddaughter proud to share. They called her Granny7.
One of my best friends calls me Jen7. We are not sure why but now I feel I am in good company.
History interests me, but most exciting was the modern art by members of the many tribes of this region. A short film by a young woman for her thesis, about respect. A symmetric black metal raven, folded and enormous, really two ravens or a raven and her shadow. When I sat in this one red chair and leaned my head back, Bill Reid started speaking the story into my ears as I looked at his carving of the Raven finding men in a clam shell and letting them out.
I am beginning to wonder if that was such a good idea.
Another room was divided by gauzy curtains into many rooms, each holding Resistance Art, "Politics and the Past in Latin America". In defence of maize, honoring the devil, and drawings by refugee children in El Salvador who depicted running from the US-provided helicopters that bombed their relatives dead.
The thing I cannot dislodge from my mind's eye: Three large paintings that are held by a wall with nothing else on it. They draw you in, so colorful and marvelous. Three self portraits of people with HIV who live in South Africa. The woman in the middle, her painting next to a small photograph with her eyes intently on you while you gaze at her work, got HIV from her boyfriend. She could not tell him or her father she had it, for her own safety. Had it, because although she was born a decade after I, she is dead now. Not of AIDS though. Her boyfriend murdered her.
At this point, I had to go to the gift shop and regroup. There was a spectacular orca mask I pictured on my very own wall, but it was $2000.00. I opted instead for two reproduced prints by two artists, one dead and famous, the other a young member of a local tribe. I also chose a small wood plaque with a raven carved on it, holding the sun (abalone) in its beak.
I wondered, as I walked through the rooms of the MOA in Vancouver, BC, which also had things from Europe and Africa and Asia and the United States of America, what the museum of anthropology will make of our era in 100 or 1000 years. It is possible we are, right at this moment, living through the downfall of the American Empire and there will be a small room dedicated to this.
It is possible the Raven will decide to shove us all back into the shell of a clam. Then future museum visitor will hear the same story I did, but in reverse.
One of my best friends calls me Jen7. We are not sure why but now I feel I am in good company.
History interests me, but most exciting was the modern art by members of the many tribes of this region. A short film by a young woman for her thesis, about respect. A symmetric black metal raven, folded and enormous, really two ravens or a raven and her shadow. When I sat in this one red chair and leaned my head back, Bill Reid started speaking the story into my ears as I looked at his carving of the Raven finding men in a clam shell and letting them out.
I am beginning to wonder if that was such a good idea.
Another room was divided by gauzy curtains into many rooms, each holding Resistance Art, "Politics and the Past in Latin America". In defence of maize, honoring the devil, and drawings by refugee children in El Salvador who depicted running from the US-provided helicopters that bombed their relatives dead.
The thing I cannot dislodge from my mind's eye: Three large paintings that are held by a wall with nothing else on it. They draw you in, so colorful and marvelous. Three self portraits of people with HIV who live in South Africa. The woman in the middle, her painting next to a small photograph with her eyes intently on you while you gaze at her work, got HIV from her boyfriend. She could not tell him or her father she had it, for her own safety. Had it, because although she was born a decade after I, she is dead now. Not of AIDS though. Her boyfriend murdered her.
At this point, I had to go to the gift shop and regroup. There was a spectacular orca mask I pictured on my very own wall, but it was $2000.00. I opted instead for two reproduced prints by two artists, one dead and famous, the other a young member of a local tribe. I also chose a small wood plaque with a raven carved on it, holding the sun (abalone) in its beak.
I wondered, as I walked through the rooms of the MOA in Vancouver, BC, which also had things from Europe and Africa and Asia and the United States of America, what the museum of anthropology will make of our era in 100 or 1000 years. It is possible we are, right at this moment, living through the downfall of the American Empire and there will be a small room dedicated to this.
It is possible the Raven will decide to shove us all back into the shell of a clam. Then future museum visitor will hear the same story I did, but in reverse.
Friday, June 15, 2018
Complementarity
Sometimes the top of the ridge, a hill that is a grueling 9 mile climb by bike and harrowing by car, is enclosed in fog. When it is sunny, it presents mountains on three sides, the ocean on the fourth. But the earth is not four-cornered, rather it is a panorama, so what one sees on a sunny day is a circle of fields, hills, mountains, water, endless horizon. If foggy, you might see your hand stretched out in front of your face while cool fog-drops cover you in mist. Either is my favorite.
Frank Wilczek was discussing complementarity on this podcast from last week. He's a nobel prize winning physicist. "When people ask me what religion I practice, I say complementarity".
I could not really understand all of his thoughts, but I think the idea might be something like: either, both, at the same time but not observable at the same time, mutually exclusive but interdependent. Having the perspective that other perspectives exist and can exist even if they are different than yours might just be the key to surviving these harrowing times.
When running on the top of the ridge yesterday, I was riling up the cows. Not on purpose, but given there is not a lot of foot traffic up there, when someone comes running along it warrants at the very least a huffy "moo", and often induces mass hysteria (hysteeria?). It is all what you are used to I suppose, because the cows on the Bottom where I also run keep chewing grass nonchalantly and push their muzzles through the gate for a better sniff and maybe a pat as I trot by.
I wonder when what once seemed an improbable evil becomes so normal that we forget to name it as wrong? Standing in a long line in Amsterdam a couple of summers ago, I awaited my turn to walk through the house where Anne Frank and her family hid. The lines are always long, I hear. People from all over the world want to see where this young diarist dwelt and stuck magazine photos on her wall and ate potatoes and had crushes on boys and was dragged out of bed into a stock car on a train that separated her from her family and housed her in filth until she died, still a child.
It is now a policy that in order to deter families from coming here illegally, we kidnap their children at the border and put them into camps.
Where I work, as a physician in a government supported program for vulnerable elders, we cannot even make a "policy" about where we store our number 2 pencils without getting the OK from the state and feds who monitor us for quality and ethical care. So how the hell did this "policy" get into place without some kind of discussion first? What country do we live in? Was someone blogging about this very question during WWII as well? Were they, as I, feeling like writing and thinking about it is not helping but maybe there is no hope and I guess I will just finish this cup of coffee and go to work while my own children are safely tucked away, sleeping in on the first day of summer vacation?
Beauty exists and does not exist, depending on your perspective. Love exists and does not exist, because sometimes it is invisible like that point past your fingertips in the fog where the world seems to end.
Yesterday a dog bit me on the ass when I did a house call. Later, dog was curled on the floor near my feet while its person and I watched Fred Astaire and Rita Hayworth dance. The movie was playing when I arrived, muted during our visit, then as I unmuted it before leaving, I was drawn into the scene along with the elder I had just doctored. Elder used to dance, can now barely move. Fred and Rita are dead but on the screen immortal, and my ass lives to see another day and I love dogs no less.
Today will be day 268 in a row of running for me. I was wondering recently what it means but got the advice to stop thinking and just keep running. Dory from "Finding Nemo" had similar advice. She had very poor short term memory. But her past exists as does her present and future and they are all happening and happened and about to happen. Might as well keep swimming through the waters of despair and absurdity, intelligence and inanity, deep love and resounding hate. When you mix it all together it makes life soup.
