mirror

As objective and unbiased as a flat mirror, showing you, on the wall, just who you are.

Urban awakening

Oh, I am better than you. You do not fit in here, mostly you fit in everywhere else. Smart, straight and able, but here you are not welcome.

But, I mean you no harm.

We will talk of tragic figures: the eighteen-year old kid, gay with HIV who works the Tenderloin, 6th street, fucked up off herion and methamphetamine. There are so many without the stability of money and love and good friends. So, really, you see, you don't belong here.

Well, I want to help. This is a good cause. No, I do not personally know those that suffer with HIV and addiction and spurned by my family. Do you see within me some insincerity? Is it that clear at the end of the day I will return to a relatively privilaged set of six days and 20 hours before I am here again feeling dejected. I suppose I deserve it. You can make me feel this way, cause the rest would never.

Look at you. You are so weak. Everything to live for, so much that could be done with you, but look at you.

The bench is low to the ground and green. It is 8ft long and made of closely spaced 4 inch by 4 inch pieces of soft wood, probably pine. It is nearly noon, but the sun is almost down, or maybe it seems that way. You would think that the position of the sun would make haunting natural sense to humans, since it has been around since we've had eyes. As modern as we are, I guess we've got no use for these natural phenomena to make sense anymore. The sun is warm, though, radiating a strange, slanted heat. Nothing feels quite as good, I think as I dip out of the negative mental tar pit I've been fighting to move in all day.

The bench is so low that I can extend my feel a good distance in front of me. In front of me lies Duboce park, a velt of green course grass, lined with low bushy trees that don't loose their leaves, three blocks long and a half block wide. Maybe there was a time were kids played stick-ball or soccer or tag here, when this neighborhood was filled young families. Presently it smells overwhelmingly of multiple-wet dog, dog piss and dog shit. The warm sun is actually cooking the excrement of a thousand different dogs; the odor is...unique. Times beening what they are in these urban areas people can only afford to have dogs. For this reason I do not loath the smell or current cainine occupation of this park. I sit with my book, the first hundred or so pages are crunchy and warped--I dropped it in the bath tub. But, I cannot read. The dogs, most of them smaller than a large rabbit, are running and bouncing and nipping at eachothers hunches. A small white cumulus cloud, bright red tongue hanging out anteriorly, moves across the grass with out aid of legs. Or so it seems. These silly dogs are so blissfully unaware of the War, global warming, my waning trust in people, my parents financial situation, the crime rate in Oakland, the fact that they stink. They just do what they do, mostly ignoring their owners. This makes me laugh and smile, a bit.

It is 12:17pm. The N-line stops at the western end of the park, just before it enters a tunnel boared under Beuna Vista park. I'm getting on a street car going east: downtown. It is Sunday and I'm going to Needle Exchange.

I walk across the park, dodging dogs and their frantic owners, and move to the other side of the tracks. My crunchy book makes me look educated as I wait for the arrivial of the train. The "brrrriinnngg" of the street car's bell shouts from the opening of the tunnel: that was quick. It is full, of course. I've never been able to predict the when the N-line will be full of people goign downtown. It is not as straight-forward as a rush hour phenomenon. It is noon on a Sunday: it is full.

My last quarter misses the slot on the fare machine and falls unreachable between the machine and the operator's door. He--an older black man with distinguished salt and pepper curls--gives me a transfer slip and waves me off. I grab some aluminum ceiling bar and bury my nose in my obviously-once-wet book.

You see every type of person on the San Francisco MUNI. It is really something amazing. Today a young persian(I think) girl escorting her grandmother caught my attention.

The street car dipped down into the tunnel that runs under Market street. It jerked. Someone almost fell over onto an old asian woman. Typical goings on for a ride on the N.

Civic Center stop is my stop. I am birthed from the train, squeezing out between to large white men who apparently didn't understand the foot traffic inhibitory effects of blocking a doorway. Next, I parry a polite tourist who has stopped directly in front of the train door to snap an ingeniously mundane picture of the station signage. I'm in a surly mood as I let the escalator bring me heavenward.

Today, I will be giving clean needles and clean works to people who will do one of three things with them. 1) They or someone they're with will use them and bring the dirty needles back. 2) They will give them to someone who needs clean works. 3) They will sell them for nearly nothing (of course that is something to some of these folks).

