Sep 2007
- Sep 3
- hot
Damn it, the heat is practically melting my brain. It’s been near 100 degrees all weekend, and as humid as a tropical rainforest. Which means that by the time I get home it’s like 120 degrees inside my apartment and disgustingly moist.
· Read more… - Sep 4
- hot. continued.
The expected high temperature today is supposedly 90°F but the humidity is up to 60% and I’m already going out of my mind. It’s time to find a place with A/C to hang out.
· Read more… - Sep 4
- whispers of the gods
On panspermia and ancient aliens (at least in science fiction.)
· Read more… - Sep 4
- meta: the snow queen
I haven’t been this affected by the death of a character ever since Gandalf fell into the abyss in Moria.
· Read more… - Sep 4
- half a person
Can you still be human when you’ve purposefully amputated your capacity to love? When you’ve decided to never feel another goddamn thing again, and there is nothing in your heart but dark emptiness?
· Read more… - Sep 4
- creation from nothing (quantum mechanics)
To be loved, you must love…
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But those who have so little, the ones who need it the most…
are the least likely to give it… - Sep 4
- faith (and the lack thereof)
When was the last time anyone believed in you?
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Outside of the trappings of your profession
without the aegis of your Oath? - Sep 4
- convoluted
every thought is second-guessed
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every impulse examined
every sliver of hope is processed
every emotion filtered - Sep 4
- dreaming
“will you come with me?”
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and she would say “yes”
just that
and I would know - Sep 4
- even starlight fades
the fragrance of her hair haunts me
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the way her eyes sparkle when she smiles
the sound of her laughter
the curve of her face
the quiet grace of her every move - Sep 4
- massive attack "teardrop"
I first heard this song one fevered night that I was driving to L.A. the long way around, up I-15, somewhere between Escondido and Temecula. Mix Master Mike was DJ’ing Spin Psycle.
· Read more… - Sep 4
- tortured soul
tortured?
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you’re damned right my soul is tortured
twisted and wracked beyond even my darkest imaginings
fraught with pain and blood and death (though it is the vomit, the piss, and the shit that gets to me the most
and worse yet, the stench of bacteria feeding on still-live flesh
I have nightmares about resistant Staph aureus and Pseudomonas more than any of my other fears combined) - Sep 5
- counterbalance
Last night I dreamt that someone confessed her feelings for me—not that it mattered even in my dream, since she was married and had kids. And she kissed me, leaving me literally floored. It was too late, much too much too late, but to know that all my heartache, all my suffering had not been completely in vain was something of a comfort to me. Even though nothing could change, that bit of knowledge consoled me.
· Read more… - Sep 5
- mind trace
- Sep 5
- no desire
why this dream now,
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disinterring the past
I thought I had buried it deep
buried it well - Sep 5
- commentary for the day
That last post was actually quite painful. Who knew that sifting through six years of blog posts could evoke such bathos?
· Read more… - Sep 5
- the flaming lips "do you realize?"
· Read more…The Flaming Lips • Do You Realize?? - Sep 6
- rivermaya "himala"
It was 1997 when I first heard this song, on the island of Tablas, in the province of Romblon, awaiting a plane to take us back to Manila.
· Read more… - Sep 6
- 87,600 hours
The last 10 years of unbearable loneliness have finally gotten to me, I think.
· Read more… - Sep 6
- Jocelyn Enriquez, Amber, and Ultra Naté "If You Could Read My Mind"
Nine years ago, driving down to San Diego to watch “Dogeaters” at the Mandeville Center on the UCSD campus.
· Read more… - Sep 7
- mindtrace (i'm getting better)
Maybe this story of fighter planes with nukes accidentally left on board flying over the U.S. was the genesis of one of the dreams I had the other day.
· Read more… - Sep 7
- trying to achieve escape velocity (retrospective: 10 years ago)
I’m not really sure what triggered this strange mood of mine. My mind wanders back to the end of my college days, unearthing a lot of bittersweet memories. (And do I even have any memories that just have the sweet and not the bitter?)
· Read more… - Sep 7
- even farther back
1995: Deep wounds. Ugly scars. And then: new, unfounded hopes and unfulfillable wishes. I learn a secret that, in the end, fucks me up bad, but which I am bound by honor to keep. (And would the outcome really have changed if I had betrayed it? Except for the damnation of my soul?)
· Read more… - Sep 7
- youtube candy
Before I find myself dragged back down into the pit of self-pity as I reminisce rather mawkishly, I thought I would share some mashups that I thought were particularly clever.
· Read more… - Sep 7
- the downward spiral
How did I get here?
· Read more… - Sep 7
- arcade fire "no cars go"
I left work this morning singing that line: “Between the click of the light and the start of the dream.” Orion gleamed through the clouds. The crescent moon was rising, and Venus also glittered in the east like a jewel, heralding the rising sun in less than an hour.
· Read more… - Sep 8
- flight
My mood is better now.
· Read more… - Sep 9
- overstimulated
Not sure why, but my brain feels like its full right now. There are like 100,000 thoughts spinning through this absurd skein of neurons wound up tighter than you could cinch a piece of string around Kate Moss’s waist, and I’m just paralyzed.
· Read more… - Sep 9
- blast crater
I guess there is no recovering from this. Even 10 years out.
