Month: August 2012

Poems in Hiding

barnstormingblog2 Comments
photo by Josh Scholten

I’ll tell you a secret: poems hide.
In the bottoms of our shoes, they are sleeping.
They are the shadows drifting across our ceilings the moment before we wake up.
What we have to do is live in a way that lets us find them.”
— Naomi Shihab Nye

Poems stayed hidden from me for decades.  I was oblivious a hundred times a day to their secrets: dripping right over me in the shower,  rising over hills bright pink, breathing deeply as I auscultated a chest, settling heavily on my eyelids at night.

The day I awoke to them was the day thousands of innocents died in sudden cataclysm of airplanes and buildings and fire, people not knowing when they got up that day it would be their last.  The poems began to come out of hiding, show themselves and I began to see, listen, touch, smell, taste as if each day would be my last.

I have learned to live in a way that lets me see the hidden poems and now they overwhelm me.  They are everywhere.

And I don’t know if I have enough time left to write them all down.

Spicy Feet

barnstormingblog1 Comment
photo of bee on a lemon blossom by Nate Gibson

“Bees do have a smell, you know, and if they don’t they should, for their feet are dusted with spices from a million flowers.”
― Ray Bradbury, Dandelion Wine

I admire the honey bee’s ability to become pollinator and pollen gatherer simultaneously, facilitating new fruit from the blossom as well as making sweet honey that carries the spicy essence of the flower touched.

As a physician, I wish I might be as transformative in the work I do every day.  I carry with me tens of thousands of patients I’ve seen over thirty years of medical practice.   There is no way I can touch another human being without keeping some small part of them with me–a memory of an open wound or the scar it left behind, a word of sorrow or gratitude, a grimace, a tear or a smile.  Each is a flower visited, some still in bud, some in full bloom, some seed pods ready to burst, some spent and wilting and ready to fall away.  Each carries a spicy vitality, even in their illness and dying, that is unforgettable and still clings to me.  It has been my privilege to be thoroughly dusted by those I’ve loved and cared for.  I want to carry that on to create something wonderful.

Each patient changes me, the doctor, readying me for the next patient by teaching me a gentler approach, a clearer explanation, a slower leave-taking.  Their story becomes part of my story, adding to my skill as a healer, and never to be forgotten.

Physicians do have blessings in the work they do, you know, and if they don’t they should, for they are dusted with stories from a million patients visited.

Nothing could smell as spicy and nothing could taste as sweet.

Snapping Green Beans

barnstormingblog3 Comments

green+beans

A reblog from 2006:

Our garden is now in full harvest mode.  I have just finished picking the bush beans and spent several evenings sitting and snapping them, preparing them for blanching and freezing, with visions of green bean casserole during the winter months dancing in my head.

Bean snapping is one of those uniquely front porch American Gothic kind of activities.  Old black and white Saturday matinee movies would somehow work in a bean snapping scene with an old maid aunt sitting on her ranch house porch.  She’d be rocking back and forth in her rocking chair, her apron wrinkled and well-worn, her graying hair in a bun at the nape of her neck and wearily pushing back tendrils of hair from her face. As the sole guardian, she’d be counseling some lonely orphaned niece or nephew about life’s rough roads and why their dog or pony had just died and then pausing for a moment holding a bean in her hand, she’d talk about how to cope when things are tough. She was the rock for this child’s life.  Then she’d rather gruffly shove a bowl of unsnapped beans in the child’s lap, and tell them to get back to work–life goes on–start snapping. Then she’d look at that precious child out of the corner of her eye, betraying the love and compassion that dwells in her heart but was not in her nature to speak of.  If only that grieving child understood they sat upon a rock of strength and hope.

Just as I sat with my mother snapping beans some 40+ years ago and talked about some difficult things that were unique to the 60′s,  I sat snapping beans this week together with my family, talking about  hopes and disappointments and fears and listened to our children grumble that I was making them do something so utterly trivial when from their perspective, there are far more important things to be doing. My response is a loving and gruff “keep snapping”.  Of course we really don’t have to snap the beans, as they could be frozen whole, but they pack tighter snapped, and it is simply tradition to do so.  We enjoy that crisp satisfying crack of a perfectly bisected bean broken by hand–no need for knife to cut off the top and tail.    We prepare for a coming winter by putting away the vegetables we have sowed and weeded and watered and cared for, because life will go on and eating the harvest of our own soil and toil is sweet.  We must do this. Indeed it is all we can do when the world is tumbling down around us.

Truthfully, there are times when I would prefer to be more rubbery like a bean that doesn’t snap automatically under pressure and is more resilient.

There is an old Shaker Hymn that I learned long ago and sing to myself when I need to be reminded where I must end up when I’m at the breaking point.

I will bow and be simple,
I will bow and be free,
I will bow and be humble,
Yea, bow like the willow tree.

I will bow, this is the token,
I will wear the easy yoke,
I will bow and will be broken,
Yea, I'll fall upon the rock.

