Tuesday morning, October 6, 2009

Out the door at 6:30 am. Slow walk to school..shouldn't have eaten that second cinnamon roll...tummy ache. Started working on Problem Based Learning activity for this afternoons session. Cranberries "Dreams" playing in my ear. "Then I open up and see. The person fumbling here is me. A different way to be." Sad to realize how much better me I can be. Project is "Prognosis and Management of Systemic Lupus Erythmatosis" Improvements in 5 year mortality rates in the 40% range in the 1950's to >90% now. Patients still die at a rate 2-3 times that of unaffected people. The body attacking itself. Wow, doesn't that have implications? Dan Edwards came by my desk at 9 am and told me Magda's fried chicken is especially good this morning, so I head up the hill to get some for breakfast. Walk toward the guard shack wondering if the grouchy guard is on duty and will make me walk around the end of the fence or if I can "cowboy" over it. I cowboy over it. Magda's recognizes me now...usually eat breakfast from there. Fried biscuit with fresh tuna salad stuffed into it is my normal breakfast. Today, it was 3 fried chicken legs. Day after Mini 1. Not much stress, so decide to walk to Portsmouth Beach Hotel beach to eat my breakfast on the pier. Quiet walk down the faded concrete drive under the whispering palm fronds. Dodge falling almond. Dominican man sweeping the sidewalk with a bundle of fine twigs...a native broom. Lady carrying out a sack of trash. Beer bottle by road...remnants of last nights "Post Mini Party". I wonder how many people will actually remember last night through the beer haze. I remember last night. My two boys and me down at the Glanvillia beach. Labrador Retriever chasing ball into water. Fading sunset over Prince Rupert Bay behind thick gray clouds. Single minded purpose of Retriever aiming at the ball floating 30 yards offshore. Up to his neck. Wow, doesn't that have implications? Back to breakfast. Walk out on new pier. Wood, as yet to be salt water stained, flexing under foot. Light chop on the waves. Walk to the end and sit down. Entered another world as an observer from above. Wow, doesn't that have implications? Bottom of ocean is how deep here? Mundane. Gray. A fish swims by and catches my attention. About 2 inches long...yellow and black...not mundane...not gray...now another...this time neon blue. How do I stand out from the mundane and gray? I remember the Cranberries. "Then I open up and see. The person fumbling here is me. A different way to be." Chicken legs slowly disappear. One life given for another. Wow,....? A rustle on the concrete pillar that holds the end of the pier. Before I can grab it, a Gatorade bottle, remnants of someone else's indiscretion, scuttles off the pillar and into the ocean. So out of place. So....marring...."impairing the soundness, perfection, integrity". Waves washing ashore on the black sand beach. Gentle whispers. A diesel truck revs in the distance...lumbering with it's load up the steep, potholed road. So out of place...so marring. I get up, careful to pack my trash. I realize I'm walking delicately now...don't disturb the deep...try to move without a sound...sand at the end of the pier crunches like angry thunder. Twist my way through the housing units of the University...up past the pool...empty of people...full of water. I raise my head and look at the ocean. Something inside me laughs at the scene before me. Grab a piece of it...try to contain it...define it...control it. The laughter suddenly stops. Wow,....? Walk up the hill past the pile of gravel being used for tiling the water away from the soccer field. Think of tile installation in Iowa....thousands of horsepower pulling the tile plows....trying to make the land more suitable for use. This time only a giggle escapes me. The scene before me is quite different from that. Maybe 10 men...a few with picks...some with shovels...a couple of wheelbarrows...manual labor tiling here. But they're on break now...in the shade of the Barn. Calm. Quiet. I stop to visit. I've come to realize that the more I learn about you, the more I learn about me. Wow,...? "I love my county." No, I haven't suddenly been taken with a spate of patriotism. I'm listening to a graying, 50-ish Dominican manual laboring man reflecting on his break. "You have money. You have problems with your money. It's quiet, peaceful here. I have this....". He gestures down the path that I just walked up, toward the ocean. Da Vinci, Michelangelo couldn't immortalize his gaze and gesture. I come back in the Barn, wash the chicken grease off my hands, sit down and write. Thank you for walking with me.