"excerpts from mylife '07"

Damn what a year this was!...This new year is a giant *reset* button for me. Finally finishing school, starting my career, single and free and moving away, starting everything fresh after a jam-packed and eventful year. Perhaps a little wiser for the wear. Guess later on I'll probably look back on this year as the time I started to grow up. It was a great year. Decided on a career finally, fell in love sort of, and had a hell of a time doing it. Had tremendous highs and crushing concrete-scraping lows. But that's how life is for an idealist, after all. It's either great or terrible or at least the constant struggle against apathy...C'est la vie.

feb: life is so good

...so basically, everything is great. just enough, not too much, not going anywhere, all dreams, all play, no reality. i'm in that wonderful limbo in life that only comes around occasionally. it is a limbo where everything here and now is good, everything ahead looks glorious, there are no regrets of the recent past, and the unknowns are all OK. I like all options equally. they all have allure and intrigue. and the best part is that I honestly have no idea where I will be in 5 years...or 2...or 1....

april: amore, etc

...finally, the last thing I wanted to write about is that I've decided to do family medicine. I started off wanting to do the lifestyle specialties, either anesthesia or radiology, but honestly I've grown to love medicine. it's the first thing I've ever done that finally makes me feel like I can do some good. help or something like it. give back a little. and I really love family medicine. it's got a little bit of everything and the stories are the best you'll hear anywhere except on a barstool. even better sometimes. think I'll most likely move west. i've really been feeling the need for my own life lately. I literally need a breath of fresh air, and I think I'll find that far away from here...

june: a bitter end

...so that's that... I spent the afternoon in sort of a pathetic homage to memory. I walked a lot. up and down the streets searching for a lost moment in the smell of a jasmine tree that, ironically, I could not find. the mysterious tree that had an aroma powerful enough to stop both of us in our tracks that I can never seem to find again. it was only there for that moment in time. that evening. now gone forever. how very appropriate. It's strange to look for a moment that's passed. a memory, I suppose, but I wanted tangible evidence of that memory. I wanted to smell that moment again and be there holding hands and laughing. both a first time and last time joined together.. those are nice. It's like that cliche, "better to have loved and lost than never loved at all." in other words, pain is a better state for human existence than emptiness... at least that's what that phrase means to me now.

...it's so unexplainable to me that something I designed, classified meaningless in my mind, destined - no, knew - to have an distinct end, should have such an effect on me. it's hard and it hurts. i'm a little heartbroken. I think I was in love. I open myself so infrequently to people, but he was one. oh well, I can let this one go like opening a window and letting the breeze blow in. it will feel good if I can ever get myself to the window and open it. freedom. independence. my best friends. the trio reunites.

july: I love new orleans (?)

...it's amazing. the small things that I hated so intensely have become the things I now smile about and cherish. that terribly unique smell, the broken sidewalks, the beggers with that knowing twinkle in their eye saying "you could have been me if things had gone differently..." the smell of stale, wet air and evaporated urine and beer, sweat, fried food and spices, cigarette smoke. eau de nouvelle orleans. that special light on the vibrantly colored flowers on gov nicholls, the tourists blending with the locals strolling hand in hand on calle real - Royal Street - as they slowly unknowingly embody the essence of the French Quarter. a trumpet sound clashes with a nearby drummer, but somehow blends more seamlessly than in other places, like we're all playing in the same key here...

october: the streets are thick.

....then all of a sudden, it is cool enough to walk the streets of New Orleans again. the uniform beaded sweat is not even worth mentioning. my favorite time of the year is when the heat lifts just enough so that I can be outside again. it is a rebirth. a sensory overload. but now my walk is full of passed time. the streets everywhere are thick not with heat and humidity, but with the sadness of runaway memories. every street corner, every view, conjures the pain of a happy time. and suddenly, the careless strolls that I love are more like memories of my careless strolls, and how wonderful it felt then. such a bitter irony to realize that by sharing my life's pleasures, I was submitting them away so that alone my pleasures are no longer complete. who could have known that a sudden stop and quick kiss would forever ruin that store front for me, so that each time I see it I remember? that bottle of wine now always reminds me of the sky that bacchanal night - the stars and the moon, the crisp air. places sound like our conversations, food looks like what you wore, sounds feel like touching you again. will this ever go away? but there are too many reminders here. too many. the birth of new memories will serve to replace the pain of dead ones. they have to. but when? how much longer? and then it seems a hopeless effort , a hilarious perversity, to pretend to replace what I lost. no one can fill those shoes again. in fact, the shoes have not even stayed behind. so that all that remains are their relentless imprints everywhere I turn....

....in less than one year, my life was formed and shaped and propelled forward with greater speed than ever. my life changed dramatically. I formed and planned career dreams that truly excited me. I had endless soul-searching conversations with real friends. there was never enough time in the day for everything worth doing and saying and seeing. it was like being happy once. and now abruptly I am empty again. time to start anew. but I am so tired now. because I shouldn't have had to lose it all at once. all of the people and conversations who shaped me this year. so special to me. bars, restaurants, music, dancing..the streets of New Orleans all sing the recent past to me like a gentle wind blowing...but then I blink and skip a heartbeat and the air is silent and still. there is no sound here anymore. and then I can't breathe. forget. focus on another task. time again for The Future to take hold of my thoughts, while Now wastes slowly away....

november: how did this happen, this thing called life?

...I think I've found my calling in hospice on my last rotation. I love it. I believe in it. I can see myself doing it. but then I sometimes think...what if medicine is only one thing I do and learn and i still learn all about those other things I wanted to be. i always wanted to write. i love photography, travel, languages. why not get a normal job and do all those things I want to do so badly but feel like I can't because there's no time because I've sacrificed my life and youth to medicine. that would be nice. I'd like that. but here I am. shocking, really. in a year or 2 or 3, before I knew it, I've taken so many steps forward blindly on the path of least resistance that I woke up a doctor with a quarter million dollars of debt and my whole life to make it up. but I guess it could be worse really... because I imagine that it's probably a similar feeling to what most alcoholics in a ditch wake up feeling one day, or a 35 year old single business person, or a 22 year old married woman pregnant for her 3rd child. It's just another version really. a version of "how and when the f&@*& did I wind up here??" and what will ever come of me because of the path I've chosen to take...

" 'There comes a time in each like like a point of fulcrum. At that time you must accept yourself. It is not any more what you will become. It is what you are and always will be' ...'What happens if one doesn't recognize the point of fulcrum'...'You will be like the many. Only the few recognize the moment. And act on it.' "

-the magus

december: the end

...and then, as simply as that, the evidence is obsolete. it joins the ranks of all the other discarded and hidden items - the reluctant but inviting empty scrap of paper, an empty wine bottle, a sad and private poem that sounds so strikingly symbolic at one time while at another embarrassingly obsolete. That understanding smile - that would, if discovered, confess to and remind others of the comfort and joy you had while you were alone, in solitude...

Little Giddy

We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time.