[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.

a certain man went out on a sunday

for a stroll to escape the four dim walls of his messily empty room. on his stroll, at the place where a dead end street exploded from its isolation into a wide, empty park, he saw a man, head down, pushing a lawnmower on a lawn that could have been covered by the three cars packed beside it in a tiny driveway. the brown grass behind his droning mower was the same height as the brown grass in front.

the wandering man teetered between the empty park and the dead end street. the lawnmower roared on behind him. the park with its bright red slides and yellow monkey bars and blue ladders and green castles and four empty baseball diamonds was eerily quiet in front of him. the lawnmower ground on behind him. a rabbit munched on the grass, near grafitti-covered padlocked bathrooms. the rabbit turned his nose to sniff the air. queen-anne's-lace and thistles and cedar trees turned and rustled in a new-sprung breeze. the scent of coming rain quickened in my nose and the rabbit bounded away as i stepped in.

in the words of the great lindsay musser

GOOD LORK! I have amazing friends!

I moved into my new apartment/house/room situation Thursday and have been "offline" ever since (I never realized the extent to which the last few years of my life have become wired...) So today I am checking my email and smiling in great relief for all of the wonderful people. But smiling very quietly because my nieces are sleeping in the next room and their mommy and daddy are off shopping, so I have no one to pass them off to should they awake unhappily. my nieces leave for Africa Friday (their parents are going, too) where they will live in Moshe, Tanzania and no doubt terrorize the nieghborhood on their new, bright pink bicycles and squeals of glee. Anna drives like her dad (and her uncle dan) and this is not necessarily a good thing.

I have a some pictures and a few good stories and a great many thoughts on solitude and change, but i foisted my cameraphone on the wandering parents in the off chance that I need a lifeline...

With hope, I will be able to wander down to Houghton sometime next week and snag my computer, purchase a snazzy wireless card, and get connected with the house network (I live with a group of "students" and internet is, of course, not optional).

I have discovered the cure for urban cabin fever: urban expeditioning! I set off towards the setting sun yesterday to discover fields, a playground, an old quarry, and a crumbling football stadium with trees growing up through the old concrete bleachers (of course I trespassed!). Then I proceeded to pick up my mountain bike from the shop, run my favorite mixture of Bill Cosby routines, Grits, Redemption Songs and Maroon 5 through my headphones on random, and terrorize the park paths, small ratdogs, curbs, piles of dirt, hills, and other potential jumps and speedy patches of the city. I only incurred several small scratches in the process, and an unhealthy, unabating urge to attempt to ride down those wide stone park stairs at top speed while dodging strolling senior citizens and lovebirds and avoiding the "lake" (it's a duck pond with pretensions--I grew up on the Great Lakes, baby!) at the bottom. Life went from miserable to 20 mph in four seconds flat, and I have the next three days off!

the stories i don't have time to tell....

because i have a test tomorrow :) now it was my impression that i had graduated...


so here's the weekend in brief:


a beautiful intersection. a flat tire. the intersection decreases in charm with time. time for the Vera the Verizoid to do her work. she does. Dave Lilley responds to the call in the red chariot of justice (it's a toyota).


dan waits. he practices calm in frustration. this becomes very handy later on in the week as dan tries to cash a check in order to begin renting an apartment...a check he cannot cash because he cannot open an account because he does not have a permanent address because he does not have...an apartment. dan curses the modern world (but that's later in the week...and with a zen-like calm).


who would have thought heroes did so much paperwork? i'll bet superheroes don't have to do all this paperwork. that's what Alfred is supposed to handle in between buffing the Batmobile and fixing my morning latte. as least i get to listen to Dave's Sufjan Stevens CD collection.


dave lilley is a pancake making fiend. i am a fruit-slicing fiend. together we make pancakes. we eat them. we are unaffected by poor lighting. we even make frozen coffee/ice cream drinks and drink them. and watch movies with British accents in them. life is good in spite of paperwork.


dan visits houghton (ah! breathe the fresh air! see the mountain views! feel the mist wafting through the air! smell horses, not buses! greet people on the sidewalk!) to pick up a bicycle. in the process, Vera makes a friend with Frawley's Fone and pleasant conversation with understanding individuals levers a load off of dan's shoulders. he squares them and faces monday once more...

