[nothing in my life is significant enough to warrant a title]

currently listening to: ben folds. melancholic and restless and lazy all wrapped into one. my new friend and housemate Mike is listening to sad French music (is there any other?) and he's in a melancholic reverie with wistfulness and nostalgia. i bike out for pizza: i don't feel like cooking. i lie on Mike's floor and we listen to Rufus Wainwright and Sigur Ros and other rainy day music and a CD Mike's friend Amanda made covering a bunch of other cool songs. we still feel sad. i think of that feeling of long road trips, when the music is playing and everyone is looking out the windows or reading a book or snoozing and drooling on their neighbor's slumbering head and somehow, without speaking, there is complete fellowship. and the sun is shining. Mike remembers how France is warmer with more sunshine and he used to walk to school every day. Mike thinks that I shouldn't let women get me down. He makes me a CD with all sorts of cool, artsier-than-the-shit-on-the-radio music. tomorrow i return to my square-peg/round-hole job. i wonder if one tomorrow-in-uniform will stack on top of another until i stop realizing that my deepest conversations during the day involve the price of donuts and which hospitals have the prettiest nurses. Mike looks forward to school this winter like doing time in Siberia. I don't think either of us wants to be here right now; I don't think either of us really knows where we do want to be.

but the music helps.

reloaded...

my dear, dear electronically connected friends, i extend my sincere apologies. in addition to having my bike stolen, the onset of pain from my wisdom teeth, twenty hours of overtime, and being threatened quite seriously with the loss of my job, the internet has been down for the last week and a half or so and Starbucks charges you to use their wireless.

so it's not my typical inability to maintain human connections at the basis of my complete absence...there are actual real reasons. i will soon be checking my email and beginning the laborious task of catching up this blog with the lightening pace of my life.

but i have returned to paper-and-pen journaling with surprising fiercefulness...

Some very good news...

I recieved some very surprising and good news last Monday: Kris, my Field Training Officer, cleared me from training rather abruptly. So I found myself in Jerry's office Tuesday, doing a miserable job on the final test as I was not prepared. Nevertheless I cleared, and now I have my own car with my very first partner, who spent today excitedly rubbernecking the various scantily clad women sprawled through the streets and Emergency Rooms of Buffalo, while providing a colorful running commentary. We're not cleared for emergency operations yet, so we do a lot of running from nursing homes to hospitals and hospitals to specialized care centers, and it's all very good for getting a handle on the city's highways, byways and hospitals--one more thing, besides the scads of detail-oriented paperwork, which I am miserably poor at.

Good Part: I don't have to get up at five a.m. anymore--my day can start at eight. Bad Part: no more morning bike rides into the sunrise. work is a two minute ride away.
Good Part: no more four-on/four-off. it's Tuesday/Wednesday/Thursday/Friday, with a three-day weekend.
Bad Part: no more four day weekends...no more automatic overtime...no more beautiful, shiny suburban ambulances.
Good Part: my battered urban ambulance has linoleum kitchen-patterend flooring in the back. Yessssss!


Terminology of the Day: "Burn and Return"--pick a patient up at the hospital, transport to the MACC for chemotherapy, and then return them to said hospital or SNF: Skilled Nursing Facility.

Interesting Sighting of the Day: the guy who, while mumbling incoherently to himself, managed to strip completely naked, climb up and over the rails of his emergency department bed, and take a stumbling leap with resounding crash through the monitors, chairs and IV racks into the curtain separating him from the guy next door. the guy next door was not terribly amused. neither were the nurses in the ED with four patients lined up waiting for admission and every bed, plus the gurneys in the hallway, packed with patients. I don't think the nurses were very packed with patience...

gotcha!

