Vonnegut brilliance

"Tiger got to hunt,
Bird got to fly,
Man got to sit and wonder why, why, why?

Tiger got to sleep,
Bird got to land,
Man got to tell himself he understand."

- Kurt Vonnegut, Cat's Cradle

inception

The first thing I noticed was that my jaws were clenched.  "No words for now" - a ubiquitous voice from everywhere around me.  I closed my eyes. 

And beneath the words I couldn't speak, beneath it all, I closed them again.  Entered a dream withith a dream.  Hallways leading to hallways. 

Breath became easy.  The fire burning between my ribs was cooled.

I wasn't there long - maybe longer than I know.  There were no clocks in these hallways.  No sense of direction either.  My internal compass was wrecked.

I never found anything. Never did anything. Never saw anyone.

When I came back, my jaws were still shut.  I had nothing to say, anyway.  Retrograde amnesia - unable to connect to my old thoughts and bother my poor worn-out tongue with them. 

Something was different.  Something was born in that wasteland.

So alive and speechless.

by Billy Collins

Night House

"Every day the body works in the fields of the world
mending a stone wall
or swinging a sickle through the tall grass -
the grass of civics, the grass of money -
and every night the body curls around itself
and listens for the soft bells of sleep.

But the heart is restless and rises
from the body in the middle of the night,
leaves the trapezoidal bedroom
with its thick, pictureless walls
to sit by herself at the kitchen table
and heat some milk in a pan.

And the mind gets up too, puts on a robe
and goes downstairs, lights a cigarette,
and opens a book on engineering.
Even the conscience awakens
and roams from room to room in the dark,
darting away from every mirror like a strange fish.

And the soul is up on the roof
in her nightdress, straddling the ridge,
singing a song about the wildness of the sea
until the first rip of pink appears in the sky.
Then, they all will return to the sleeping body
the way a flock of birds settles back into a tree,

resuming their daily colloquy,
talking to each other or themselves
even through the heat of the long afternoons.

Which is why the body - that house of voices -
sometimes puts down its metal tongs, its needle, or its pen
to stare into the distance,

to listen to all its names being called
before bending again to its labor."

- Billy Collins, from Picnic, Lightning

by Billy Collins

Not Touching

"The valentine of desire is pasted over my heart
and still we are not touching, like things

in a poorly done still life
where the knife appers to be floating over the plate
which is itself hovering above the table somehow,

the entire arrangement of apple, pear, and wineglass
having forgotten the law of gravity,
refusing to be still,

as if the painter had caught them all
in a rare moment of slow flight
just before they drifted out of the room
through a window of perfectly realistic sunlight."

- Billy Collins, from Questions About Angels

most haunting and beautiful four minutes of your day

I haven't had much time or energy to write lately, so I've been putting up quotes and things I run across that move me.  Here's another, a song and video by Bon Iver (my newest life-changing musical discovery).  Do your best to not be haunted and moved by this - although, I realize I'm in a particular place in life that sets me up for that kind of experience at almost every turn, and not everyone is.  All the same, enjoy.

prayer, a quote

"For the happy man prayer is only a jumble of words, until the day when sorrow comes to explain to him the the sublime language by means of which he speaks to God."

Count of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas

latter days

There is a me you would not recognize, dear

Call it the shadow of myself

And if the music starts before I get there

Dance without me, you dance so gracefully

I really think I'll be okay

They've taken a toll, these latter days

Latter Days, Over the Rhine

i could see for miles, miles, miles

The song is Holocene, by Bon Iver, and I had never heard it before.  I was with friends.  Someone in the other room was remarking about how flipping awesome you are.  And an invisible hand squeezed my chest 'til I couldn't breathe.  On the back porch, all I could choke out was, I'm sorry.  I'm so sorry.

and

I love you.

