Vigil v 5

"The arrival of the fear is not unwelcome, though. It shows me that for a moment, the fear was gone."

I am reading this book that in some other times, I would read bits to him lying around naked or in vintage loungerie, for which I must also invent time, I think. The tide of the earth thing 🌙🌊, not gonna cut it. Back in the day, I'd make him read it, and he would have to find me a little time. Coming up this fall, I'll make students read just excerpts. You can't expect students to read a whole book anymore (premed students -> baby Dr's are the worst). But if you get them to choose, it's a lot more interesting 👁

"I meet a fellow in training in intensive care who hates the pictures the families bring and show or tape to the walls, vacation snapshots or wedding photos, the patients beaming and well in better times, enjoying the silence of their organs. If I see that they are really human, he says, I cannot be objective. I won’t try to change your mind, I tell him, but there is no such thing as objective. Relying on what you decide to call pure reason means only that you leave your bias unexplored. That’s fine, he says, his tone uninvested. My mind will never change on this. Imagine believing that, I mean about anything."

Packed my first boxes, crossing the line of denial. Moving sucks every time. And I think, for Chrissakes he's in withdrawal, least you can do is pack boxes without getting bent out of shape. I'm not really. This still isn't a fun part, I get that, so I should get existential shit done too. I keep trying to hold the feeling that division is expansion. Like hostas. To move this life with no witness again would be heartdeadening, I think. Instead, I can think, do you want this Dylan?

"He saved my life, I think, by letting me love him. And once you save someone, you always will have done it."

I am going to force myself to eat. And keep "packing", which at this point is mostly just picking shit up, looking at it, putting it back down. The Lazarus Project on in the background, teaching me about pulling time out of my ass. Shamelessly.

"Sometimes I see plainly that the mind is only noise, and I find a way to live mostly underneath the din." ~Our Long and Marvelous Dying, Anna Deforest MD