I'm very slow sometimes

Okay, okay, okay...I was tagged. Here goes:

Post five things you enjoy, even when no one around you wants to go out and play. What lowers your stress/blood pressure/anxiety level? Post it to your journal, and then tag 5 friends and ask them to post it to theirs.
1. long bicycle rides with Maroon 5 and/or Johnny Cash, etc, ad infinitum. preferably with obstacles to jump or obscenely fast downhills where I can do the "Look Ma! No Hands!"
2. eggs. meat. onions. tomatoes. tortillas. garlic. oregano. basil. assorted other italian seasonings. cheese. home cooked beans. repeat.
3. anything involving sunsets, water, foliage and silence. (must be at least two of the four). or exploring.
4. I'm a Level 8 Jam Horker
5. right now: Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog) (Jerome K. Jerome). but any good book will more than do.


alllllrightey then. Tim Watson, Ryan Alo, Ben Howard, Dan Perrine, and....ohhh...Tracy. cheers!

oooooh....

Cinnamon Danish: 25 cents
Brita-Filtered water: $5 for a new filter
Refrigeration: well, it's in the rent...
Reading my housemate's fashion magazines because I am too tired from riding my bike to move: ummm...free because she pays for the subscription?

Chuckling to myself at the inherent irony of this ad's linguistic blunder*: Priceless





* look it up here.

choices, choices....

so I have a MasterCard coming in the mail, and I'm eagerly anticipating an exciting new world of internet purchases. I'm trying to decide what to buy first...and I think I've found it!

[ta dum ta dum ta dum....]

New Underwear!!!!!! And it makes a statement, too!

bathroom warriors of mighty doomness

my new housemate and i tackle the bathroom!
[theme music]



note: i'm writing blogs on scratch paper in spare time and publishing them when i get the chance, under the dates they were written--not the dates they were posted--so check in the "old stuff" section for "old" posts that you might not have seen yet. in this case, I just posted "the streets" today but it's an entry from August 5th that had languished waiting for photo uploading, finishing touches, etc. if you're interested.

note (another): i just finished organizing my flickr photostreams, including my Foto of the Day project. you can check it out from the "Foto of the Day" link on the right sidebar, right below my name/email/etc.

public service announcement if you for any reason are traversing to Buffalo to dine upon wings or perhaps feast thine eyes upon the cinemas, there is no excuse on god's green earth (not even unwavering body odor, for i am the proud owner of old spice's mountain rush fragrance for smelly armpitjungles, and i live within fourtteen steps of the shower now, so i am actually quite clean...) for not giving me a call or dropping me an email and saying "hi!" while you're up here.

semimystical moosings

i wish that i could sever my future from my past.

i think that the phrases "how am i not myself?" and "what are you still holding on to?" have a lot to do with each other.

you have to know when to hold them and know when to fold them. when is that? when precisely, does disappointment or discouragement cease becoming an obstacle to overcome and begin to become a teacher to humbly submit to? when do you surrender your dreams and acknowledge your foolishness?

is it really meaningful to spend your life helping others to better live their meaningless ________ lives? [fill in the blank with your choice--whatever little things that seem important to them and meaningless to others--it could be materialism or outdoorism or world savers or quiet pietest monks or individualism or collective identity, ad. infinitum]

why is it that my own life seems more meaningful and beautiful when i am in motion--riding my bicycle and listening to tunes--than when i am unoccupied? unless, of course, i am unoccupied on an island in a lake in Algonquin while the sun is setting...

maybe what you do with your life is not so important as how you do it--the person you become in it. your potential as a person is not to accomplish things or attain positions or accrue honor, but the potential to accomplish, attain, and accrue whatever you manage joyously with keen eyes, open ears, grace, charity, and calloused hands.

(but i ride a bike...)

i walk a lonely road/the only one that i have ever known/don't know where it goes/but it's home to me and i walk alone...

so the ambulance was sitting at Tim Horton's today and i was being more than happy to hear this pretty cool song. i have felt like this all my life. and then i heard Oasis, too, and I was thinking, as you most certainly are too:

what is it with emergency services personnel, ridiculously unhealthy pastries, and cheap coffee? c'mon dan--Timmy Ho's?--it's so cliched. but...it's also completely true. that every single post in the city of Cheektowaga is within a half-mile of a Tim Hortons or Krispy Kreme. Post 63 is, in fact, the Krispy Kreme parking lot--where on duty EMTs and Paramedics get free donuts and koffee (there's a very good reason the koffee is free...)

