tags: God is gracious
2006
July
- 2006 Jul 9
- consolation
I am trying to trace down the etymology of the word “consolation,” wondering if it is necessarily related to “isolation.” Alas, there are no clear answers, but are there ever?
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2007
October
- 2007 Oct 3
- active stillness revisited
Oh her blog, S. (not S) posts this quote from T.S. Eliot:
· Read more… - 2007 Oct 24
- last thoughts for the day
As I try to clear my head from the fires, S. gets me thinking.
· Read more… - 2007 Oct 25
- unholy light
After grabbing some grub and buying more toilet paper, I noticed for the first time the unnatural, diffuse glow that seems to envelop all of San Diego. The sky is this bizarre faded and yet deep blue, like the color of the light filtering through an aquarium, maybe, or maybe more like a TV screen that’s on but without any input coming in, not even static. Or maybe more like an overexposed picture, and just as grainy.
· Read more… - 2007 Oct 27
- priestly duties
It has been about six months since the last time I had to give The Talk™. It’s not something I’m particularly good at, although I’m better than I used to be. In the end, it’s about getting to the point: your loved one is dying, and everything we’re doing to her/him is only prolonging suffering. Will you give us permission to stop these things, and focus on making her/him comfortable?
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2008
April
- 2008 Apr 5
- a song in my head
As I finish off my residency, I realize that no matter how awful some of the remaining hours and the minutes can be, this experience is finite and bounded. My senior resident on my very first in-patient intern month took a sardonic aphorism from the seminal medical novel "The House of God" and added a hopeful corollary which has become something of an unspoken mantra. "They can always hurt you more, but they can't stop the clock."
· Read more… - 2008 Apr 6
- sing your melody
…with longing and wistful hopelessness, he parted from her reluctantly, out into the cold darkness. The bejeweled stars of Orion dipped headlong into the sea, and the night air made him shiver. Sometimes, the right song plays at the right moment, crystallizing a brief memory, forever remembered half-wrong and askew. But he remembers her smile.
· Read more… - 2008 Apr 8
- inspiration and sacrifice
So talking to S has inspired me. And reminded me of all the things that I've given up to follow this path that I'm on.
· Read more… - 2008 Apr 12
- answers
In that moment, as I leaned on the railing and watched them all dancing, the unasked questions buoyed my heart, lifted it up with the tide, and I smiled, knowing for that one moment the answer.
· Read more… - 2008 Apr 13
- here
my heart misgives me
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and yet this vigil I must keep
through the long dark night alone I gaze upon the stars - 2008 Apr 18
- brain splat
What is going through my head?
· Read more… - 2008 Apr 19
- sacrifice
If I could guarantee the happiness of a certain someone whom I think is the coolest person in the world at this point, I would sell my soul at a pinch. No matter how much misery I must endure, if I know that she is happy, then whatever I suffer will be bearable.
· Read more… - 2008 Apr 19
- trying to characterize what makes me sick
The irony is, I'm terrible with details. I can't figure out the right threshold, the right setting. Either I actively ignore the minutiae and pretend they don't exist at all, or I end up mired in the trivial, and I end up taking hours when it should've taken minutes, and every task becomes a variation of Zeno's Paradox, getting halfway there, then halfway again, then halfway again of that, but still no closer to the finish line. This leaves me extraordinarily tired and frustrated, with a bunch of half-finished or maybe three-quarters finished projects lying around.
· Read more… - 2008 Apr 25
- how i hate the night (reprise)
Now the world has gone to bed,
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Darkness won't engulf my head,
I can see by infrared,
How I hate the night.
Now I lay me down to sleep,
Try to count electric sheep,
Sweet dream wishes you can keep,
How I hate the night. - 2008 Apr 30
- dimensionless
wanting starlight
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sunlight
sunrise
gold glimmer
warmth
you make me think of home
and a deep longing buried within the frozen chambers of my heart
thaws
like darkness arising
monstrous awakening
madness stirring
May
- 2008 May 6
- get this right
I don't know. Maybe S. is right. Maybe the last 3 years 10 months have finally caught up to me.
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- 2008 May 13
- time/chance
15 years: 5,480 sunsets
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the days spin by, the hours whirl
blurring into infinity
and I can't remember where I've been
nor all the answers that I figured out
falling out of my hands
scattered wildly like spilled grain
as I was, so I will be
upon this path to nowhere
to anywhere - 2008 May 29
- jacta alea est
the die is cast, the cards laid down on the table
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the flop, the turn, the river, but it's the pocket that matters
and you don't know what she's got
you're crossing your fingers and holding your breath
trying your damnedest not to give away a tell
June
- 2008 Jun 4
- small triumphs/on the other hand
Given all that tripe, I did have a decent day today. I managed to get in an arterial line after three tries. The attending that I'm working with—who has a reputation for making interns cry—thinks that I'm probably no dumber than a box of rocks. (Which, believe me, is a complement.)
· Read more… - 2008 Jun 14
- there are no happy endings, because nothing really ever ends
I don't remember the last time I wept tears of joy. Tonight—even though I have 16 days left—I felt that, at the last, it was truly, finally, over.