The second escalator brings me into a world of sun and tents and the sound of water being shot against concrete. The tents belong to the weekly farmers market that sets up in Civic center plaza on Sundays. I stroll by boothes of organic egg farmers, piles of asian and unrecognizable vegetables, and homeless people. They are not there for a hand out, but to mere hangout. That is, apparently, what they do. I'm not being provokatively insensitive--these are the people I've grown to appreciate and care for. I am stating an actual fact.

Walking across the plaza, the sound of water becomes colorful in my right ear. Glancing in that direction I see the fountain: a retangle depression in which sit loitering and louging cubic columns of marble. These chunks are being constantly showered with water, spouting up from unknown, unseen nozzels. A man and a child walk in the depression of the fountain(ignoring a sign forbiding just that). I pass behind one of the two walls that bound the back side of the fountain and, for the second time that day, my nose is filled with piss-vapors. This time it is human. It bothers me only slightly, mostly because I've walked by this very spot and smelt this very odor many Sandays. On the lawn bordering the wide brick walkway perpendicular to Grove st. two homeless people eye me. Two black man to my right talk to a closed glass door. I just mind my own business.

As I hike up the sligh incline to the corner of Golden Gate Ave. and Larkin St. grey metal baracades line the sidewalk. There is the occasional used needle lying forsaken on the concrete, offen with the point missing or broken off. I know I'm close. A black homeless man who looks farmiliar sits propped up against a baracade, his legs streched across the sidewalk, his hands clasped over his stomache and his face in the warm sun. Quietly, I plod past.

So much has been written about the homeless and street culture of America, and probably 50% of what has been documented has come from the hands of writers in SF. It is really the most habitable of cities for the homeless. Here is a non-exhaustive list of reasons to be homeless in San Francisco, if you are to be homeless at all: the weather is agreeable, never getting below 45 F; the social services are fabulous, I've never heard of a homeless person dying of starvation in this city; public transportation is easily accessable and goes almost everywhere in the city; people are nice and generous here, especially the tourists. I remember seeing homeless peopl huddled up on exhaust grates in DC when I was in the fifth grade. Today, I would stir them and advise them to hope a freight train to SF.

TARC is situated in a building whose purpose was once retail, but I am not sure. The area which we have the needle exchange resembles a store front, with plate glass windows. It is really no bigger than the standard size vestibule were you are blasted with hot air before entering. When I arrive, I am early and the door is locked. Tammy (no real names within), a man to women transgender, sits at a table busying herself with gloved hands. She is preparing hundreds of small baggies of tiny cotten balls.

"Hey Matt! Where have you been?"

"Oh! Hey Tammy. I was at home."

"Glad you're back! No one knew where you were."

"Dan didn't know? I told him I would be gone for the next three Sundays."

"He had no idea."

"Well, I'm back. Sorry about the confusion."

There is a lot of confusion at the Needle Exchange. The are things that really matter when you deal with life and death and disease. Scheduling is one of those things that falls by the way side. There is no money paid to some people who will be helping with the operation today; we are volunteers. The people who do get paid are stretched so thin for time and resources. It was slighty touching and alittle worrying that I was missed. They must have been sort-staffed.

Tammy has been working since 9am filling preparing cotten and vitamin C packets. I grab the vitamine C packets and start placing "TARC" labels on them.

Before I go further I want to give a run down of the supplies we make available at the Needle Exchange:

The mainstay of any syringe exchange program is, naturally, sterile syringes.

1. Insulin syringes
1. 27 5/8 gauge needle with 1cc capacity syringe. Know as "longs" on the street, because the needle length is longer than the "shorts". More frequent IV users needle the extra length to hit deeper veins.
   
2. 28 gauge needle with 1cc capacity syringe. Know as "shorts", the standard.
3. 28 gauge needle with 1/2cc capacity syringe. Know as "micros".
   
2. Larger syringings aka Musclers
   
1. 23 gauge x 1 in needle with a 3cc cap. syringe. People that use these bad-boys are hitting deep into muscle tissue for they are out of usable surface veins. If you think you could never run out of veins, think again. I once watched a phlebotomist stick a recovered IV drug user for a good 5 minutes until she found a usable vein. The guy was clean for 15 years... they didn't come back.
2. 23 gauge x 1.5 in needle with a 3cc cap. syringe. Even worst shape then the people above, the people who ask for these I really really worry about.