When I get a mouthful of unexpected hate, I immediately spit it out. It tastes so rotten and my biological system knows it is toxic. Yesterday when I was driving to hospice, a guy pulled up behind me as I was waiting for traffic to clear to make a turn, and laid on his horn and leaned out his window and screamed the f bomb at me. I think he was in a hurry. I felt my heart pound in fear for a moment but I managed not to get angry. I felt a little sad and I had to do a proverbial spit out the driver's side window to rid myself of the taste. I think he would've beat me to death, right there on my way to hospice, just because I existed. I was wondering if the "READ" sticker on my car pissed him off. Or maybe he just found out his child has cancer or his wife is leaving him or his dog died and I was just the target of his innermost pain. Either way, I drove on to hospice and went about my day.
Which brings me back to he concept that contrasting theories and realities can exist simultaneously to explain phenomena. Other perspectives and ways of being exist. But I propose there are times when going about ones day is not the answer. Are there angry people out there who feel disenfranchised? Yep. Does that make the current normalization and acceptance of racism, sexism, violence, school shootings, and ripping children away from their parents who came to our country for a better life OK?
When I run on top of the ridge on a foggy day, I know the beauty is still there. It resides in my mind's eye and it reassures me that I can run and run and not fall off the edge of the earth. We live in the foggiest of times. We need to run toward the beauty, love, kindness and ethical correctness as fast as we can.
As fast as we can.
Frank Wilczek was discussing complementarity on this podcast from last week. He's a nobel prize winning physicist. "When people ask me what religion I practice, I say complementarity".
I could not really understand all of his thoughts, but I think the idea might be something like: either, both, at the same time but not observable at the same time, mutually exclusive but interdependent. Having the perspective that other perspectives exist and can exist even if they are different than yours might just be the key to surviving these harrowing times.
When running on the top of the ridge yesterday, I was riling up the cows. Not on purpose, but given there is not a lot of foot traffic up there, when someone comes running along it warrants at the very least a huffy "moo", and often induces mass hysteria (hysteeria?). It is all what you are used to I suppose, because the cows on the Bottom where I also run keep chewing grass nonchalantly and push their muzzles through the gate for a better sniff and maybe a pat as I trot by.
I wonder when what once seemed an improbable evil becomes so normal that we forget to name it as wrong? Standing in a long line in Amsterdam a couple of summers ago, I awaited my turn to walk through the house where Anne Frank and her family hid. The lines are always long, I hear. People from all over the world want to see where this young diarist dwelt and stuck magazine photos on her wall and ate potatoes and had crushes on boys and was dragged out of bed into a stock car on a train that separated her from her family and housed her in filth until she died, still a child.
It is now a policy that in order to deter families from coming here illegally, we kidnap their children at the border and put them into camps.
Where I work, as a physician in a government supported program for vulnerable elders, we cannot even make a "policy" about where we store our number 2 pencils without getting the OK from the state and feds who monitor us for quality and ethical care. So how the hell did this "policy" get into place without some kind of discussion first? What country do we live in? Was someone blogging about this very question during WWII as well? Were they, as I, feeling like writing and thinking about it is not helping but maybe there is no hope and I guess I will just finish this cup of coffee and go to work while my own children are safely tucked away, sleeping in on the first day of summer vacation?
Beauty exists and does not exist, depending on your perspective. Love exists and does not exist, because sometimes it is invisible like that point past your fingertips in the fog where the world seems to end.
Yesterday a dog bit me on the ass when I did a house call. Later, dog was curled on the floor near my feet while its person and I watched Fred Astaire and Rita Hayworth dance. The movie was playing when I arrived, muted during our visit, then as I unmuted it before leaving, I was drawn into the scene along with the elder I had just doctored. Elder used to dance, can now barely move. Fred and Rita are dead but on the screen immortal, and my ass lives to see another day and I love dogs no less.
Today will be day 268 in a row of running for me. I was wondering recently what it means but got the advice to stop thinking and just keep running. Dory from "Finding Nemo" had similar advice. She had very poor short term memory. But her past exists as does her present and future and they are all happening and happened and about to happen. Might as well keep swimming through the waters of despair and absurdity, intelligence and inanity, deep love and resounding hate. When you mix it all together it makes life soup.
When I get a mouthful of unexpected hate, I immediately spit it out. It tastes so rotten and my biological system knows it is toxic. Yesterday when I was driving to hospice, a guy pulled up behind me as I was waiting for traffic to clear to make a turn, and laid on his horn and leaned out his window and screamed the f bomb at me. I think he was in a hurry. I felt my heart pound in fear for a moment but I managed not to get angry. I felt a little sad and I had to do a proverbial spit out the driver's side window to rid myself of the taste. I think he would've beat me to death, right there on my way to hospice, just because I existed. I was wondering if the "READ" sticker on my car pissed him off. Or maybe he just found out his child has cancer or his wife is leaving him or his dog died and I was just the target of his innermost pain. Either way, I drove on to hospice and went about my day.
Which brings me back to he concept that contrasting theories and realities can exist simultaneously to explain phenomena. Other perspectives and ways of being exist. But I propose there are times when going about ones day is not the answer. Are there angry people out there who feel disenfranchised? Yep. Does that make the current normalization and acceptance of racism, sexism, violence, school shootings, and ripping children away from their parents who came to our country for a better life OK?
When I run on top of the ridge on a foggy day, I know the beauty is still there. It resides in my mind's eye and it reassures me that I can run and run and not fall off the edge of the earth. We live in the foggiest of times. We need to run toward the beauty, love, kindness and ethical correctness as fast as we can.
As fast as we can.
Thursday, May 31, 2018
The Other Day
The other day
A black man was shot
I was running with Greg
And a child was shot at school
When I felt faint.
I heard they are claiming Sandy Hook was not real.
My heart was palpitating weirdly
Emma Gonzalez asked
Greg was worried he'd need to resuscitate a doctor
for the love of God stop tweeting an image of the killer's face
which I forbade him to do
Emma is actually a child
Because I don't want to die in an ICU.
But gun control is a wild frontier
My resting heart rate is 43, sometimes 38,
that only Americans seem unwilling to explore
my hemoglobin not great
which is ironic.
I was so happy to run with Greg the other day
When we stake our reputation
I think my heart was just doing joy flip-flops.
on our willingness to forge new paths.
For the record I am serious:
America needs to be kinder, braver, more sensible.
I actually do not want CPR.
A black man was shot
I was running with Greg
And a child was shot at school
When I felt faint.
I heard they are claiming Sandy Hook was not real.
My heart was palpitating weirdly
Emma Gonzalez asked
Greg was worried he'd need to resuscitate a doctor
for the love of God stop tweeting an image of the killer's face
which I forbade him to do
Emma is actually a child
Because I don't want to die in an ICU.
But gun control is a wild frontier
My resting heart rate is 43, sometimes 38,
that only Americans seem unwilling to explore
my hemoglobin not great
which is ironic.
