Kingfishers #2

AS kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies dráw fláme;
As tumbled over rim in roundy wells
Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell’s
Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;
Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:	5
Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;
Selves—goes itself; myself it speaks and spells,
Crying Whát I do is me: for that I came.
Í say móre: the just man justices;
Kéeps gráce: thát keeps all his goings graces;	10
Acts in God’s eye what in God’s eye he is—
Chríst—for Christ plays in ten thousand places,
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
To the Father through the features of men’s faces.

Greetings to the newbie doctors!

While reading the news this morning I came across this article about emergency rooms in "Scientific American." It references the fact that this weekend emergency room visits may not be well advised, not because of the new crop of doctors that are beginning the academic year, but because of excessive holiday makers clogging the system and causing long waits.

I'd like to say welcome to all those new doctors, and point out that we, their patients, are part of their training and that we, their patients will very soon be dependent on their training for our own well being as time passes. New doctors don't evaporate into the ether after their residency, but become involved and reactive experienced doctors. What they become, and the way they handle situations will in some degree depend on their experiences with you- you are a part of their training, for good or ill.

My experience is that the new people coming out of medical school are extremely bright, quick thinking and extensively educated. It is usual for them to have the most recent knowledge and be familiar with the most progressive treatments. They have yet to acquire a "bedside manner" and their experience at your bedside is going to determine what their manner becomes. If you can focus on your own "enlightened self interest" you will realize that making the inexperienced doctor comfortable and relaxed will only improve his or her performance. Be interested in them, teach them that patients can be helpful to them, show them that you respect the ordeal of education that they have been going through, and you will then reap many benefits.

Ovid once said "to be loved, be lovable," and I will add "to be cured, be curable."

My generation is aging fast, and the discipline of medicine is advancing at an amazing rate. We will be cared for by the young more and more, and we will get amazingly fine and committed care from them; and we are all responsible for their training.

Rain

Yes, I've been silent, really neglectful for 21 days, but have both excuses and explanations. The biggest excuse is that Dr. Funk and I positively wore ourselves out with Boston Early Music Festival performances. The smaller excuses are far less interesting and so I won't bore you with them. The Festival, by the way, was truly amazing.

And now we have all this rain, which is a current subject. I have an understanding of the world that probably comes from having nearly exited it: that there is amazing beauty in every day, regardless of the weather. Some time ago I set myself the objective of putting on paper the beauty that I find even on a cold and rainy day in March. I assure you that I see the beauty depicted in the photo above, but unfortunately my camera didn't. This image represents quite a struggle, which has been going on for some time now. At one point I thought I would have to declare a failure, but I had a specific reason to persevere.

This view is from the footbridge that leads over the Muddy River on the path from Beth Israel to the Longwood "T" stop, a route well travelled by me. It happens that the people at Beth Israel have requested some of my work for the walls of the Radiology department, a place with which I'm very familiar. One of the people I've been talking too about this has actually told me that these images have caused her to pay more attention while she's moving through the world, more attention to the beauty around her, and that has caused her to appreciate it more. I was very pleased about that! But a rainy march day?

Yes, a rainy march day, when the buds on the maple trees are just starting to create a red haze in the woods, and willows are pushing out their tiny catkins and the ground is glowing with the acid green of emerging grass and damp moss. Next March, on such a day, as you are hurrying on your, way look up and say to yourself "if I were never to see this again....."

Being the hearty Episcopalian that I've become I can't say much about what is and what isn't, about certainties and acting "As if" things were true, or certain, or able to be known; but I do feel that what ever the ultimate answer is, however a covenant may be kept or broken, that gratitude and appreciation will keep most of the celestial bases covered, and keep our own heart happy.

Which is another thing I find I share with the BI!

Kingfishers

Below is one of the last poems written by Gerard Manely Hopkins.

I seldom play the "favorites" game, thinking it a little silly, and a lot limiting, to be so focused on a color or a composer or a painter that all others are somehow relegated to a place of less enjoyment. I think this is true of Poetry as well, but in the case of poetry an answer is easy for me: Gerard Manely Hopkins. I was introduced to his poem "Kingfishers" in my freshman year in college and was stunned by it's beauty. If I may call myself a poet then I must acknowledge Hopkins as my inspiration. I am far from alone in that. I suppose I am also not alone in feeling that my relationship with his poems is very personal, indeed, that the ideas expressed in the poem "Kingfishers" have been a lifelong guide to me, a constant focus for meditation.