to be continued...

the dan in the mirror

the dan in the mirror,
originally uploaded by reifiedbean.

hey everybody! it's dan! with not-orange not-dyed hair! at Becca's house! looking at his fine self in the mirror! and next to him...it's his new buddy [as yet unnamed...suggestions?] through whom you can talk to an actual, real, live, conversant and incredibly mobile (we're working on the upward) dan. that's right. you could talk to dan. if you had his number. you don't. very few people do. do you want to?

ps--dan's little friend is a verizoid; if you're little friend is a verizoid, they can become verizobuddies and can talk and swap pictures and text messages to their little hearts' content. otherwise...it's best to find dan's expensive little friend on free days like nights and weekends, when he's not marshalling his 450 monthly minutes like a fat hamster guarding his little stash of green pellets. :)

city livin'

0630 up an' at 'em--breakfast of granola
0700 out the door and on the bike with pack:
uniform, lunch, and ubiquitous three binders
0730 arrive Rural/Metro Buffalo. Shower. Shave. Assume uniform.
0800 Documentation training: why exhaustive documentation ensures important things:
successful billing
liability avoidance
more successful billing
more security from trial lawyers and TV-miseducated juries
because patient care is the bottom line
1000 HIPAA: the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act
(why you don't talk about confidential stuff to anyone. ever.)
(except, under certain occasions, the cops)
(or, of course, those directly involved in patient care)
1200 lunch. an apple. two. i have decided to go back to string budgeting.
(everyone else is eating out....)
1230 Map Reading 101: welcome to Buffalo. the map is usually right when it
indicates a one way street. except, of course, when the street is one way
in the other direction. in the winter, half of them are impassable.
(now i long for home. in Detroit, there is a grid of mile roads.
the east-west ones are handily labeled, 5 through 27 mile
the south-north ones are sometimes tricky--they change names
but NEVER directions. and they rarely just dead-end.
Buffalo, on the other hand, has no such reliability. or common sense.
this could be fun.
1400 Epinepherin Auto-Injector protocol/skills training. Albuterol "peace pipe"
preparation and protocol. Mass-Casualty Triage, with chipper, black tags
with "dead" in big white letters for those we give up on after a thirty-
second assessment. we are cheerily told that after arriving on-scene and
triaging twenty patients (going through an entire SMART tagging hit) we
will be not assist in patient care because we will probably need
counseling. or at least a coffee break.
1530 Confirm schedule with Chief Field Training Officer: a month of 12 hr. shifts,
four days on, four days off.
1600 embark on semi-intentional bicycle tour of Buffalo, including two major
hospitals (ECMC--D-Zone, Level 1 Trauma Unit, Burn and Psych Ward; Buffalo
General--E-Zone, General Emergency with Cardiac Center and Psych Ward).
tires on bike need repeated pumping--need new tires. scratch. need new bike.
1900 "home"--Becca's apartment. T minus three days 'til Robin gets back and i have
no bed. humidity awful-shirt soaked-shower necessary.
2000 Mac 'n Cheese for dinner. Email. Read homework. Write piteously to friends
hoping for solution to housing dilemma. ponder fiduciary limits and weigh
the convenience of car ownership verse ever paying off my college debts.
2100 Read more homework. Documentation and billing and Medicare requirements and the
fine line between...
2300 Test finished. At least it's open-book. Bedtime.

No wonder I feel so satisfied, so fulfilled, so stinkin' tired. looking forward to: Thursday, 0800, driving an ambulance. :)

so do you know anyone in Buffalo?

because I start work Monday and I'm living on a friend's couch until I can find an apartment. :)

cheers for me!

sufjan stevens

thanks to the eclecticly well-versed Dave Lilley, i give you Sufjan Stevens, who has been helping me reconnect with my native Michigan. from a distance. if you do nothing else with Sufi, go here and click "Paradise," up in the Upper Peninsula towards the east. and Sault Saint Marie, of course, which i have the privelege of knowing the correct pronunciation for ("Soo Saint Marie").