· Read more… - 2008 Jun 24
- realized
OK. I'm too exhausted to make up a video. I know it's crappy, and I must warn you, there's a possibility your tympanic membranes will rupture, and you might be enraged and/or disgusted by dropped notes, off notes, and screwed up timing, but I just had to post it.
· Read more… - 2008 Jun 26
- i'll follow you into the dark
This song, which recaptured my imagination a few months back, popped back into my head today.
· Read more… - 2008 Jun 29
- happy ending
Even this late out into the game, I find myself still hoping for a reprieve from a life devoid of tender companionship, a life destined to loneliness and continued struggle.
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July
- 2008 Jul 2
- mathematical catastrophe, revisited
the slow, legato silence, by intervals, by measures
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frame by frame, ignition, combustion, explosion, boom boom
that's my soul up there, in particles and all aerosolized
like an ashen rain falling upon my haunted visage
I taste the firestorms of the fall, and the endless winter
that followed, on its heels came spring and that harrowing
catastrophic thaw, now the floodwaters crest, come summer
sun burning and my soul withers, my soul crumbles to dust
and still there are no endings, just fraught nerves, the pain reminds
you are still alive, against all reason, beyond all odds
* * * in this echoing silence, I am forced to ask myself,
was this thawing worth the inevitable disaster?
my words unspoken, my song stilled and silent,
already I can see it coming like a wave rushing
washing upon the shore, foaming and spraying, gurgling, roar
on the verge of breaking right upon you, crashing down like
a shattered, suddenly shorn mountaintop, cut down mid-rise.
Are the days awaiting, the nights laying awake, alone
in the cursed glow of the full moon, or the mocking glare of
the shimmering stars or with all the lights in your room lit,
striving in futility because the dark is too much
its unbearable weight crushing you with your self-doubt, your hidden shame
wondering if mistakes were made, or if you failed because you suck
or if you were driven by fate, unable to avert the speeding arrow of time - 2008 Jul 3
- winds, tides, luck
The first instinct has always been—will always be—to flee from impending disaster. As far as I can tell, I've played this game as tight, as taut as I might ever play it, given the circumstances, given what shape I'm in, and I really couldn't have hoped for more. It wasn't about not being enough (although that may be true) nor was it about not being true to myself. That's all there is, there ain't no mo'. I've been down this road so many times, the thought of even one more trip makes me utterly sick.
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August
- 2008 Aug 16
- route
in this voiceless silence interrupted
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by the whirring internal combustion
engines, rubber running across worn-down
concrete, these assemblies of metal growl
past, slashing through the air like two-ton knives
at 70 miles per hour, almost
like the tumult of a rushing river
or waves crashing down on the silver shore
my mind lost in the eddies and whirpools
of wind and debris, as the sunlight streams
in, vainly trying to evaporate
the dark mood crouching upon my soul like
a gremlin ready to ambush and havoc
September
- 2008 Sep 2
- now I definitely can't sleep
I think I was supposed to learn something from this. I wish I knew what it was, though.
- 2008 Sep 5
- song dedication
To a woman whom I failed to communicate how I feel about
· Read more… - 2008 Sep 7
- a frank assessment
Now his failure is complete
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—Darth Vader - 2008 Sep 7
- she leaves with someone you don't know
I'm a sucker for these song about unrequited love and failed relationships, failed attempts at connecting. I don't remember when I first heard this song, I just remember it was while the sun was shining down upon me as i drove south on the I-15 somewhere between Corona and Temecula, a lot happier than I am right now.
· Read more… - 2008 Sep 7
- 2 for the price of 1
I don't know why it grieves me so, when I knew this was lost already.
· Read more… - 2008 Sep 7
- lacuna
The mornings are the worst,
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when all of the sudden,
you are reminded of all that
failed to come true, of all that is not there
all that has never been, and all that will never be - 2008 Sep 21
- the last day of summer always feels so cold
It's been 8 years since this song was released by The Cure. I remember that the first time I heard it, I felt that it captured perfectly my despair from that moment my heart shattered 13 years ago.
· Read more… - 2008 Sep 23
- does it make sense to mourn what never was?
Since you and I never came to be—
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2009
May
2011
October
- 2011 Oct 17
- somehow shifted
Funny how the random function of my iPod can just make my thoughts go "that a way", to steal a turn of phrase. "I See the Light1" from the "Tangled" soundtrack started playing, and I started thinking about fairy tales. There has been much ink spilled and many photons shed about how Disney ruins little girls, but maybe it's not really that gender-specific. While it might be argued that Hollywood in general peddles the pernicious idea of "happily ever after", none of the studios inculcates this idea so universally to people at such a young age.
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2012
April
- 2012 Apr 13
- metaphor, or omen?
Ugh. Dreamt of a [what-if situation][1], of a missed chance (or maybe it was always just in my head) that left my heart aching when I awoke and realized that it never happened that way, that it was all just wishful thinking.
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2015
November
- 2015 Nov 3
- It Lights the Whole Sky
Aww. Turns out this verse attributed to Hafiz isn't actually written by Hafiz.
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2016
January
- 2016 Jan 4
- Reminiscing
Realizing how happy I am these days, and also how my cares and worries have evolved, I can't help but think back to the times when I was single and mired in desolation.
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