I was so happy to run with Greg the other day
When we stake our reputation
I think my heart was just doing joy flip-flops.
on our willingness to forge new paths.
For the record I am serious:
America needs to be kinder, braver, more sensible.
I actually do not want CPR.
Saturday, May 12, 2018
Brave Moms
Memory: my eldest, back when she was about 3, running along behind us in Monterey as we walked and talked along a walled-in pathway overlooking the Pacific. My husband and I turn around to check on her and see that she has decided running on top of the stone wall between path and cliff is a good idea. She has her tongue sticking out against her upper lip as she does when concentrating. Hair flying behind her. We, her frozen-in-terror parents, had the presence of mind not to shout at her, not to interrupt her focus, not to startle her into a temporary bird who would then be broken on the wave-carved rocks below.
I read this article today about being a brave mom. About how we are told to raise courageous children, but generally tend to do so while hyperventilating into a paper bag due to our own anxiety. The article refers to letting children do dangerous things, like climbing, biking, diving from high places. Personally, I do not need extreme sport to make me feel anxiety about the safety of my children. I think it is universal among parents, and probably especially among mothers.
My own Mom, may she not be hyperventilating into a paper bag somewhere in Mom heaven, could not even attend my childhood cross country meets for the nervous wreck she would be if my race did not go as planned. She could not care less if I ran fast, but she could not bear my own intense teenaged self-loathing.
I was watching Steph Curry play the other day, back from missing 16 games or so due to another injury, and realized watching him play is like parenting. That is, I found myself just waiting for the next shoe to drop, in the form of a twisted ankle or mangled knee. That feeling, of wanting so badly for things to go well, but bracing yourself for something bad to happen.
It is sweet to remember my Mom getting anxious about little things like cross country meets and piano recitals. Though to be honest I think her fear was about my type A driven personality and the deep abyss of depression I would teeter right over, like a 3 year old running on the top of a stone wall over a cliff. So maybe sweet is not quite the right word. I might not have offered the same grittiness as fodder for fears as has, for instance, a certain son of mine. He had me picturing the absolute worst. Which, thus far, has not yet occurred. The second absolute worst, yes. When your fears come true as a Mom, you rise up. And fall down. Then rise up again and then fall again. And somehow finally stop falling long enough to live life each day with some semblance of hope and gratitude.
My son wrote a letter from prison to my 10 year old nephew recently. Nephew brought it to show me and son's Dad. It said how he wished he had tried in school. How important it is for nephew to do this, to not end up making choices like son did. Nephew held the letter close to his heart, probably a little bit awed by having a family member in prison, but also clearly wanting son to be free. Free so they can open a mechanics shop together some day. It will be on the top floor of our house, where only the right people will know how to find it. A secret mechanic's shop with a slide off the roof into the hot tub. Son to nephew: "no secret mechanic shops will happen if you ignore education and get addicted to drugs." Only he said it in a way a 10 year old boy could absorb.
God knows we tried such words on son, among a million other pisses in the wind trying to help him and assuage our own anxiety. Even in the less potent arena of regular old day to day parenting, knowing what to say to guide your child without pushing them, knowing how to comfort them without making their eyes roll so far back in their heads they can see the root of their optic nerves, knowing how to let them fall down so they can learn how to get up because some day they will need that skill is the holy grail. If I knew, my son would not be in prison. If I knew, my children would be happy every second of the day as they aced their exams and won the prize for "best kid to talk about in the doctor's lounge to impress everyone there" award.
I have no clue how to be a brave Mom. I think I will write a poem instead.
I Can Only Speak for Myself, as a Mother
The little hands
Six in all
Clasped mine
Expecting magic from the wands
Of my own fingers
Two that write
As predicted
By Fifth grade teacher
Tapping into third sight
Zen Master all grown
Two that draw
On bodies of imprisoned men
Ink found
Somewhere alongside awe
You never could sit still but now you can
Two that strive
Dragon claws
Clapping with delight
Not held by me until after five
I never want to let go
Expecting magic from the wands
My own fingers
Grasp
Like holding sand
Warm and slipping away.
-Jennifer Heidmann 5/12/18
I read this article today about being a brave mom. About how we are told to raise courageous children, but generally tend to do so while hyperventilating into a paper bag due to our own anxiety. The article refers to letting children do dangerous things, like climbing, biking, diving from high places. Personally, I do not need extreme sport to make me feel anxiety about the safety of my children. I think it is universal among parents, and probably especially among mothers.
My own Mom, may she not be hyperventilating into a paper bag somewhere in Mom heaven, could not even attend my childhood cross country meets for the nervous wreck she would be if my race did not go as planned. She could not care less if I ran fast, but she could not bear my own intense teenaged self-loathing.
I was watching Steph Curry play the other day, back from missing 16 games or so due to another injury, and realized watching him play is like parenting. That is, I found myself just waiting for the next shoe to drop, in the form of a twisted ankle or mangled knee. That feeling, of wanting so badly for things to go well, but bracing yourself for something bad to happen.
It is sweet to remember my Mom getting anxious about little things like cross country meets and piano recitals. Though to be honest I think her fear was about my type A driven personality and the deep abyss of depression I would teeter right over, like a 3 year old running on the top of a stone wall over a cliff. So maybe sweet is not quite the right word. I might not have offered the same grittiness as fodder for fears as has, for instance, a certain son of mine. He had me picturing the absolute worst. Which, thus far, has not yet occurred. The second absolute worst, yes. When your fears come true as a Mom, you rise up. And fall down. Then rise up again and then fall again. And somehow finally stop falling long enough to live life each day with some semblance of hope and gratitude.
My son wrote a letter from prison to my 10 year old nephew recently. Nephew brought it to show me and son's Dad. It said how he wished he had tried in school. How important it is for nephew to do this, to not end up making choices like son did. Nephew held the letter close to his heart, probably a little bit awed by having a family member in prison, but also clearly wanting son to be free. Free so they can open a mechanics shop together some day. It will be on the top floor of our house, where only the right people will know how to find it. A secret mechanic's shop with a slide off the roof into the hot tub. Son to nephew: "no secret mechanic shops will happen if you ignore education and get addicted to drugs." Only he said it in a way a 10 year old boy could absorb.
God knows we tried such words on son, among a million other pisses in the wind trying to help him and assuage our own anxiety. Even in the less potent arena of regular old day to day parenting, knowing what to say to guide your child without pushing them, knowing how to comfort them without making their eyes roll so far back in their heads they can see the root of their optic nerves, knowing how to let them fall down so they can learn how to get up because some day they will need that skill is the holy grail. If I knew, my son would not be in prison. If I knew, my children would be happy every second of the day as they aced their exams and won the prize for "best kid to talk about in the doctor's lounge to impress everyone there" award.
I have no clue how to be a brave Mom. I think I will write a poem instead.