As people of resilient faith we seek to wear the yoke we’ve been given to pull, bow in humility under its burden and know the freedom that comes with service to others.  Even in the midst of the most horrific brokenness, we fall upon the rock bearing us up with love and compassion.

It is there under us and we’ve done nothing whatsoever to earn it.

Time for us to get back to work and start snapping–life does go on.

Baffled and Impeded

barnstormingblog2 Comments
photo by Josh Scholten

It may be that when we no longer know what to do
we have come to our real work,
and that when we no longer know which way to go
we have come to our real journey.
The mind that is not baffled is not employed.
The impeded stream is the one that sings.
Wendell Berry  “Real Work”

Who among us knows with certainty each morning
what we are meant to do that day
or where we are to go?
or do we make our best guess by
putting one foot ahead of the other as we were taught
until the day is done and it is time to rest.

For me, I wake baffled each day
that I am allowed
to eavesdrop on heartbeats,
touch tender bellies,
sew up broken skin,
listen to tears.

I wake humbled with commitment
to keep going even when too tired,
to offer care even when rejected.
to keep trying even if impeded.

It is only then I learn that
obstacles slow but cannot stop
the flow of time,
which overflows its banks with
uncertain certainty:
my real work and journey
through life.

May I wade in deep~ listening~ready to sing along.

A Paucity of Civility

barnstormingblog11 Comments
Cartoon by Bennett

“Aspire to decency. Practice civility toward one another. Admire and emulate ethical behavior wherever you find it. Apply a rigid standard of morality to your lives; and if, periodically, you fail ­ as you surely will,  ­ adjust your lives, not the standards.”
― Ted Koppel

This week started out ordinary enough but took a quick turn when I got a message from the media director at my university that a 14 month old opinion article I’d written for the student newspaper and posted on www.kevinmd.com where I’m a regular contributor was suddenly being quoted on the Huffington Post and other websites.   Within hours, over a dozen media websites were quoting “A War on Pubic Hair”

The original article was written as one in a series of opinion pieces on medical issues pertinent to college students requested by the student newspaper.  I wrote it in spring 2011 after draining my umpteenth staph bacteria genital abscess due to the increasingly common practice of cosmetic removal of pubic hair.   I felt the students needed to understand the hazards of what they were doing and hoped I could spare the next patient from experiencing an infection so painful and potentially serious.

So this week it goes viral, over a year later, all in a matter of hours.  I was being quoted as if I had just been interviewed by these news agencies, which I had not, and they began feeding wrong information to each other:  I was identified as “a leading British physician” since the first media report originated in the U.K.   One British site actually asked permission to reprint the original article, which I appreciated so that my words could not be taken out of context, but they attached a photo of me to the article lifted from my family picture on my personal blog.

Soon my personal cell phone started to ring in the middle of the night and my email in-box filled up–messages from Europe, South America and all over the U.S. came in with requests for interviews, wanting me to elaborate in more detail on my very “provocative” point of view.  I said no to every one of them even though some are respectable agencies, like the BBC, because I’ve said all I have to say on this particular subject.  I do not want my long career to be reduced to my defense of pubic hair.   Indeed I can hold my head up and be proud to tell my grandchildren someday that I actually turned down the Playboy Channel.

The online comments on the articles rapidly reproduced themselves, numbering now in the thousands,  with many hostile to my perspective and saying so in the most inflammatory way possible, citing my age, my looks and obvious lack of sex appeal as showing I lacked credibility in this subject.  I dared to question the point of a multi-billion dollar cosmetic industry spawned by the multi-billion dollar porn industry, and no one was going to let me get away with it unscathed.

The internet has made it too easy for human beings to lack accountability for their words and actions by allowing anonymous comments on media websites and blogs.   It is easy to attack, lie, threaten, and bully when it is only words on a screen directed at someone you don’t know and will never meet.   Decency and civility are lost forever when the standards for moral and ethical behavior disappear in a fog of pixels and bytes.

Now after 48 hours it seems to have mostly blown over, though my name on Google will never look the same again.    It will take some time and distance for me to consider whether I did the right thing writing about a medical issue no one else would touch.   If it convinces someone to put away the razor, stop the waxing, and respect their body as nature intended it to be,  maybe I did.

Ask me in a year or so.

It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity.
Albert Einstein

Breaking Through Rocks

barnstormingblog1 Comment

“The violets in the mountains have broken the rocks.”
Tennessee Williams in “Camino Real”
These words became his epitaph

Some beginnings in this life commence on inhospitable ground: no soil, no protection, barely enough water.  Just a crack in the pavement, relentless heat and the drive to thrive.

Such delicate beauty can come from nothing but a seed packed with the potential to transform its circumstances.  A gentle transcendence has the power to break through rocks and change the world.

Forever.

Blond Moon

barnstormingblogLeave a comment
photo by Josh Scholten

“Many solemn nights
Blond moon, we stand and marvel…
Sleeping our noons away”
― Teitoku (Japanese Haiku)
May I never lose my wonder at the universe suspended above my head, whether it is vast galaxies spreading like a canopy, a golden blond moon or photos beamed back from the surface of Mars from the rover Curiosity.