Supplies aka "works"

Clean supplies for preparing and using IV drugs. Three main IV drugs: herion, crack/cocaine and methamphetamine.

1. Cookers: clean small aluminum containers about the size of a large bottle cap, but deeper. Heat is applied to the underside to aid in solvation of the solid.
   
2. Tourniquets: clean, rubber, funny-smelling. People were using (and reusing) dirty rope.
3. Alcohol Prep pads: For injection site sterilization.
4. Sterile water in small one-use 3ml capsules: For dissolving drugs for IV use. Better than tap water. For better read: cleaner.
5. Tiny spun cotton balls: For filtering large debris from the drug solution when being drawn into the syringe. Before the use of spun cotton, users would employ cotton balls for filtering. Fibers of cotton would be drawn up in the filtering and injected in the vein, which would quickly elicit an immune response resulting in a condition know as "cotton fever".
   
6. Triple Anti-biotic oinment: Reduces local tissue infection. Absesses are a common problem for IV drug user.
   
7. Vitamin C (Ascorbic acid) powder: Its presence in water creates the acidic conditions needed to dissolve the chemically basic crack/cocaine for IV use. It is harmless to inject, especially compared with lemon juice or Kool-aid powder. IV drug users who were using lemon juice were going blind from a fungus present in the juice that would attack the optic nerve.

The Needle Exchange goes as normal. The figures shuffle in toward the survey table. We take no names, just ages, sexual preference, gender (all 4), race, HIV status and number of needles to be returned. We stopped having them fill out the dates and printed them directly on the forms. Too many of them had to ask what the date was. Most of them, when told, would say "Is it July already?" and, in some more astonishing cases, "it's 2006?". I wish I were exagerating.

Earthquake in my mind

http://earthquake.usgs.gov/eqcenter/recenteqsww/Quakes/nc51177644.php - I felt this at 3:33am. Fun.

Martin Sexton was introduced to me by Emily. He has a new song that you should hear: "Way I am". It's great. And it made me think.

I think I've got some good Catholic blood in me, cause I feel like a sinner. And I deserve what's coming my way, every last insult. Such a sweet sight to get the poison out.

Ruminate on an interview

My interviewer: "With your application I would've liked to hear a story."

This was his response to my question: "What do you think when you see an application like mine?"

I asked this because he invited me to ask a question and because I knew that my cumlative GPA would come into question. The way the American Medical Application Service calculated it, it didn't look great. And my application is peppered with blemishes: an F in college writing my first semester of community college, another F in Discrete Mathmatics about a year later, transfer to UVM after almost two years as a computer science major at USM. I look as if I am an unpredictable vagrant, close to the truth. But there was a definite upward trend in my grades, and I had performed some compelling research.

Well, I don't have a fuckin' story. I've got lots of little experiences that are remarkable when combined, but when accounted one-by-one would sound sorta pathetic. I've never saved a live. I've never watched a person die. I've never cured anyone. I thought these are things I would do in med school. I'm not a triathlete. I've not written a book, fiction or non-fiction. I'm a worker. I try to be creative. I'm not consistant, but I am diligent. I'm unorganized. I'm emotional, was powering against myself.

But I've got greatness within me, the potential to do that elucive "something great". People always say that to me, that I will do something great. Just cannot leave it up to God or fate or chance. Right? Go to do it myself. Do I want something with my brand on it? This urge to leave something behind after death... it IS our very nature to do just that: leave out genetic material behind. But socital accomplishment, in whatever form, seem to have takin' over for proceation. But, I have been going against the grain since I was born.

Story telling seems exciting. It was the way we(humans) passed history until writing was invented. Some have lost the art.

A Child Again

The globe is coming 'round to tilt into spring's blossom. Pitch into summer's head-on heat. Winters slanted, retracted cold.
Our lives are in a thousand ways repeatable, never to be duplicated. But, on the general theme of failure and success, of love and loss, on injury and health, all repeatable--if it doesn't end you.

I wish there was a spring for me to be reborn. To spread fresh light tender leaves that shade and nurture the right from the hot regret. But my leaves are in there ways set in a deep green, awaiting the chilled air of early fall. Already, the events that set the green retracting in, leaving vivid reds and oranges, are in motion. Just when I was going to grow another inch, when I was going to fill out this canopy, when I was going to bury my roots deep into the loom. Just when...