I Can Only Speak for Myself, as a Mother
The little hands
Six in all
Clasped mine
Expecting magic from the wands
Of my own fingers
Two that write
As predicted
By Fifth grade teacher
Tapping into third sight
Zen Master all grown
Two that draw
On bodies of imprisoned men
Ink found
Somewhere alongside awe
You never could sit still but now you can
Two that strive
Dragon claws
Clapping with delight
Not held by me until after five
I never want to let go
Expecting magic from the wands
My own fingers
Grasp
Like holding sand
Warm and slipping away.
-Jennifer Heidmann 5/12/18
Tuesday, April 24, 2018
Diving for Pearls
I love anatomy. Don't get creeped out. If you have a medical doctor who does not (to some degree) love anatomy, there is something wrong with them. I also love physiology. The science of how we function. The deep dive into the chemicals and salts and biological brilliance that helps us do everything from breathing to running to playing a Bach fugue. Having recently re-read A Wrinkle in Time, I must consider that the anatomical sinews and physiological perfections of the body well-studied may not be all there is to it. Maybe we have always existed and maybe we are existing in countless places at once. Maybe my perceptions blind me to the possibilities of wonder.
All that being said, I have this nagging injury that would go away if I stopped running for awhile but I am on a streak and it means something to me I cannot explain, so I just keep running. I try to compromise by taking slow days often. I vary terrain, shoes, pace, elevation. Today the weirdest thing happened, which I think even Charles Wallace Murry would have trouble understanding. I set off for an afternoon run after seeing patients. My legs were very sore (see above re injury). I decided to do a "rest run", which involves a very slow pace. Usually "rest runs" are emotionally challenging for me. But today, from the very first step, I was blissed out with a complete, full-on runner's high. I just felt like nothing was wrong in the world. That nothing else needed to be happening at that moment. This was weird, because simultaneously my hamstrings were so tightly wound that there was a real possibility I was going to get flung across town by them, slingshot style. My right sciatic nerve was screaming bloody murder. But my brain just floated up there and was like, wow this feels good, the flowers smell like ambrosia, the spring air is soft and gentle, that SUV who just cut me off is super nice, that escaped chihuahua running circles right in front of me on the trail is pretty cute.
I do not really like chihuahuas. Or being cut off by SUVs. So, what the heck?
Physiologically, it is serotonin and norepinephrine and such percolating around my brain cells and communicating with the system that is me. Spiritually, it is inexplicable. Psychologically, it made my day. Kinesiologically, I was a slug. Egotistically, this generally puts me in a foul mood. But today, my sluggish, athletically barren self was as happy as could be.
Maybe we can exist in two planes at once, one of suffering and one of bliss. Maybe the key to a well-lived, well-loved life is riding the curl of these extremes. Go too high and the wave of life tips you over, go to low and it crushes you while shoving salt water up your nose. When I surfed, I tended to go too high on the wave, and subsequently dive for pearls.
There was this fragrant shrub I ran past at the start and end of my run today that made me swoon. I think for once in my life, I was in the curl today. Getting all misty over chihuahuas and scrumptious blooms while my very real anatomically-based hamstring misery was something I just acknowledged.
A couple of patients I care for deeply will die this week. I find myself coming at this fact sideways, with my gaze softened and trained at some point just above the strong shoulders of the universe. Wiping the brow of someone in transition without losing oneself to sadness is tricky. Usually the act of dying is not transcendent for anyone involved (though I cannot speak for those that have died and what might happen then), but showing up is probably enough. Transcendence might be overrated. When I have saved up enough in my good vibes account to visit Transcendence, I will be sure to leave a review on Trip Advisor so everyone can know what I think about it.
I love anatomy and physiology, the way it all fits together. How we can run and dance and heal and sing and cry and surf and snuggle. How our chemistry sparks our electricity and our ability to love. How we will never have a shortage of mitochondrial power as long as we live. How after we die our bodies become part of the universe, one way or another. How we might all be connected and powerful and nothing at all, all at once and never before and sometime in the future.
It is possible my endorphins are still in excess. Because none of this makes sense. I should not have had a runner's high today. And beloved people should not get sick and die. It is possible my tendency to accidentally dive for pearls is just one more piece of my DNA, a wrinkle in some part of my mind. Written in my chemistry, just waiting there for the next grand experiment. I think it lives next to that part of my brain that still believes I could go sub 3 in the marathon.
Magical, obtuse, and just this side of possible.
All that being said, I have this nagging injury that would go away if I stopped running for awhile but I am on a streak and it means something to me I cannot explain, so I just keep running. I try to compromise by taking slow days often. I vary terrain, shoes, pace, elevation. Today the weirdest thing happened, which I think even Charles Wallace Murry would have trouble understanding. I set off for an afternoon run after seeing patients. My legs were very sore (see above re injury). I decided to do a "rest run", which involves a very slow pace. Usually "rest runs" are emotionally challenging for me. But today, from the very first step, I was blissed out with a complete, full-on runner's high. I just felt like nothing was wrong in the world. That nothing else needed to be happening at that moment. This was weird, because simultaneously my hamstrings were so tightly wound that there was a real possibility I was going to get flung across town by them, slingshot style. My right sciatic nerve was screaming bloody murder. But my brain just floated up there and was like, wow this feels good, the flowers smell like ambrosia, the spring air is soft and gentle, that SUV who just cut me off is super nice, that escaped chihuahua running circles right in front of me on the trail is pretty cute.
I do not really like chihuahuas. Or being cut off by SUVs. So, what the heck?
Physiologically, it is serotonin and norepinephrine and such percolating around my brain cells and communicating with the system that is me. Spiritually, it is inexplicable. Psychologically, it made my day. Kinesiologically, I was a slug. Egotistically, this generally puts me in a foul mood. But today, my sluggish, athletically barren self was as happy as could be.
Maybe we can exist in two planes at once, one of suffering and one of bliss. Maybe the key to a well-lived, well-loved life is riding the curl of these extremes. Go too high and the wave of life tips you over, go to low and it crushes you while shoving salt water up your nose. When I surfed, I tended to go too high on the wave, and subsequently dive for pearls.
A couple of patients I care for deeply will die this week. I find myself coming at this fact sideways, with my gaze softened and trained at some point just above the strong shoulders of the universe. Wiping the brow of someone in transition without losing oneself to sadness is tricky. Usually the act of dying is not transcendent for anyone involved (though I cannot speak for those that have died and what might happen then), but showing up is probably enough. Transcendence might be overrated. When I have saved up enough in my good vibes account to visit Transcendence, I will be sure to leave a review on Trip Advisor so everyone can know what I think about it.
I love anatomy and physiology, the way it all fits together. How we can run and dance and heal and sing and cry and surf and snuggle. How our chemistry sparks our electricity and our ability to love. How we will never have a shortage of mitochondrial power as long as we live. How after we die our bodies become part of the universe, one way or another. How we might all be connected and powerful and nothing at all, all at once and never before and sometime in the future.
It is possible my endorphins are still in excess. Because none of this makes sense. I should not have had a runner's high today. And beloved people should not get sick and die. It is possible my tendency to accidentally dive for pearls is just one more piece of my DNA, a wrinkle in some part of my mind. Written in my chemistry, just waiting there for the next grand experiment. I think it lives next to that part of my brain that still believes I could go sub 3 in the marathon.