I have just finished Paul Mariani's very beautiful and challenging biography of Hopkins and feel that it is appropriate to share my responses to Hopkins' poetry. This will form one of my series of posts, please be patient.

I learn from Mariani's biography that Hopkins often prayed in a kind of retrospect, feeling that as time did not apply to God, to pray now about something that had happened in the past was appropriate. It that spirit I hope that my tribute might provide a drop or two of whatever rain Hopkins' roots did find.

THOU art indeed just, Lord, if I contend
With thee; but, sir, so what I plead is just.
Why do sinners’ ways prosper? and why must
Disappointment all I endeavour end?
Wert thou my enemy, O thou my friend,	5
How wouldst thou worse, I wonder, than thou dost
Defeat, thwart me? Oh, the sots and thralls of lust
Do in spare hours more thrive than I that spend,
Sir, life upon thy cause. See, banks and brakes
Now leavèd how thick! lacèd they are again	10
With fretty chervil, look, and fresh wind shakes
Them; birds build—but not I build; no, but strain,
Time’s eunuch, and not breed one work that wakes.
Mine, O thou lord of life, send my roots rain.

Hooray!

The farmers market at Copley Square has started. It is a wonderful thing full of life and beauty and good things to eat. It is a very good thing for my spirit to watch humanity at it's most beautiful and most productive, at one with nature, the city and themselves. Tuesday and Friday- don't miss it!

At The Opera

Gerry Springer The Opera.

I assure you, had this not been an event of the Emmanuel Center I would never even have considered attending. I went out of loyalty to the organization, and if I had any curiosity it was only to discover what in fact Rev. Werntz and Rabbi Berman could possibly do with this in their "Talk Back" session afterwards. We hadn't left "Blackbird" with a very high opinion, Dr. Funk decided to sit this one out, and I left home out of a sense of duty.

I was surprised to find the house packed, and even more to find myself in constant hysterics from the first number to the end of the show. The music is brilliant and the staging is brilliant and the actors are brilliant, and there would have been a long standing ovation except that the audience was so exhausted by laughing that at the end we could hardly clap.

Gerry, in the first act is in tension with his "inner Valkyrie" (she appears in the upper corner of the set to taunt him in her helmet and shield.) This is appropriate because the music is a very imaginative pastiche of Wagner- along with jazz, Busby Berkeley, Jerome Kern, Sondheim, and I think Papa Haydn was stirring the pot at one point but it gets hard to sort out about midway in the first act. 

Amongst the challenging questions asked by "Gerry Springer, The Opera" are these. Can two jealous women fighting over a man be a valid premise for a soprano duet? Obviously, yes, even if they are redneck sluts fighting over a Ku Klux Klan member- I should have included Leonard Bernstein in the list above. Can a Wagnerian chorus be built on the text "we eat, excrete, and watch TV?" again, yes, but more surprising. Most surprising indeed is that "Gerry Springer The Opera" pulled this sort of thing off with great craftsmanship. 

And then Mozart- Gerry, like Don Juan, takes a trip with Satan to warmer climes- and decides he'd rather stay there "I'm less confused here" and bring a balance of sorts between Satan and Jesus, and the God "it's not easy being me" and the inner valkyrie is reconstituted as St. Michael.- we even have Milton poking around here. The show is a tour de force of "Reducio ad absurdem" and I recommend it heartily.

You can, by the way, bring your pretensions, they will probably survive, not quite intact but perhaps a little better for the workout!

Cheers

May Seventeenth

Would I had someone to wed this day

Too long in coming for my life’s pure love,

Snatched by fate and death from me

With nothing to keep my hope

And body from the winds of fortune,

Which too easily severed the tie we made.

Too long in coming to stay those fickle hearts

Left so free that whim could wreak

Destruction of a life and home.

Too long coming to give me future peace

Though I kept my bargains with care and toil

Loyal, faithful, beyond all calling, tending the

Heart and garden of my lovers’ lives,

Seeing in their happiness my own.

Now the parade of ghosts marches through my past;

Would wedded one of them have stayed at last? 

May 17,2004