the peek

on that dark corner
polk and damen
where the poor men
who hoisted guns
killing for us
go for a protected smoke
and a room with clean sheets

this is where we put those
who have fought our political wars
in places they couldn't pronounce
we house them where
we would never house our own mothers

in a place where the stench
sticks to your clothes
and in-between the tiny hairs on your neck.

where the government
saves money
buying the cheaper gloves
and needles
coffee that would taste like water
if it were triple bagged

i go to this place
to the 6th floor where
an older man
with white hair and bleached skin
tells me that his finger is broken
and names the man who did it:
"Vladimir putin"
he is a little bit out of sorts
much like the man in the room across the hall
who creaks the door open
cautiously
suspiciously
leans his head around the corner
to peek at me
like a ghoul
slithering up from the ground
on the side of one of those
haunted roller-coaster-rides

"who can blame him for being so sick"
said the man with the M.D. behind his name.
"would you want to be a patient here?"

driving by the VA
i am in awe
of this great buildings'
resemblance to
the projects down the street
condemned
but still occupied.

now i know where the edelweiss song comes from

i have often been ridiculed for never having seen "the sound of music." it's not that i intentionally avoid it, i have just never seen it. it's always on T.V., but I never want to watch it from the middle so i do the whole, "i'll just watch it later" thing. that, as i'm sure you all know, never happens. i've seen bits and pieces of the damn thing, but never the film in its entirety. how many times have you done that with a movie? if you're like me you do it a lot.

anyway, it was on t.v. last night. i was at my friend dietzer's house in baton rouge, lousiana. i had an interview in mobile, alabama and then a good friend of mine got married in baton rouge. she was a best friend back in the day, but we were immature and had a stupid falling-out in college so now we're only mildly resemble friends. anyway that was off the subject. so dietzer's parents came over to her apartment, along with her cousin kevin and we all sat around and played cranium interspersed with sound of music viewing. dietzer and i were on a team, her mom and cousin on another with her dad being the "lifeline." that's a little thing the dietz family added to the game to make it more fun. anyway it was great cause her dad is almost as into the movie as her mom so we were only really allowed to play or talk during commercials. maybe that had something to do with my missing the question about john glenn or not being able to build a picket fence out of clay, but i really can't say for sure. what's important is that i realized that i already knew all of the songs in S.O.M. adelweiss and the "doe a deer" one and "so long, farewell, Auf wiedersehn, goodnight, " and many others. (in case you were wondering i totally looked up how to spell auf wiedersehn). it was like my life all of the sudden had meaning. i knew the origin of all of these tunes. the one last piece in the puzzle. o.k., i'm being a little melodramatic, but it really was amazing that i could know all the words to all the songs without ever having seen the movie.

it's nice to know where it all came from.

i have but one task...to see the whole thing from beginning to end. i'll just have to see it later...haha

no i am not depressed

so i just wanted to write a post that explains how i'm not about to jump off a bridge, and i'm not sitting around contemplating how little meaning life has wanting to O.D. on benzos or something. writing = healing for me so maybe blogging wasn't such a good idea. cause i usually write when i feel like thinking things out, when things are awful and confusing and scary.

so please don't judge my mood by my blog...it is but a glimpse into my present struggle not the whole state of my being.

i will try to only write happy entries.

given the current state of my life: not knowing where i will be next year, who i will be around or what i will be doing; i think i'm doing o.k. when absolutely everything is a variable, it's difficult to act as if everything is gravy all the time,

random story from today:
attending doc asks us "what is the best way to illicit the pain response in a patient?"
we all give different answers: sternal rub, squeeze the nailbed, etc.
no, he says. these things all cause bruising.
he leans over the patient's bed and squeezes his nipple. really hard.
the guy screams.
this is his way. he even specifies that it works equally well in a woman and won't bruise. i think it's cruel and inappropriate.

so, no nipple pinching for me, unless someone happens to think it's sexy...then i will happily oblige.

i will save my blogging for when i only have happy, positive things to recount...so no one call the suicide hotline on me, o.k., cause i'm doing just fine.

from "a heartbreaking work of staggering genuis"

this is the best description of cancer i have ever read:

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They took my mother's stomach out about 6 months ago. They had hoped they removed the offending portion. But of course they didn't get it all. They had left some of it and it had grown, it had come back, it had laid eggs, was stowed away, was stuck to the side of the spaceship. When she went in again and they had "opened her up" -a phrase they used- and had looked inside, it was staring out at them, at the doctors, like a thousand writhing worms under a rock, swarming, shimmering, wet and oily -Good God!- or maybe not like worms but like a million little podules, each a tiny city of cancer, each with an unruly, sprawling, environmentally careless citizenry with no zoning laws whatsoever. When the doctor opened her up, and there was suddenly a light thrown upon the world of cancer-podules, they were annoyed by the disturbance, and defiant. Turn Off. The fucking. Light. They glared at the doctor, each podule, though a city unto itself, having one single eye, one blind evil eye in the middle, which stared imperiously, as only a blind eye can do, out at the doctor. Go. The. Fuck. Away. The doctors did what they could, took the whole stomach out, connected what was left, this part to that, and sewed her back up, leaving the city as is, the colonist to their manifest destiny, their fossil fuels, their strip malls and suburban sprawl.

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i'm only 54 pages into the book...i keep falling asleep in the library, but it's good. even when i try to read non-medical stuff, medicine always seems to creep in. and that's because sickness and death are some of the most awful and important and expressive moments in people's lives.