It is time. And I could never, will never, come to life again. The snow and ice could break my boughs and the wind could wrench me out the ground. Since this is not a game and I am not a tree the winter is taxing me eminently, inexorability to death. So, this is no time for sorrow or to stagnate. The trees die and rise again. I rise once and die once. This is for real.

101... I don't care, read: I do.

lily white in your eyes
blue with iris on the ground
I have waited too long
and the red is turned to brown

I came back I'm waiting
you chopped the apple orchard down
search the snow in silence
people said just what I've found

shut your shades and hide from me
and I will watch you silently
when you're yearning for my voice
silence stings you without choice

lily white in her eyes
gold hair and she surrounds
all your thoughts of failure
and the fences taken down

I'm singing softly sighing
you dropped the iris to the ground
you choose your female wanting
now your left without my sound

It's been months (contrition)

As per my normal rhythm, I've returned once again with a wholly inadequate post. Inadequate as it tries to summarize the pass three months and all the events and insights and whatever else that occurred in that long interm. It has been a thrilling three months, and I am frustrated with myself (as usual) because I've not been consistant with this blog.

I've been invited to interview at the university of Vermont medical school. I freely admit I did not put my "all" into the application process this year. Subconciously, I think I am content with my situation in San Francisco, and maybe that explains the lack of energy applied to writing essays and sending secondaries out and so forth. I was lucky to receive this interview at UVM and luckier still because Vermont is where I would like to make my home. The Bay has grown near and dear to me in the there-is-so-much-to-see-and-do sort of way, but I need wind and rain and snow and mud and slush and spring and fall and heat and moist air to feel alive. I've thought much about (as much as I think about anything) being in both places someway. But, that is a pipe dream of the most long and narrow kind, its happening so impropable that it is represented by the tinyest point of light who knows how far away.

Tomorrow I go for my interview. I am going to have to answer some rough questions that I've put off thinking. My SSRI can dull the fear of death and failure and public humiliation, but it can not remove it and prevent it from effecting my present. I have avoided the internal dialogue with myself, the self-interview, that one should have if one is to go in front of a complete stranger and convince them of one's resolve and passion.

Why I want to be a doctor

I have habored a fancination of the unknown, especially in the natural world, since childhood. I found an name for the type of person that is constantly turned-on by the stars, plants, animals, forces that pull me, past people, the body, the mind: a scientist. Fortunately, I am not all scientist, for I love art and music and efforts of the soul. As I've been taught, there are one two possible types of people, those who do the sciences and those who toil with the arts. Of course, there is a whole world of people interested in business and ventures with money... but I am not one. I love to teach. I love to learn. I love to feel appriciated. I want dedicate to giving back this world that as given so much to me. Being a doctor means that you may do something different everyday, that your job is never done, that more effort is alway required of you... and all that appeals to me.

Pub-trans-rant

This is my Saturday morning routine. I'm at a cafe called "Bean there" about 2 blocks from my house on Haight st. It is a woody and comforting place with outside seating, taking the form of unstable metal-mesh chairs. I've been doing this for a couple of months now, since I started applying to med school. At this very moment I'm procrastinating.

Yesterday I became a true city dweller. First, I cringed as my boss INSISTED on taking her car out on a little lunch time lab outing. We were headed to the sports basement, you see, over the hill in the Presidio. Not far, could've cabbed it, could've taken public transit, but in the end we took the car. But, not until the parking lot attendants fetched it from stack parking, fifteen cars deep. We when back inside while they did this. An hour later we were able to leave. I just thought it sad that my boss, in this most liberal and environmentally conscious of cities, insisted on taking HER vehicle. When the mention of the bus came up you should've seen her face. It was easier to take the car once we extracted it from the lot, but I guess it is the principle that bothered me.

And again it happened that day. Alina came into town to see a movie called the Short Bus. The Short Bus is a indie unrated movie about love and sex (homosexual and heterosexual) in New York. Normally I would not seek a film like this out, but a subject of mine has a role in the film (I cannot say who). This film is a big deal: reviewed in the NYTimes and playing at the Embarcedaro center (kind of a big deal). In terms of nudity and sexually activity it was somewhere between a gay-porn and a softcore porn; lots of cock, ass, tits and dildos. Anyhow... It was thrilling to see a person that I had interacted with, even connected with, up there on the big-screen! I truly feel like a big city dweller.

