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Thursday, February 14, 2013

law school: 1, Brian: 0

My legs tighten, my impulses fire ... Run! Run! Anywhere! Just Run. Find those crimson cliffs that once settled out the wrinkles of your soul. Find the old woman from Portland with her gentle wisdom. Find that cliff you once climbed on the worst of days. Find the cliff in southern Colorado that you once sat on as a young boy. Get drunk on margaritas, jump into Lake Powell and float away while laughing in the hot summer wind! Find a slot canyon and lose yourself in it!

I now understand what Albert Camus meant when he said, "In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer."

The darkness is like a hole. As the soul becomes more dense, gravity begins to tug, more and more. Yet, I find my thoughts drifting to a rock in Snow Canyon, meditating, finding some strength in the setting sun.



My hands hold the bottle from whence the wine doth flow.

Wednesday, February 13, 2013

The cold air hardens.

I swim to the side of the pond. I sit near its bank, my toes squishing in the clay, the warm water encapsulating me. The outside air, so shrill and cold, brushes against the top of my bald head. It says with its frigid touch, "Hey, kid. You're going to be cold if you get up. It's going to be pretty miserable. You should think twice - or maybe even thrice - about all this."

So, after a moment of thought, I stand up. The wild wind beats at me. It is unrelenting. When I look back at the pond, it is no more. It is unwelcoming. I am its pariah.

A friend comes to my side. He offers me another beer, a mindful conversation of the moment, of the peculiarity of the wind. "The wind will reside," he insists. However, I think maybe he is wrong about the nature of the wind, and maybe, I reason, it is the skin that will get thicker, not the wind milder.

And again, I stare at this frigid medium. Let my heart sink to its touch.  Feel it caress me further down and let it harden me. Harden to a world that is harsh, that gives no quarter, and takes no prisoners.

I shall not succumb. I shall harden. I shall draw from the fire and forge anew.


Tuesday, February 12, 2013

You wouldn't say

You wouldn't say that this wasn't best for you. Straight ticket to a better career ... fast forward an estate in Kentucky. You wouldn't say that our last conversation - pointing to how bad of a boyfriend I was - showed that you were particularly happy with me. You wouldn't say that I didn't drive 4,000 miles during my winter break so that I could see your face was a decent gesture. You wouldn't say that I am a free man, captured in the midst of debt and too much schooling.

You wouldn't say any of that.

Sunday, February 03, 2013

Seems like a long time now.

Before sleep, I doze

Stillness in the night, a man with an Arabic accent speaks about Somalia with a woman with a British accent. On the radio, Delhi is a place where unspeakable things happen to young ladies and men raise cat calls at a young Ugandan girl. The girl explains that it just the way it is. She doesn't seem too upset.

And I'm now ready to let my mind wander off to sleep, thinking I should write, just anything, so long as it is written.

Oh, To Succeed is a Perception Changer.

Going deeper into the abyss that is my debt, deeper into the rabbit hole of education, I find myself reliving moment by moment each time I sat on a rock wondering where I should take my life. If I had known what I know now, would I have pursued this direction, or another?

Today, I read the story of Richard Fee - a young, ambitious man who during a span of years surrounding college and afterward became addicted to Adderall, gradually lost grip with reality, became depressed, and eventually after crashing from a withdrawal, killed himself. The story speaks to correcting the negligent conduct of doctors and other health care officials. However, what does the story say about our society as a whole?

Mr. Fee was a young man, stricken with ambition, perceived by others to be bright and articulate. He was a young man who graduated with honors from college. He was a man with a single dream. He wanted to become a doctor. How ironic that man aspiring to a career of curing and helping people with illness should destroy himself in the process! What does the story of Mr. Fee really say? Maybe it says that a segment of society, maybe even myself, believe so much in what others perceive of them that the only way to attain any worth is to achieve the upper echelons of their respective field.

Caught up in this, how much can one/should one sacrifice?

Still the grandeur of working on water issues holds me. Am I as delusional as another who destroys himself in a desperate attempt for a better perceived reality? Or am one who will succeed, one who does have a true path?

To give up would be cowardly, but to go forward blindly would be idiotic. Maybe the trick to all this is held in the words of Kenny Rogers. You have to "know when to hold 'em. Know when to fold 'em, And know when to run." For now, I go on, with the belief that I am one of the lucky ones with a path.

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Ambitiously enduring.