Magical, obtuse, and just this side of possible.
Saturday, April 7, 2018
Pushups in the Rain
I found a new use for coban. Rainy, busy day. Determined to get my run in around noon. Realized I had neglected to bring my running bra. After a moment of cursing under my breath, my wilderness medicine skills kicked in. Coban: truly versatile. I am thinking of starting a new line of running bras for emergencies, called "CoBras".
As I ran in the rain with my CoBra comfortable enough I forgot it was even there, I pondered the last few weeks. They have been defined by sore legs and a tight ass, compassion fatigue and a whole lot of injuries for Warrior's players.
My engine is all revved up in some ways, but the daily running for almost 200 days now does leave me with a bit of that exhaustion peculiar to marathon training. It goes into your bones, and drags you to the couch more often than usual. There are three spots, one on each leg plus a butt cheek, that are so tight that when I first start running I am fairly certain I look exactly like my father did when he moaned and groaned getting up from the sofa after a nap, walking like Frankenstein. Like with marathon training, I am acutely aware of injury risk, so I have been trying to tone down the pace and mileage a bit. Probably should stop for a few days but I am not yet ready to take orders from my butt. Rx: massage.
An occupational therapist I work with (incidentally, it is occupational therapy month, so go thank one) suggested a foam roller on steroids. Which is to say it has a rechargeable battery that allows it to vibrate, at three different speeds. It is magnificent. Though my IT band is still hiding under the bed.
Compassion fatigue is the buzz word of the early 21st century for those in the business of caring for others. When I run, I try to stop thinking about the suffering, except my own (see above, re tight ass). Still, my brain is like a spin cycle, all the tough stains of concern agitating around from lobe to lobe. Doctors like to fix stuff, but it turns out there is not a lot we can actually completely fix. Oh, we can comfort till the cows come home, and that is my best power, but comforting takes a lot more out of a person than, say, prescribing an ACE inhibitor or cutting out a stony gallbladder.
Last night I dreamed I accidentally left my hospital shift to go to a fundraiser at the mall, then got lost trying to find my way back, and was really stressed about getting my rounds done, then went for a run in the forest and found myself lost again on a snowy crag with mountains rising, and the thing that really got me was I did not have my Garmin on to record my run. I asked for directions back home, not remembering so many snow capped mountains in my redwood forest in the past. No one could help. A fair amount of brain energy was spent deciding how to describe this run on Strava, as it would not have the usual hard data. About how far did I go? What pace? I got a good picture of the mountains though, so there was that.
As I ran in the rain with my coban bra, I thought about kindness. When I have "compassion fatigue", I am less kind. Kindness is a superpower. It requires putting the ego under wraps, finding the beauty and humor in each interaction, absorbing anger that was never meant for you, then melting it with your strong, unflappable heart, beating warm and solid and bradycardic.
The Warriors have disappointed me in that respect in recent weeks. Their coach, Steve Kerr, is someone I deeply respect. For instance, he speaks honestly and openly about gun violence, and has some personal experience with this as his father was gunned down. He and his team usually model sportsmanship and joy in the game of basketball. Lately I have noticed more anger right on the surface. Anger about calls, technical fouls stacking up. Granted, it is not their responsibility to be nice. But I have a theory, and that is that kindness helps people win.
Handing the ball to your competitor would be stupid (hey, Warriors, enough with the turn overs!), letting someone elbow you out of your lane on the track foolish. But solidity of purpose, on a foundation of benevolence, with compassion to self and others, with unrelenting hard work, using actions to show prowess, not words of hate or boasting, and the ability to do joyful pushups when you fall in the rain steps before finishing a disappointing marathon? Superpowers.
As I ran in the rain, breasts cobaned, I wondered if I would ever see sub 7's again.
I don't really want to race again until I do.
Self kindness: a work in progress.
Meb always signs his autograph with the words "Run to win".
The kindness to self and others part? Super powerful. I don't really want to race again until I can do pushups in the rain.
As I ran in the rain with my CoBra comfortable enough I forgot it was even there, I pondered the last few weeks. They have been defined by sore legs and a tight ass, compassion fatigue and a whole lot of injuries for Warrior's players.
My engine is all revved up in some ways, but the daily running for almost 200 days now does leave me with a bit of that exhaustion peculiar to marathon training. It goes into your bones, and drags you to the couch more often than usual. There are three spots, one on each leg plus a butt cheek, that are so tight that when I first start running I am fairly certain I look exactly like my father did when he moaned and groaned getting up from the sofa after a nap, walking like Frankenstein. Like with marathon training, I am acutely aware of injury risk, so I have been trying to tone down the pace and mileage a bit. Probably should stop for a few days but I am not yet ready to take orders from my butt. Rx: massage.
An occupational therapist I work with (incidentally, it is occupational therapy month, so go thank one) suggested a foam roller on steroids. Which is to say it has a rechargeable battery that allows it to vibrate, at three different speeds. It is magnificent. Though my IT band is still hiding under the bed.
Compassion fatigue is the buzz word of the early 21st century for those in the business of caring for others. When I run, I try to stop thinking about the suffering, except my own (see above, re tight ass). Still, my brain is like a spin cycle, all the tough stains of concern agitating around from lobe to lobe. Doctors like to fix stuff, but it turns out there is not a lot we can actually completely fix. Oh, we can comfort till the cows come home, and that is my best power, but comforting takes a lot more out of a person than, say, prescribing an ACE inhibitor or cutting out a stony gallbladder.
Last night I dreamed I accidentally left my hospital shift to go to a fundraiser at the mall, then got lost trying to find my way back, and was really stressed about getting my rounds done, then went for a run in the forest and found myself lost again on a snowy crag with mountains rising, and the thing that really got me was I did not have my Garmin on to record my run. I asked for directions back home, not remembering so many snow capped mountains in my redwood forest in the past. No one could help. A fair amount of brain energy was spent deciding how to describe this run on Strava, as it would not have the usual hard data. About how far did I go? What pace? I got a good picture of the mountains though, so there was that.
As I ran in the rain with my coban bra, I thought about kindness. When I have "compassion fatigue", I am less kind. Kindness is a superpower. It requires putting the ego under wraps, finding the beauty and humor in each interaction, absorbing anger that was never meant for you, then melting it with your strong, unflappable heart, beating warm and solid and bradycardic.
The Warriors have disappointed me in that respect in recent weeks. Their coach, Steve Kerr, is someone I deeply respect. For instance, he speaks honestly and openly about gun violence, and has some personal experience with this as his father was gunned down. He and his team usually model sportsmanship and joy in the game of basketball. Lately I have noticed more anger right on the surface. Anger about calls, technical fouls stacking up. Granted, it is not their responsibility to be nice. But I have a theory, and that is that kindness helps people win.
Handing the ball to your competitor would be stupid (hey, Warriors, enough with the turn overs!), letting someone elbow you out of your lane on the track foolish. But solidity of purpose, on a foundation of benevolence, with compassion to self and others, with unrelenting hard work, using actions to show prowess, not words of hate or boasting, and the ability to do joyful pushups when you fall in the rain steps before finishing a disappointing marathon? Superpowers.