Getting to the theater was a fucking migraine. First off, Alina brought a friend, and her friend brought a map. I should also mention I was back in a car for the second time that day. The original plan was to take the MUNI (the light rail that runs along the street and under Market St). It would've spat us out fairly close to the Embarcadero center. Alina arrived late after picking her friend up in approximately the same part of town as the theater. Her friend apparently is not unlike my boss in that she thinks of the public transit system as being too convolute and curious to navigate. We made it in plenty of time, but again, it was very unnecessary to employ our own vehicle.

At -any-rate, I enjoyed the movie immensely. It was easily the most compelling, beautiful, provocative and uplifting movie I've seen all year. I love this place for all its solitary offerings, cause I am very much still alone. It's okay.

a poem about Twins

a poem about Twins

We know what happened to you
scientifically:
When you were a couple of days,
when you were as close as you never will be again,
you were one.

Then fate struck a slicing strike; you became two.
For 9 months you and you shared the warmth of mother, and, probably,
already becoming you and you in that time. Distinct and separate.
Hearts not synced with mother's or each other's.
Both aware, perhaps, of each other: sharing, maybe
a uterine embrace.

Then, in the years after birth, you and you would play different games, speak different words.
You and You would feel different amounts of pain and shame and regret.
You and You would love in your on ways, feeling separate rays of the sun, seeing the maples don fall-fire leaves on distinct trees.

Who knows what the twin feels? Maybe what is hot to you is cold to you, an maybe blue is some hue you see in a different view.

But, only you and you can be more sure you know all the many-fold differences between the two. The world may gloss over in its crude march, for the details are lost in the day.
At the end of it, at least, you will know you.

Needle Exchange [10/01/06]

Not really much to report:

We need a diagram and rating of the best areas to inject IV drugs.

I volunteer with a really cute Berkley student, Julie.

Ascorbic acid-> break crack down to inject.

People hit arteries. You think people care about living or dying with an addiction like that?

I walked away from needle exchange with a bit of doubt about how much of a difference I could possibly be making.
Then I realized that for every junky (tweeker) that comes in and gets a free needles and never returns them, there is a more responsible amount of drug use out on the streets. People are using the clean needles if they are present and accessible. The less disease the better, that is the rule. HIV and HEP C can be easily transmitted between classes. It doesn't care about your assets. It just needs a warm body.


Hmm....

All in all, and at the end of the day, I'm a country boy. Though I do like me some city from time to time.

Needle Exchange [09/24/06]

Notes:

Sex workers prefer black condoms because they can have sex on their period and the client will not notice.

If you put baby powder on your hand and bitch slap someone it does not leave a hand print on their face.

If you ask a drug addict how they are, they will usually say "I'm doin' alright".

If you smile at them, they smile back.

They often times thank you. They sometimes say, "Bless you."

The average age of the people using the needle exchange this week is 45.

The hole in the woods

During the summer after high school, after Sara and I parted, I began to dig a hole in the woods. I took a spade from the garage and made my way across the back lawn, trudged through a small patch of marsh behind our pool, and climbed into the woods. There was a huge white pine back about 200 yards. It was a hydra of a tree, with a single enormous trunk and three smaller, but substantial, necks that rose up about 200 ft. From the back deck you could see this monster rising alone, liberated from the canopy. I started digging at the base of this tree.

The forest floor was covered in a amber pad of pine needles. The Maine woods always smelled so sweet. I positioned the spade and rested a foot on the collar, gripping the old wood handle. Slowy, deliberately I pushed down with my foot and watched the needles pitch up on end and follow the advancing spade into the dark earth; a hundred long doomed ships. Pulling back on the handle, I raised a pyramid of solid black soil, full of unruly roots and twigs jutting from its sides, and tossed it to the side. I repeated this, all the time thinking. There was an desperate urgency in the pace I dug at and in the act itself. I dug as if there was a goal, a purpose, a point at which I could stop and say "I've done it. I'm done". I dug until I was sore, until my eyes were level with the forest floor. I unearthed roots as thick as my arms. The network of them twisted about me, hanging up my shovel and frustrating me. I dug until it began to rain and thunder cracked around me. I stopped and crouched, my back resting on the earthy wall of my hole. The hydra loomed above me, watching me with knots that appeared to be curious eyes, in the low gray light of that stormy afternoon.

