an illumination from glances

my favourite work of art:

smilesinstead — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 17:46:02 +0000

Hello young lovers wherever you are,

Hello not-so-young lovers with hearts fixed on the prize of growing older together, one day at a time, come what may,

Hello to those flying solo, learning to love just the feel of being human,

Hello to those head over heels in a tangle of a wrecked bed, blurring ego boundaries with an eager protagonist, drunk on it,

Hello to those who could never live with another human being and are okay with that knowledge (Fran Lebowitz),

Hello to those married with young children, running their domestic marathon,

Hello to those in love with the sky only, the very breathable air, restlessly content with this earthly mix of sometimes joy, sometimes longing, sometimes loneliness, sometimes surprising laughter,

Hello to those in love with the whole human predicament,

Hello to the broke, the well-heeled, the lucky, the lost, the quiet, the gifted, the empty-handed, the adopted, the beginners, the almost finished, the starting over, the music makers, and those with the gift of hearing and receiving the music,

Hello.

Happy St. Valentine’s Day to you all.

(C’mon St. Valentine, how ‘bout a high five…)

Linford Detweiler

dreams are like movies

smilesinstead — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 03:56:53 +0000

outside there is a bitter wind, the kind that makes your eyes water when you’re walking to work in the dark. london is cold and grey, full of sadness and broken promises and the wounds people inflict on each other, somehow.

i have always erred on the side of glass half empty, in cynically raising an eyebrow and saying really??. but this job that i do brings me these people who are hurting and broken wide open and leaving collateral damage at every opportunity. i wonder if i’ll ever get used to it, if there will come a point where i stop having so much care and worry for the women i meet. all i can do is my job, i remind myself. i can’t save them or rescue them or teach them to be strong and independent and free. i patch them up as best i can, and send them out into this cruel city, back to lives without community or family; hoping against hope that cycle breaks, somehow, that these babies on their way will learn how to do it all differently, somehow.

how do we make the somehow come true?

memories are films about ghosts.

smilesinstead — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 04:49:02 +0000

4am brings frightening clarity, sometimes, the eerie quiet on hospital corridors echoing round and round. reminding me that there’s still so far to go. but here we are. the 4am time vortex that swallows happy thoughts and positive thoughts and coherent thoughts and says “it will be like this forever”. it won’t be like this forever, and i know it full well. but. this is the bitter part of the morning, before coffee and first light and the birdsong i hear sometimes on my walk home from work. laced with fear, laced with doubt. someday we’ll understand. someday.

i wonder if some day will explain it all.

this girl i know, she needs some shelter:

smilesinstead — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 17:48:01 +0000

the boy across from me is crying, and his tattooed hands are shaking as he rips a napkin into tiny shreds. there’s a lady across from him, with grey hair and a green jumper, and she shakes her head and picks up the next napkin on the pile. they sit in silence, and then suddenly they talk and talk and talk. memories, mostly, then what the diagnosis is. how things look, the prognosis. they fall silent again, and i remember how much i still hate the smell of hospitals in winter.

yes, just like the song.

this is the face i make in my sleep:

smilesinstead — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 15:32:39 +0000

january is a hard, hard month to get through, and here we are: working it out under the cold sunshine of this romford sky. there is nothing settled about it, it is constant flux and hourly changes and a steady back and forth. sometimes it feels like all i do is work, and sleep; i go running on my days off, escape to the beach, even in winter. i drink countless coffees and I spend hours on the phone, missing you, wishing ridiculous wishes for astral travel and ruby slippers and apparition. these are fictions, and i know it too well. but life is here, now, for such a time as this. i need to remember it, when my day is chaos and my patients are sick and i’ve been working for too many days in a row. i need to remember that this is how it goes. i need to run by the river and look up at a london sky, and remember that this is a place that isn’t quite home.

currently…

smilesinstead — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 18:09:58 +0000

reading: the help, kathryn stockett; the hand that first held mine, maggie o’farrell.

listening: smith & burrows; over the rhine; ella fitzgerald.

thinking: that this has been the longest sick day ever; that i’m going home tomorrow and i better be apyrexic by then; that i have no idea where i’ll be this time next year; that i want to know more than anything else in the world.

consuming: rice cakes and water (post bug); paracetamol like it’s going out of fashion; homemade stollen (pre bug); diet coke; black coffees because we’ve run out of milk; style blogs, style blogs, and pinterest.

coveting: a bigger ipod, and the music i left behind in belfast; family hugs, the good kind that squeeze colour into your cheeks; hot white chai; the hard-won settled feeling that comes slowly, over time.

tomorrow, the perfect weather to fly.

the difference between shooting stars and satellites:

smilesinstead — Sun, 18 Dec 2011 14:42:40 +0000

sunday afternoon, on a half empty train, watching the weak december sun make angular shadows on the cold fields outside. three nephews make my tiny grinch-like heart a few sizes bigger, and my trainy afternoon feels quiet and empty without them. how good and precious it is, to be filled up with family, with enormous hugs and wrestling and finding the tickliest feet and oceans of coffee and the fancy mince pies. graduation champagne and breakfast bagels and handmade stollen and tiny playing cards and the widest smiles of all. it is life, i remind myself, life in all it’s fullness. the shadow side and the unspeakable joy, hand in hand.

...i love the bones of you, that i will never escape…

the long december

smilesinstead — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 09:48:00 +0000

friday is cold and wet, still dark when I get up, stumbling around the flat in a daze of post-work tired. I throw clothes and christmas presents into my bag at random, hoping that I remember everything I need. I cross two subways and the dark alley by the station, climb on a crowded train, and quietly start to overheat. my suitcase gets in the way, bumping off legs and elbows all over the place, and my heart sinks because I know the tube will be even worse. my morning is a flurry of stairs and crowded platforms, finally getting a coffee at kings cross, waiting at platform zero, and always the rain.

suddenly, though, there are green fields and actual trees to be seen, sideways rain on the window, and the passenger to my left eating a steady stream of christmas oranges. going north, home from home.

Hospital life in a lunchhour:

smilesinstead — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 13:16:53 +0000

Life in the hospital cafeteria is a flurry of ebb and flow, relatives and patients and medical staff elbow to knee. The food is bad. Patients are generally gloomy, because the clinics are running behind and there are more tests to undergo and the special on the board isn’t really so special. Relatives are worried, flipping limp salad over and over a plastic fork. Good news, bad news, all plays out against the Christmas tree and icy blasts of air from the automatic doors. The medical staff eat quickly, checking dect phones and pagers and iphones one handed. Minutes are precious and don’t come along often enough. Out in the foyer the escalator ferries more people back and forth, as school children play carols on the grand piano.

Back and forth, the cold air, the constant ebb and flow.

so this is how it goes, I guess?

smilesinstead — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 14:07:16 +0000

life has a new rhythm and pattern lately, full of early mornings and late nights and never getting enough sleep. we walk to work under the sky as it gets lighter, spend our days under fluorescent lights and windowless rooms running for as long as we can on coffee and sugar and adrenaline. I’ve delivered two babies this week, both textbook births, and I heave sighs of relief when everything is done and done well. it’s strange, this new place, this new way of working, and I wonder if things will ever settle into a comfortable way of working, or if it will ever feel like home. meanwhile flights are booked and Christmas is being organised and time is ticking away quicker and quicker until I’ll be homeward bound. six more shifts, and then we rest.