As I ran in the rain, breasts cobaned, I wondered if I would ever see sub 7's again.
I don't really want to race again until I do.
Self kindness: a work in progress.
Meb always signs his autograph with the words "Run to win".
The kindness to self and others part? Super powerful. I don't really want to race again until I can do pushups in the rain.
Saturday, March 31, 2018
Ode to Scales and Trails
The piano is built for fingers. The way the black keys sit above the white at just the right
angle. It is a fact of nature that the thumb goes into the curl of fingers like surfer in wave
when ring finger sits on ebony. There is no fight involved.
Two against three, three against four, by separation of thirds, all to keep scales fresh. Fingers alert
even though it is familiar ground. Exert now, collect later when runs on the page drill via retina to synapse to fingers. So solid a pathway that the mind can drift.
"Do not be thinking of what is for dinner tonight when on stage" my piano teacher once said.
The terror of looking down at flying fingers you forgot were there, wondering how they got air
borne.
Presence always scares the wise, easier to reprise that argument from earlier today or consider your next play. Wandering away from present truth. What comes next is prescience. What just happened is lost, like a miracle sent back unopened.
The problem with retinas is they are always looking. Shutter the eyes and the fingers still find their way, the legs still spin on the path. Sudden focus gained, the deranged mind chatter stops. Blindness is safer on piano than trail running where roots grab toes, with bloody aftermath.
Softening the gaze, lowering the hunched shoulders, marveling in the harmony of hamstrings and quadriceps, smelling the salt air, hearing the crunch of crab shell underfoot, slipping on the rain slicked redwood fronds, imbibing dopamine and other endorphinic hormones. Heart and hamstrings burning bright.
The scratched piano wood is from nails slicing through air. All those hours etched in plain sight.
angle. It is a fact of nature that the thumb goes into the curl of fingers like surfer in wave
when ring finger sits on ebony. There is no fight involved.
Two against three, three against four, by separation of thirds, all to keep scales fresh. Fingers alert
even though it is familiar ground. Exert now, collect later when runs on the page drill via retina to synapse to fingers. So solid a pathway that the mind can drift.
"Do not be thinking of what is for dinner tonight when on stage" my piano teacher once said.
The terror of looking down at flying fingers you forgot were there, wondering how they got air
borne.
Presence always scares the wise, easier to reprise that argument from earlier today or consider your next play. Wandering away from present truth. What comes next is prescience. What just happened is lost, like a miracle sent back unopened.
The problem with retinas is they are always looking. Shutter the eyes and the fingers still find their way, the legs still spin on the path. Sudden focus gained, the deranged mind chatter stops. Blindness is safer on piano than trail running where roots grab toes, with bloody aftermath.
Softening the gaze, lowering the hunched shoulders, marveling in the harmony of hamstrings and quadriceps, smelling the salt air, hearing the crunch of crab shell underfoot, slipping on the rain slicked redwood fronds, imbibing dopamine and other endorphinic hormones. Heart and hamstrings burning bright.
The scratched piano wood is from nails slicing through air. All those hours etched in plain sight.
Wednesday, February 28, 2018
Quilting
To be of the opinion, to have a way of thinking, a sentiment.
This is where the word "sentence" comes from.
"In my opinion your son deserves 13 years", said the judge, unsentimentally.
No tender feelings of emotion, just a motion, sealed by a gavel.
That is 4,745 days, during which no pizza is delivered, no joints smoked (well, as far as we know). No studying for exams, no kissing girls, no tossing a baseball with your old man.
I often wonder if people in prison have a plan.
For getting through each day, I mean. I have heard some thrive because in all their prior years
there was no structure, so the structure is a relief of sorts.
I can relate to this, being a lover of structure who is oxymoronically also the least organized creature in the universe. By loving structure, I mean anatomy and histology were like water to a fish or air to a balloon or milk to a hungry baby for me. When I studied these things, I saw nerve bundles in tree branches, liver cells in sidewalk splotches. I walked around my medical school campus in Madison and named your forearm muscles when you waved or flipped me off. By structure I mean I like to know where I will be sleeping, when I might wake up and whether I have enough clean running bras to last through my next day's run. I like to know my hospital orders are being carried out and making someone better instead of worse. I like my family to leave a note if they won't be home when I expect them to, and to text back instantly so I know some ditch somewhere has not claimed them as its own.
My disorder lies in the state of my desk on any given day, by the moat of books that tends to form around my bed, by the piano music lying open in competition for my attention. I am entropically gifted.
I am nearly halfway through a year of running every day. What happens on day 366?
Running has become something of a fix.
Fixing my broken parts. I have always wished to be a quilter. Someone who can make a lovely whole from smaller bits of oddity and beauty. I once did house calls on a quilt artist who saw the end approaching and quilted like a cyclone in those final months, harnessing and sewing pieces that were swept into her eddying energy, fueled by chemotherapeutic fumes.
On day 160 of running I realized something, in-between sneaking peaks (hoping not to burn my retinas to a crisp) at the setting sun drowning in the Pacific Ocean.
I am making a quilt.
Metaphorically lame, yet the thought stopped me for a moment.
Quite literally I have a picture of each day of running thus far. I pick one that most captures my senses. I notice things. Those pictures form a sort of story. Seasons, state of dog grooming, flora, fauna, urban austerity, travels, darkness, all captured.
But what made me stop in my tracks on run 160 was my brokenness that feels like it heals just a little bit more each day I run, like pieces coming together, even in the physical strain and fatigue, the admonitions of too much running and the potential harms, even in the days I fall and draw blood. It reminds me of how Wendy sewed that shadow back on Peter Pan. Ouch, but he needed that thing.
Running is hard, I suppose. Tonight it was cold, rainy, and my work day had been stressful. A couple of weeks ago my femur was screaming in pain. Have you heard the screams of a bruised bone? Angry skeletons are scary as shit. On days when I work a 12 hour hospital shift, the run will be in the dark on one end or the other, and usually the morning end because 12 hours is a nice thought but usually that will become 14 or more. I am not a morning person, really. There are two professions to avoid if you are not a morning person:
1) parent
2) physician
I am a mourning person, as are we all or as we all shall be if we are lucky enough to ever love.
The dopamine surge of exercise is a nice temporary ticket to planet Happy, but that is not why I run. Running is not my cocktail of choice. I do sometimes wonder how I got into running every single day. Once a colleague pulled me aside, and bored his almost black eyes straight into my soul while whispering with Slavic accented mystery "I see you running so much. What are you running from?"
Dude, sometimes running is just, well, running.
I am not sure 365 days is the right goal. Because my structure-craving side needs a goal, that seemed like a reasonable one. But the thing that has me most broken these days, that makes me mourn, is the 4,745 days my son has been dealt. Just desserts? I don't know. He's a kid who screwed up. And I am a Mom who cannot fix it.