May I marvel at what is beyond my capacity to understand and my capability to see with my own eyes.

May I never snooze oblivious, unaware of the privilege that is being here, if only a little while.

No Hurry

barnstormingblog1 Comment
Scout and Atticus

Maycomb was a tired old town, even in 1932 when I first knew it. Somehow, it was hotter then. Men’s stiff collars wilted by nine in the morning; ladies bathed before noon, after their 3 o’clock naps, and by nightfall were like soft teacakes with frosting from sweating and sweet talcum. The day was twenty-four hours long, but it seemed longer. There was no hurry, for there was nowhere to go and nothing to buy… and no money to buy it with.
Harper Lee (Scout narrating at the beginning of To Kill A Mockingbird)

After several days of upper 90’s temperatures, I have greater understanding for the slower moving pace of the south and other warm environs.  There is not much that can be easily accomplished in humid heat other than staying in the shade and sweating.  Cats sprawl like furry puddles on the ground.   Dogs drip with their panting.  Horses have sweat marks under their manes.   And people are soft teacakes with frosting.

Those unfortunate places where the temperatures don’t drop much at night must really slow down to a crawl as attempting to sleep in a puddle of perspiration is just like constant menopause.

So we get a taste of it just to remind us what so much of the world lives with all the time, with air conditioning still being rare almost everywhere except the most fortunate affluent folk.  We are meant to slow down in the summer, stop hurrying, just melt and bathe and nap and simply be.

We usually complain about how fast time passes.  Summer is surely the necessary remedy.

 
"What dreadful hot weather we have! It keeps me in a continual state of inelegance." 
--Jane Austen

At the Top of the Ferris Wheel

barnstormingblog2 Comments
photo of the Seattle Great Wheel by Anthony May Photography

“The first week of August hangs at the very top of summer, the top of the live-long year, like the highest seat of a Ferris wheel when it pauses in its turning. The weeks that come before are only a climb from balmy spring, and those that follow a drop to the chill of autumn, but the first week of August is motionless, and hot. It is curiously silent, too, with blank white dawns and glaring noons, and sunsets smeared with too much color.”
― Natalie Babbitt from Tuck Everlasting 

Our summer finally hit this week with temperatures topping 90 degrees.  The rest of the country has been suffering in heat and drought for two months while we in the northwest wondered where summer was hiding itself.

So here I sit silent and sweating in the highest seat of the Ferris Wheel this week, appreciative of the brief pause, enjoying the view of what is behind, alongside and in front, looking down all around me.  Too soon will be the descent into autumn coming, arriving just over the top, my stomach leaping into my chest with the lurch forward into the unknown.  As the climb took so long, I am never quite ready for this inevitable drop back into the chill.

Best to celebrate this first week in August, finally having arrived at the very top of the year.  I’m swinging in the breeze,  capturing the moment forever.

Plenty Messy and Mushy

barnstormingblog3 Comments

Politics is applesauce.
~Will Rogers
Our transparent apple trees are heavily burdened with fruit this time of year, to the point of breaking branches crashing to the ground with the weight. There have been few windfalls.

There is a short span for this variety between fruit too green and sour becoming too mealy and mushy.  With the hot weather, the thin-skinned apples will start to crack and turn to mush right on the tree without even letting go first.  So the window for applesauce is now, this week, ready or not.

Applesauce-making is one of my more satisfying domestic activities.  Peeling and coring apples can be tedious, there are always a few bad spots to cut out, and though rare with the organic transparents, there is the occasional wiggling worm to dispose of before cooking.  They make a tart sauce, need no sugar;  but with all the careful preparation before the cooking, the result is smooth to the tongue and a lovely creamy light color, with all blemishes removed, extra unwanted wormy protein deposited in the compost bucket along with mountains of peel, cores and seeds.

Would that I could similarly pare out, peel off, dispose in the compost all the political flyers flooding our mailbox, the automated telephone voter polls coming into our “unlisted” number, the radio, TV and internet ads that burden us all until we crack and break under the weight.  Actually most of the election fruit is already rotting on the tree, turning us to mush in the process.  I’m weary just thinking about the millions of dollars spent in advertising candidates that could be used for far greater good and benefit for the citizenry.

The process of selecting a president and members of Congress, a governor and voting on controversial initiatives can be so vile and mean-spirited that the whole kettle of sauce is spoiled.   I could cook it all day long and there still will be worms waving in the air, rotten cores festering, scabby peels floating on top, the bottom scalding with the heat of the cook stove.  How does a reasonable person decide what is best for the country when nothing is transparent at all in what politicians say versus what they do?

And how palatable will the political flavors be when all is said and done?   I guess we’ll need to wait until November to know how the messy mush of elections will taste.

Thankfully I will have stored up plenty of the real stuff in the freezer so we can drown our misery in the creaminess of summer apples prepared and cooked to perfection: no blemishes, no scabs, no rot, and no worms waving back.

What a world.