"...3rd and Lake it burnt away, the hallway
Was where we learned to celebrate
Automatic bought the years you'd talk for me
That night you played me ʻLip Paradeʼ
Not the needle, nor the thread, the lost decree
Saying nothing, that's enough for me

... and at once I knew I was not magnificent
Hulled far from the highway aisle
(Jagged, vacance, thick without us)
I could see for miles, miles, miles

Christmas night, it clutched the light, the hallow bright
Above my brother, I entangled spines
We smoked the screen to make it what it was to be
Now to know it in my memory:

... and at once I knew I was not magnificent
High above the highway aisle
(Jagged vacance, thick with ice)
I could see for miles, miles, miles"

Holocene, Bon Iver

back in the trenches

Week two at the St. Louis Fire Department. I'm through all of my classroom orientation, and I've worked three shifts on the streets. I had been jokingly predicting that I would be assigned to night shift in north city, because I'm the rookie, and that's the worst time and the worst part of St. Louis for violent crime. Good call. That's where I am.

And it is something.

In three 12-hour night shifts in north St. Louis I have seen a patient who was hit in the head with a brick by her son (incurred a serious brain bleed, went into cardiac arrest and died three times, and was revived)...an ex-marine cop come close to executing an HIV-positive satanist who spit in the cop's face in the back of my ambulance...several patients living in completely third-world conditions with no lights, heat, or electricity at all...some wicked car wrecks resulting from drunken urban street racing...and three heroin overdoses. So far, I've managed to avoid the plethora of shootings and stabbings that have happened since I started on Friday. [Interesting side note: my first night, we had an army medic riding with us. She was shipped to St. Louis from Cali-freaken-fornia for two weeks to get experience treating gunshot wounds before being shipped out to Afghanistan. Really? She was based one hour from Los Angeles. St. Louis is worse than L.A? According to her, the army's research shows that St. Louis and Baltimore have the highest rate of shootings per capita in the U.S.; they were offered a choice between the two cities. I got a kick out of that, and then I made sure I knew where we keep the bullet-proof vests on the truck]

I have to admit that I was really anxious about getting back into this field after what I went through last year, and the reputation St. Louis has, learning to sleep during the day again, learning to leave the comfort of being the EMT/driver and become the medic-in-charge, making huge, weighty decisions about peoples' lives and well-being in a split-second, the paperwork, all the extra responsibility...

I'm still being trained by another paramedic for the next few weeks - every shift I'm handed new responsibilities and given more leeway. So I don't know yet what it will feel like when at last the doors are closed and I'm in the back of the bus by myself with the patient, and there's no one there to bail me out.

But I can say that, to my great relief, I love it. I see this job in a different light than when I first got into this business four years ago. I didn't start this new job in St. Louis with any delusions of what being a paramedic is all about. I've been around the block - through the jadedness and cynicism that everyone experiences when they learn what it's really like. I know that it's not at all what you see on t.v. And I'm thankful for that.

May I keep my heart open, my mind sharp, and my body strong as I dig in and experience the underbelly of my hometown.

cicada shell

I love the open space of the Funeral Chapel parking lot at night. Earlier today, a human's cicada shell lay inside those walls, smiling, not telling the secret of where the rest of him went, after moulting.

As I buzz around this empty space, I feel sure that I'm a reincarnated soul, or a vampire - hundreds of years older than I look. Or an ant who has underestimated the weight and size of this dead beetle he is hauling around.

But I don't mind the aloneness, or the fact that this is not my season. The dead spot on my right big toe is the only remaining numbness from last year's debacle - the unfulfilled portion of the progress bar on my screen. The healing is not complete, but it is real.

Now it's gotten late. Time to flip my collar up and turn back to the house. Tonight is not the night I leave my skin behind and finally learn the secret.

cloud comin' down

Sunday morning. Not early. Not late. I'm sure well over half the city is still sleeping it off.

It would be cooler if I had a record player and could physically put the needle on the vinyl. I'll settle for connecting a USB cable to the docking station. Greg Brown is singing.

It's a messed up world, but I love it anyway. I love it.

And now, between the notes and his gravelly voice, another voice.
You are not what you were. I've been strengthening you. It might soon be your turn to do the lifting up. You are weak, you are strong. That's all for now.

Fade back to Greg Brown - strange choreography.

I try to say a prayer, return the favor, but I don't know who to address or what to call you. I get the feeling for a minute that the joke's on me. You have no name. You have a thousand names. You have no name. Why do I need you to?

I return to the song; my breath tells me I've been in a different sort of presence, though I can't put a finger on it.

I've got two little feet to get me 'cross the mountain.
two little feet to carry me into the woods.
two little feet, big mountain, and a
cloud comin' down, cloud comin' down, cloud comin' down.