i'm enjoying sufi on a two day break between trips. First STEP is done, which is a pity because the middle schoolers are much more, if not innocent, at least ready to engage in a hearty stretch of goofy childlikeness, than high schoolers. tomorrow we leave for a ten-day program in conjunction with Upward Bound, a program for local high schoolers who want to be the first in their family to get a college education. i'll be bouncing up to Algonquin Provincial Park in lovely Canada with the UB graduates for a canoe trip. which is kind of a pity because i have new waterproofallleathersh*tkickingrockthumpingmudslogginghiking boots and a new hiy-uge gynormouse 5300 in3 uber-backpack into which i could no doubt load everything along with both the kitchech and bathroom sinks. but not a new paddle or sunglasses. o well. i guess that just means i'll have to keep on hiking after STEP. :)

in other news, we picked up four freezers' full of ice cream at the food bank for only 17 cents a pound. so while we don't have any real food in the house outside of mac n' cheese and eggs, our dietary needs are met by vanilla/crunch bar ice cream bars, popsicles and pints of Perry's Cookie Dough. last night we went and played in the waterfall at Wiscoy--the water was low enough to pile into the little cave behind the falls (more of a "nook" than a cave) where we bemoaned the lack of beautiful women and then looked at each other in horror, recalling all the anguished conversations of the past several weeks, and determined right then and there to not kiss women until we were ready to marry them. sometimes it royally sucks to be a guy. we firmly banished womanliness from our minds by psyching ourselves up to do stupid things, like exploring further up into more dangerous waterfall sections as darkness fell. we urged each other on, shouting ourselves hoarse over the roar of the waterfall with little bits of manly wisdom such as, "because it's there!" and do you know how we got maps? because men went to the edge of the maps they had and walked off!"

at least that's how they did it in the old days. now they use satellites from a safe and cold distance. bah and humbug.

have fun exploring the infinite abyss!

*gulp* [apprehension]

at six thirty tonight, i have my first interview with Rural/Metro Medical Services of Buffalo. it's a skills test involving skill sheets from the class i took two years ago. i have a professional-looking haircut, semi-professional-looking slacks, a battered polo shirt, and yesterday's shave. i'm going to brush my teeth. and then i'm going to study skill sheets like crazy. heaven be with me...

sweet pictures

courtesy of bound2success

now it's your turn

ok. i don't "go to church" anymore, because at best i am amused, and at worst angry. a short list of reasons:

-irrelevance. sermons preached reiterate the same feel-good, irrelevant pop theology. i could preach a thousand "good sermons," whose goal seems to be to reassure congregants that they are better than everybody else, more knowledgeable, and selected the right sort of people to belong to. or they elucidate a fine point of some new pop theology designed to solve your personal problems by theological education--rearranging ideological furniture at a surface level.

-alienation. i cannot remain polite and honest at the same time. those who do not join the herd are looked down upon with "pity" by the better-informed ones with the good theological answers and placed in a special mental class of "project people," who really need God's help. God's help is then brokered by the better-informed who attempt to form the "project people" into their own image.

-the importance of the unimportant. things like worship techniques, speaking in tongues, using socially-acceptable language, sharing the group's opinions on art, culture, values, and the good life, having the proper political viewpoint, dressing appropriately, being involved and invested in the consumer-driven lifestyle, having appropriate hobbies and bad artistic taste, and being immersed in and content with the evangelical subculture.

-the unimportance of the important. i can't remember the last time i heard someone preach the Kingdom of Heaven. and it's the most important thing in the world. i can't remember the last time i heard someone tell me good news--the poor are truly poor but can be wealthy. the brokenhearted really have a reason to weep, and ought not to ignore their wounds, because they can be bound up. injustice is real and horrific, and justice can be brought to their prisons. bondage is real, in and outside of the church, and it can be undone. innocents do not have to be bombed by US soldiers--third-world farmers do not have to be reduced to poverty by unjust trade--the evils of capitalism can be redressed by the righteous.

so--that was a lot longer than i expected--why should i go to church? why do you go to church? what is the church supposed to be. this is the part of the game where you tell me. feel free to discuss and elaborate, share an idea for consideration and laugh if it turns out to need refining.