So, although my running is by no means a prison sentence for me, and in fact is about as freeing as anything I can imagine in life, it is something I can show up for every day in some solidarity with my child. Maybe I will run for 4,475 days. And hope some of the beauty and hope I feel when doing so will transmit to him through that unruly bond we share called family.
If we get early parole or the proverbial bus takes me out before then?
Well, then, hopefully someone will finish my quilt for me.
That is 4,745 days, during which no pizza is delivered, no joints smoked (well, as far as we know). No studying for exams, no kissing girls, no tossing a baseball with your old man.
I often wonder if people in prison have a plan.
For getting through each day, I mean. I have heard some thrive because in all their prior years
there was no structure, so the structure is a relief of sorts.
I can relate to this, being a lover of structure who is oxymoronically also the least organized creature in the universe. By loving structure, I mean anatomy and histology were like water to a fish or air to a balloon or milk to a hungry baby for me. When I studied these things, I saw nerve bundles in tree branches, liver cells in sidewalk splotches. I walked around my medical school campus in Madison and named your forearm muscles when you waved or flipped me off. By structure I mean I like to know where I will be sleeping, when I might wake up and whether I have enough clean running bras to last through my next day's run. I like to know my hospital orders are being carried out and making someone better instead of worse. I like my family to leave a note if they won't be home when I expect them to, and to text back instantly so I know some ditch somewhere has not claimed them as its own.
My disorder lies in the state of my desk on any given day, by the moat of books that tends to form around my bed, by the piano music lying open in competition for my attention. I am entropically gifted.
I am nearly halfway through a year of running every day. What happens on day 366?
Running has become something of a fix.
Fixing my broken parts. I have always wished to be a quilter. Someone who can make a lovely whole from smaller bits of oddity and beauty. I once did house calls on a quilt artist who saw the end approaching and quilted like a cyclone in those final months, harnessing and sewing pieces that were swept into her eddying energy, fueled by chemotherapeutic fumes.
On day 160 of running I realized something, in-between sneaking peaks (hoping not to burn my retinas to a crisp) at the setting sun drowning in the Pacific Ocean.
I am making a quilt.
Metaphorically lame, yet the thought stopped me for a moment.
Quite literally I have a picture of each day of running thus far. I pick one that most captures my senses. I notice things. Those pictures form a sort of story. Seasons, state of dog grooming, flora, fauna, urban austerity, travels, darkness, all captured.
But what made me stop in my tracks on run 160 was my brokenness that feels like it heals just a little bit more each day I run, like pieces coming together, even in the physical strain and fatigue, the admonitions of too much running and the potential harms, even in the days I fall and draw blood. It reminds me of how Wendy sewed that shadow back on Peter Pan. Ouch, but he needed that thing.
Running is hard, I suppose. Tonight it was cold, rainy, and my work day had been stressful. A couple of weeks ago my femur was screaming in pain. Have you heard the screams of a bruised bone? Angry skeletons are scary as shit. On days when I work a 12 hour hospital shift, the run will be in the dark on one end or the other, and usually the morning end because 12 hours is a nice thought but usually that will become 14 or more. I am not a morning person, really. There are two professions to avoid if you are not a morning person:
1) parent
2) physician
I am a mourning person, as are we all or as we all shall be if we are lucky enough to ever love.
The dopamine surge of exercise is a nice temporary ticket to planet Happy, but that is not why I run. Running is not my cocktail of choice. I do sometimes wonder how I got into running every single day. Once a colleague pulled me aside, and bored his almost black eyes straight into my soul while whispering with Slavic accented mystery "I see you running so much. What are you running from?"
Dude, sometimes running is just, well, running.
I am not sure 365 days is the right goal. Because my structure-craving side needs a goal, that seemed like a reasonable one. But the thing that has me most broken these days, that makes me mourn, is the 4,745 days my son has been dealt. Just desserts? I don't know. He's a kid who screwed up. And I am a Mom who cannot fix it.
So, although my running is by no means a prison sentence for me, and in fact is about as freeing as anything I can imagine in life, it is something I can show up for every day in some solidarity with my child. Maybe I will run for 4,475 days. And hope some of the beauty and hope I feel when doing so will transmit to him through that unruly bond we share called family.
If we get early parole or the proverbial bus takes me out before then?
Well, then, hopefully someone will finish my quilt for me.
Sunday, February 11, 2018
Flames, Failure and Falling: Advice to My Children
If you were to substitute I in falling, you get failing. I prefer to keep the El in falling though, because without it I would feel like a failure, and would know I had lost my connection to my superpowers. The superpowers that let me get up every single day.
Falling, like failing, is hard to define. Unintentional travel from a higher place to a lower place might sum both up. With falling, everything can fall apart in an instant. Failing might occur more slowly, sneaking up and standing next to you for awhile before you give it the side eye and realize with a start, oh man, that is Failure next to me!
When you fall, get up. If you can't get up, punch your lifeline. If failure is at your side, wrap your arm around its shoulder. If that scares you, it should. I try not to be afraid of anything and am afraid of everything. I try to look tough despite my bleeding heart. I can wear pants like these and still be on top of the world.
The other day, I fell in the literal sense on a trail marked "use at your own risk".
It is not like I have not fallen before. You can expect this with trail running. But this one left me wondering if a had fractured my femur. I figured not, as I could bear weight after the first couple of nauseating minutes laying on the ground. So.....I finished my run, albeit at an extremely slow pace, such that the banana slugs were passing me left and right. When the next morning found me barely able to walk, I decided to use some modern technology instead of my super Xray vision, and got an Xray of the biggest bone in my body (besides my head). No fracture! So.....I went running, because I am on a streak, people. Day 144 today. It is going to be slow going for awhile though.
Doctorly Disclaimer: never run on an injury. Unless, like me and El, you have superpowers and checkered pants to prove it.
Figure skaters should not fall. They train their whole lives for this 3 minutes of olympic glory, and if they fall, nay even wobble, they fail. I have to watch their leaps and landings through a little slit in my fingers, with hands ready to hide the horror, sort of how I watched the movie It.
It all brings me to think that we are too quick to judge the value of everything. It is fear of failure, fear of falling and fear of the unknown. It is standing right next to us.
Say, for instance, a skater is on a frozen pond, of the type we used to have in winter in my hometown in Wisconsin. It is dusk. There is no one else around. Skater nails a quadruple axel. If a skater nails a quadruple axel at dusk at a pond where no one is watching, does it count? Does it count less than nailing it in that one 3 minute time slot allotted to the olympic contender?
I have been traveling more in recent years, and finding myself more overwhelmed by how many people there are in the world. People living their lives, just like me, and each and every one of them the center of their own universe. People who will do great and terrible and mundane things on any given day. Some people will die of hunger, some will die of gluttony. Some will have sons who get olympic gold medals, some will have sons in the hole in prison for their own safety after standing up to a gang. Some people *cough Emma Coburn cough*will be leading a race till the last two laps then get spanked by that one woman with the wicked kick, plus a few others that had more left in the tank.
Some doctors will be famous. Some quietly do their care, one patient at a time. Some pianists will play Carnegie Hall. Some will never be able to afford a piano and thus never even unlock the talent inside their brain and fingers. Some writers will be published and some will sit in solitude writing the most beautiful things no-one ever read.