Why did I do this? When I am faced with the reality of my failures I attempt to mask it and patch it with a spurt of glorious accomplishment. In the oppressive rural setting I was in, this was the best "accomplishment" I could think of. A hole; movement of earth; making a scar on in the floor. I was not destructive, nor was it constructive, it was simply an expenditure of energy that had been long-stored in my constant failure. The crumbling relationship with a girl I loved (my first love), the absolute squandering of my time in high school, all this would have required energy to maintain and make right. But that was over now. The chance to release my energy in a constructive and controlled manner was gone. Now the only thing I could do was dig a hole. Convert my regret and do something futile.

Coffee and Contacts in the Evening

Are you listening?

I'm still running away

I wont play your hide-and-seek game

the sweetness will not be concerned with me.

I got a secondary from BU and the doubt rolled in with the fog.

At least that is how I woke up. I was in a really sour mood this morning. It was due to wracking my brain on what sort of narrative I will give as my secondary essay.

I am not consistent with what I want to do. I've never quite learned to do this: have habits that I deem cool and worthy. Like this one. Will this make me a bad doctor? No. In fact, a lot of being a doctor--as far as I've noticed--is dealing with the novelty of each person and their particular state. But that is not to say that being consistent with documentation of my thoughts would be amiss or useless.

Life in SF is always interesting. I've adapted nicely, I think... Although, I've not figured out the social scene here just yet. There are several young ladies that I've had a good time with (not like that). But, I takes initiative to date here, and money, and I barely have either. I've lost all interest cause I'm to busy comparing these merge lusts to the greater ills of the world. I guest it is also because I've lost a little faith in things.

I was talking to someone, who specifically I can not remember, and this fact will buttress the statement he made...

"Yeah, cities are hard [places to meet people]. You've got a million people all ignoring each other."

This is so true, to the point where I will not ever forget the statement. Sadly, the person who uttered those words has passed into the social fog, like most of those I meet.

I wont ever be as alone as I am here, nor will I ever live amongst so many.

Last night.

I've GOT to stop doing stupid shit when I drink.

I was out downtown, a long way from home. 2nd & Bryant I think it was, at the Nova bar. I went to go see Lil Lau, a friend of a friend, spin. She is great, a fun DJ, and I suspect, a creative one. This venue, she was not given the chance. One of her other friends, Carrie, is a beautiful LA native, and who is jewish. She is well out of my league.

There is something about her. I guess I'll find out.

Tales from the Syringe Exchange

"My parents would never understand this."

I've got this really bad habit of baring myself early. And the very cute but potentially hostile lesbian, Feminist studies intern didn't look scares me. I am the minority there. The staff are women or transgender man-women or guys who are not white. I'm the reviled, clean cut, unblemished, untarnished child of a society that has always cradled my kind: white men. But David likes me.

I'm at the needle exchange for my first time without Shelly. Earlier today I arrived for training. David, the health educator and Syringe exchange big-man, sat down with me in his open office on the second floor of the Tenderloin AIDS Resource Center to guide me through the training. The training came in Power-point pill form, a wave of comfortability washed over me. I had only attend several hundred hours of PP lectures since graduating high school. As we started, I began wondering about David.

Who was this person. David is a latino, light skinned, with big brilliant, hazel eyes. He wears a mustache-goatee combo and slicks his hair back, but the product is matte and his hair is without sheen. He wears baggy clothing: tee shirt and jeans. In his left ear he has a single earring; the letters SF in gold. It is his eyes that give him away. If you gouged out his eyes he'd be a very formidable and intimidating character. But his large eyes transmit compassion that is enforced by his choice of lifestyle and employment. David speaks slowly and deliberately, especially when explaining something. Expletives are threaded throughout his normal speech, even as he instructed me now with other office workers present. His normal way of speech has a urban cadence, he casually adds the word "hella" in as an adjective, its kin being "wicked". All that is description fodder because what matters is the content of his mind is good and clear and the profundity of his actions.

This is my sister

This is my sister...

the woman with two children.

"Quiet. I want to sit and listen to the rain. Stillness and stationary. No more voices; know more peace.

Where I live now, it's not hard to get depressed and anxious. Last two mornings at 5:00am, I've been out taking pictures of the sunrise. Seen an old man picking in the dumpsters. It should have broken my heart... only now with the rain falling I cry for him, because in this place you can't cry. I have grown wary and doubtful. Mine eyes deceive me. Should I remove Thee, offenders to my senses?