and then you thought--what's Oasis doing in a Green Day song? why do i think they're playing "Wonderwall?" i will tell you. WEDG was playing both songs, mixed seamlessly. If you can manage it, try--they fit perfectly. and the emotional power squares itself in the combination. wierd. but that was not the end.

summer has come and passed/the innocent can never last/wake me up when september ends

for those not in the know, this is the second radio-released track from american idiot, Green Day's latest album. walk alone was the first track released. my partner-in-Timmy-Horton-ing-it-up informed me that american idiot is a concept CD on which all the songs follow a theme: a critique of post-9.11 america, the american mentality, the church, the media, and the iraq war. if he had a more...specialized? arcane?...vocabulary he might have used phrases like "suburban nightmare," "consumerism," "mass culture," "politics of fear," and "mass media."

i know this because i biked to Barnes and Noble tonight and bought it. i couldn't not. the cd isn't great art, it's not a great statement, it's not amazingly technical or even really poetic, by any means. it's a raging ball of anger and frustration and a little dash of hope, like a diary of the betrayal and disappointment and disillusionment and hopelessness of the 9.11 generation.

it's stomach acid on the twisted american soul. it's a man at his wits end, reaching for a grenade to wake a warped insensate glutton sated with self-importance and power. it's a rage against complacency, inner and societal, laden with the hopeless exhaustion of commitment to an unpopular and unpretty reality.

it's almost prophetic. or it's so filled with the spirit of prophecy, the grating, burning, intrusive and rude truth about ourselves that...well...you should listen to it.



Are we we are, are we we are
the waiting unkown?
the rage and love, the story of my life
the Jesus of suburbia is a lie

the streets

it's chilly--the fan has been brining in the cool night air for hours. my cell phone chimes out Oh When the Saints for lack of a better tune while a light flashes lurid purple-red-green-white, some engineer's "clever" idea splashing all over the bare walls and sloping ceiling of my little room. it's my morning wake-up call. i am up before the sun.

I slide into shorts and wool socks and my trusty Africa-and-back hiking sweater. cornflakes. pack my uniform: shirt, pants, pager, watch, workboots, socks, black ball-point pens, shears, log book, glasses. packtowel, soap, deoderant. bike lock. breakfast is cornflakes. it looks like lunch will be apples.

I think I'll take the red bike today: the roads are smooth, and Red Fuji is built sleek and narrow for speed. It'll be the January '05 mix CD, I think.

the streets are mine. I cut into the cool breezes, breathing deep and settling into a quick cadence for warmth. I know the backroads now--their potholes, deep curves, the shortcuts through parks, the timing of the stoplights at Kensington and Wehrle. the first two miles are quick: all sidestreets with old trees and blue collar houses and a few silent cars passing quickly, almost respectfully, as if they feared to intrude.

The last leg is longer: a two-and-one-half mile straight on Wehrle, a series of flats and uphills. today I'm flying. the CD shuffles from Ben Folds to Bush to the Crows to the Beatles with a dash of Moulin Rouge's Roxanne and Johnny Cash encores "Hurt" with "When the Man Comes Around." In front of me, the stars bow out to the sun's fiery entrance--there is a determined force in the oranges and reds and yellows burning through the predawn gray and clouds and making a way for the deep, deep blue in her wake. my legs are aching but determined as well. the day is coming. I coast into Post 64 and watch the sun across the airport--the sound of engines washes everything out as the jets thunder their way over my head and into the sky for destinations unknown. it's the sound of freedom and purpose and adventure. i stand there in the middle of the parking lot and soak it in.

the nice lady in Medic 12 skips the usual good morning. "You're wierd." I smile. I know. I think about a sunset seen from an island in Algonquian. I wouldn't have it any other way.



Epilogue the day holds another treat. we work late on a pleasant old lady with chest pain. the nurses take forever to find her a bed. i hit the road at eight, moving slow, low gears, taking a few new backroads, letting the bike take the long winding curves of the meandering dusky streets. i don't really want to get off my bike. i don't want the music to stop. i share the roads and sidewalks and paths with no one. i drift through the park no hands as the sun sets. life is good.