Some need to never fail, never fall. Or at least appear that way to the world. I, for one, grab the hand of my friend failure and take my chances. This is what I want my kids to do too:
Fail miserably, fall often, and live life. Forget about not going gently when death reaches out a hand. Instead, devote yourself to not go gently in all the days leading up to that last. Look up from the hole and see the light, burning from within. Lean in and whisper all that matters. Its your superpower.
This poem failed to win a contest. But maybe it is better just curled up right here in my preachy blog.
Flames
Antiseptic flared my nostrils,
white light burned my eyes.
One hand was balled into a fist,
the other tucked inside my mother's as she led me to say goodbye to my father.
I did not raise my hand to my face to protect myself from breathing fire.
It filtered through me and curled up inside:
an ember, a bomb, a pyre.
A white coat and dozens of notebooks crammed
with a new language.
Greek and Latin pouring light into dark corners of human anatomy.
Anyone could be blinded by my new armor
under the glaring fluorescents.
The man with AIDS laughed with me
as I made my rounds.
I wanted to make a good impression
on my attending. I wrote a beautiful note.
Later when my team was summoned,
we marched where he led: the morgue.
My laughing man was splayed open
on the silver table. Dead.
I did not raise my hand to my eyes
burning with formaldehyde.
The image burned my retinas,
curled upside down and righted again.
Housed by hippocampus, a hotel with many rooms,
Little tombs.
For the black man, first night intern year
who died and died and died again.
I pushed on his chest and felt bones crunch, my own bile rising.
"Good," my senior resident said,
"That's good CPR."
For the young husband, who was losing his wife.
Obviously terminal, she suffered
while he raged.
My words with no power to tame, I learned
Some must go down in flames.
For the veteran who outlived war
only to drop on a nursing home floor.
I ran the code and he lived again, with displeasure.
He's there, curled up with all the others,
tucked in my hand—
but sifting through, falling away,
grains of sand,
dry and warm like the parched lips
I lean into, my own hair graying,
white coat brushing the forearm of
the hand grasping mine.
Whispering all that matters:
an ember, a bomb, a balm.
Jennifer Heidmann, MD
Falling, like failing, is hard to define. Unintentional travel from a higher place to a lower place might sum both up. With falling, everything can fall apart in an instant. Failing might occur more slowly, sneaking up and standing next to you for awhile before you give it the side eye and realize with a start, oh man, that is Failure next to me!
When you fall, get up. If you can't get up, punch your lifeline. If failure is at your side, wrap your arm around its shoulder. If that scares you, it should. I try not to be afraid of anything and am afraid of everything. I try to look tough despite my bleeding heart. I can wear pants like these and still be on top of the world.
The other day, I fell in the literal sense on a trail marked "use at your own risk".
It is not like I have not fallen before. You can expect this with trail running. But this one left me wondering if a had fractured my femur. I figured not, as I could bear weight after the first couple of nauseating minutes laying on the ground. So.....I finished my run, albeit at an extremely slow pace, such that the banana slugs were passing me left and right. When the next morning found me barely able to walk, I decided to use some modern technology instead of my super Xray vision, and got an Xray of the biggest bone in my body (besides my head). No fracture! So.....I went running, because I am on a streak, people. Day 144 today. It is going to be slow going for awhile though.
Doctorly Disclaimer: never run on an injury. Unless, like me and El, you have superpowers and checkered pants to prove it.
Figure skaters should not fall. They train their whole lives for this 3 minutes of olympic glory, and if they fall, nay even wobble, they fail. I have to watch their leaps and landings through a little slit in my fingers, with hands ready to hide the horror, sort of how I watched the movie It.
It all brings me to think that we are too quick to judge the value of everything. It is fear of failure, fear of falling and fear of the unknown. It is standing right next to us.
Say, for instance, a skater is on a frozen pond, of the type we used to have in winter in my hometown in Wisconsin. It is dusk. There is no one else around. Skater nails a quadruple axel. If a skater nails a quadruple axel at dusk at a pond where no one is watching, does it count? Does it count less than nailing it in that one 3 minute time slot allotted to the olympic contender?
I have been traveling more in recent years, and finding myself more overwhelmed by how many people there are in the world. People living their lives, just like me, and each and every one of them the center of their own universe. People who will do great and terrible and mundane things on any given day. Some people will die of hunger, some will die of gluttony. Some will have sons who get olympic gold medals, some will have sons in the hole in prison for their own safety after standing up to a gang. Some people *cough Emma Coburn cough*will be leading a race till the last two laps then get spanked by that one woman with the wicked kick, plus a few others that had more left in the tank.
Some doctors will be famous. Some quietly do their care, one patient at a time. Some pianists will play Carnegie Hall. Some will never be able to afford a piano and thus never even unlock the talent inside their brain and fingers. Some writers will be published and some will sit in solitude writing the most beautiful things no-one ever read.
Some need to never fail, never fall. Or at least appear that way to the world. I, for one, grab the hand of my friend failure and take my chances. This is what I want my kids to do too:
Fail miserably, fall often, and live life. Forget about not going gently when death reaches out a hand. Instead, devote yourself to not go gently in all the days leading up to that last. Look up from the hole and see the light, burning from within. Lean in and whisper all that matters. Its your superpower.
This poem failed to win a contest. But maybe it is better just curled up right here in my preachy blog.
Flames
Antiseptic flared my nostrils,
white light burned my eyes.
One hand was balled into a fist,
the other tucked inside my mother's as she led me to say goodbye to my father.
I did not raise my hand to my face to protect myself from breathing fire.
It filtered through me and curled up inside:
an ember, a bomb, a pyre.
A white coat and dozens of notebooks crammed
with a new language.
Greek and Latin pouring light into dark corners of human anatomy.
Anyone could be blinded by my new armor
under the glaring fluorescents.
The man with AIDS laughed with me
as I made my rounds.
I wanted to make a good impression
on my attending. I wrote a beautiful note.
Later when my team was summoned,
we marched where he led: the morgue.
My laughing man was splayed open
on the silver table. Dead.
I did not raise my hand to my eyes
burning with formaldehyde.
The image burned my retinas,
curled upside down and righted again.
Housed by hippocampus, a hotel with many rooms,
Little tombs.
For the black man, first night intern year
who died and died and died again.
I pushed on his chest and felt bones crunch, my own bile rising.
"Good," my senior resident said,
"That's good CPR."
For the young husband, who was losing his wife.
Obviously terminal, she suffered
while he raged.
My words with no power to tame, I learned
Some must go down in flames.
For the veteran who outlived war
only to drop on a nursing home floor.
I ran the code and he lived again, with displeasure.
He's there, curled up with all the others,
tucked in my hand—
but sifting through, falling away,
grains of sand,
dry and warm like the parched lips
I lean into, my own hair graying,
white coat brushing the forearm of
the hand grasping mine.
Whispering all that matters:
an ember, a bomb, a balm.
Jennifer Heidmann, MD
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