I went to see doctors, they give you pills; numbs the pain of being lost, feeling lost, and seeing the lost. But you just store it until you can tap into it. Have one or two or six drinks, it will find you. It will sneak up until you are bare bones exposed; brains and heart splayed for all; like a jump from a twenty story building.

Alcohol is not used to grow closer in the traditional sense, it's used for sex and forgetting, not sharing and being open.What happen to sharing around a fire and sweating in a tent ? Not only for the men.

What happen to running in the rain? Being free. Being sexy free and unafriad of looking at people in the eye?Now only: fearing the passing of one more judgment based upon a five second interaction. A look and a brush off. Fuck you, you don't know me.

That is not me. Years ago I would have not been so bitter. I thought that I had a chance of escaping... I've seen too many dragged down. No happy endings. I cry for them, I cry for me. I cry for my children who take my stress and outbursts and will form from it's aftermath a hate for me that is so strong it will make them afraid to be real with me later in their lives.

I keep reaching out but all I get is water on my palm.

I want to stand out in the rain and let it hide my tears and wash away the false. I don't think anyone here would understand.

Want if all at once everyone stopped what they were doing and went and stood in the rain?

Would we all realize how much we all need to be seen crying? To have someone ask after us and our children?

Or would we find out that upon being all together we would have less to cry about? "

Always have hope.

If you let the world turn one more time
my feet will go wheeling under me
the milestones will crack and turn over
you'll be excited next to me

if you let a hand sweep through
I suppose we'll make due
with the time I waste in haste
in truth, I want to know you

If you let the moon come up
and the light is pale
the skin I seek with a mind in bright
soft luna and temperate cover'd night

If you freeze the rain to white
with a fire to fight off night
with a warm engulf we share
this is new to you?

What could you want with me?
I guess I'll see, I guess I'll see.

Something is not right.

My last post did not sufficiently capture what I've been thinking this past weeks. I think it is coming to a head tonight because I am listening to a song that the Grant sisters put on my birthday mix. The song is doing something to me needed to be done.

The truth is I don't understand the world. I don't understand death, entropy or hate. To day was spent mostly inside trying to write up some cohesive, comprehensible personal statement for medical school. Look past all my hate, blemishes and my death to what I can be. That, I think, I should repeat, slowly and clearly, to myself.

This song is changing my brain. It is churning up the still light mud that is bound to cloud the water upon disturbance. I don't care if I make sense anymore. I'm sick of pretending that I have to make sense cause everyone thinks everything should make sense, when nothing makes sense.

I'm sick of mass killings, present and past. Entire legions of soldiers dying, entire groups of people starving, migrations of people that end in doom. I sick of classes and corruption and the splitting angry bastards. They should all blow blood vessels.

"The out-of-jointness of the universe."

The more I am around the homeless and addicted, the more I watch people suffer, the more I don't understand.

And am I going to die at the hands of an oppressor or someone who is invested in the status quo. I think so.

Cause the universe just does not make sense, and I've never felt like my spirit belongs. I realized this very young and I would discuss it in my youth with friends when our minds were fresh as beach sand, ripe to have a sand-piper of ponderance leave tracks. But that has been washed by the tides of time.

What hope can I find. In the moment? I don't want to regret those days or waste my time. I have precious little time here, and though I feel like I don't belong, I know only this. I know only unimaginable suffering as they are conveyed by words and images.

One thing is sure: I'm not losing this state of mind. I thought I had, but I'm sure it is back. I'm glad, cause I can realize how lucky I am.

Something is just not right

"I don't want to live here anymore."

"Oh, you regret the move you made?"

"No, I don't want to live here, now, anymore."

"What other choise do you have?"

"I've been reading about Themepolae."

"What the hell are you talkin' about?"

"Defeat of the Spartan legions at Thermopylae. They were out numbered 10 to 1 by the invading Persian army."

"What does that have to do with anything?"

"The odds seem so much better. Their enemies had eyes. You could look into there eyes."

"Again, what are you talking about?"

"They fought to the last man. That was their law. They use to say learning comes only through suffering. I'm starting to thing I've stopped learning."

"Maybe you should start taking the whole pill instead of half. Think that would help?"

"I think my enemy needs a face. I would happily follow the law to the last."