· Read more… - Sep 9
- the coming of cold iron
I never watched the original version of “3:10 to Yuma” but I suspect it probably didn’t have the nuances of the remake starring Russell Crowe and Christian Bale. The plot is relatively straight-forward. Ben Wade, the infamous leader of a band of outlaws that have robbed the Southern Pacific Railroad twenty-two times, finally gets caught. Meanwhile, Dan Evans, a veteran of the Civil War who lost his leg, and a rancher who is being forced off his land by the Southern Pacific Railroad, decides to take the job to bring Ben Wade to justice, by escorting him to the prison train that stops in the town of Contention. Of course, Wade’s band of outlaws does all they can to save their boss.
· Read more… - Sep 9
- hope springs eternal
· Read more…
- Sep 9
- mindtrace (a full review)
But if I dissect out the past few weeks, I guess I’ve been asking for it. It’s like jumping up-and-down on an unstable bridge.
· Read more… - Sep 10
- lux aeternum
Let the starlight guide my path
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bear witness to my salvation
my redemption - Sep 10
- irony
Or self-fulfilling prophecy, depending on how you look at it, I suppose. It all depends on who exactly reads my blog, I suppose.
· Read more… - Sep 10
- basic concepts in wound healing
One of the things we learn as children about wounds is that you should never pick at your scabs. This is guaranteed to prevent healing of the wound, and can actually promote scarring to the point of disfigurement.
· Read more… - Sep 11
- ephemerality
Is “ephemerality” even a real word?
· Read more… - Sep 11
- doomed
Septembers have also been traditionally the month that I would start re-reading The Lord of the Rings. There is always something poignant about the ending of summer. It reminds me that it’s time to move on, and to fly towards the shadows of the unknown.
· Read more… - Sep 13
- 31
Today came without much fanfare or glee. I am quite happy that I have the day off, though. This week I’ve been working rather fucked-up hours, and it’s begun having a toll on me. I’m not a big fan of leaving work and finding the sun rising up to meet me. I still have to work another shift with similar hours tomorrow, but thankfully I have the weekend off as well.
· Read more… - Sep 13
- reintegration
Now that I’ve found a blog engine that I’m relatively happy with, I’m thinking about folding all of my old entries into it. Not sure exactly what that will accomplish except that it will be easier to search for certain topics, but I’m sure that I’ll waste at least a few hours trying to figure it out.
· Read more… - Sep 13
- they might be giants "older"
A humorous paen to aging and mortality.
· Read more… - Sep 23
- letting go
trust not to hope
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hope will have you believing in things
that have no hope of coming true
and despair is not the absence of hope
no, despair is hope so thin and frail and fragile
hope so deadly, so fell, so fraught with peril
a thread of hope so sharp, so razor-thin
cutting deeply, jaggedly, viciously - Sep 24
- hulogdahon (a prelude)
Summer’s beginning to give up her fight…
· Read more… - Sep 24
- hulogdahon (failure to disentangle)
It’s been a strange ride. Friday, against my better judgement, I went to the Beer Festival. Hilariously, I ran into a bunch of people from my residency class. I didn’t know whether to be disturbed or to be comforted that there were at least six or seven physicians at that place.
· Read more… - Sep 24
- hulogdahon (the heart of the matter)
So S (of whom I’ve written a few things here and there) got married on Saturday. Strangely, it didn’t seem like it had been all that long since she first hooked up with her now husband, but four years is a pretty long time.
· Read more… - Sep 24
- hulogdahon (a brief and fitful storm)
I’ve never been sore from crying before. I mean, literally sore. My recti abdominalis hurt the next morning.
· Read more… - Sep 24
- recent mistakes and bad ideas
It was probably poor planning to drink coffee at 9 p.m. and expect to be able to sleep.
· Read more… - Sep 25
- back to our regularly scheduled program
While I’m technically not on a ward month now, I’m spending about 11 hours a day in the hospital. Which is not as bad as it sounds, I guess. I dig working on the wards a lot better than working in the ED, frankly.
· Read more… - Sep 26
- anticipation
For no good reason I woke up at 4:30 a.m. today without any prompting from my alarm clock.
· Read more… - Sep 27
- last thoughts of the day
My mind has been everywhere today. I suppose one of the good things about getting older is that there is a wider field for my brain to wander. I could probably keep myself usefully amused for several days just letting my thoughts meander.
· Read more… - Sep 27
- my mind is on overdrive
The problem I have with overly optimistic philosophies is that it seems to discount the seriousness of human suffering. I mean, seriously, try getting someone who, after 10 grueling years of intensive chemo, followed by an equally grueling course of bone marrow transplant complicated by graft-vs-host disease, just had a relapse of leukemia—try getting them to watch “The Secret” and see how perverse and even insulting that is.
· Read more… - Sep 29
- julia roberts already made that movie
I feel like a lot of loose ends are being tied up in my life lately. I don’t know whether to be relieved, or to be sad. Or whether to be wary of the future. Every time life comes to one of these pauses, one of these lacunae, it seems that everything goes to shit.
· Read more… - Sep 30
- september fades
This song is by Pedro Gil, whom I ended up watching a few months ago.
· Read more… - Sep 30
- karma is not a linear function
My interpretation of a mathematical theory of karma:
· Read more… - Sep 30
- pain cycle start
is it sharp?
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is it burning?
is it constant?
is it intermittent? - Sep 30
- the roots "complexity"
This song seems curiously apt with regards to the thoughts flowing through my head in the last 48 hours or so. This song actually reminds me of those days when the evil resident was raping my soul and somehow it ties everything together and closes the loop.
· Read more… - Sep 30
- hooverphonic "eden"
I really find this song haunting. And fitting, as the memories of this last summer and the summers gone before blow away upon the wind of smoke.
· Read more… - Sep 30
- 92 days
…left in 2007. Where does the time go?
· Read more…