I believe that some of the most beautiful and worthwhile things in life cost just a little bit more. Almost always they come with a high price of personal sacrifice and hard work--but sometimes they require a selfless sacrifice from many.
As I heard about all of the tax protests earlier this week, I couldn't help but think of this girl in Ohio and all of the hard work she has put in so that she can have just a little ray of sunshine in her life.
The truth is, our tax dollars often fund the arts. And if we get all bent out of shape over paying taxes and demand cuts--the arts are often the first things to go. The one small piece of beauty in this girl's life will be the first thing to go.
So please, before we all get in a huff about things, let's stop and consider what we'll be losing as a whole, as a society and as a culture, if we allow the selfish demands of our individual pocketbooks to take control.
Watch: Ohio Serenade (come on, it's only eight minutes long)
Your thoughts?
(But please, if you care to comment, at least take the time to watch the short clip in question.)
Some Things Are Worth Paying For
3.27.09-2
Dolores lay quietly weeping in bed--her warm tears filled the wrinkled corners of her eyes before cascading down the sides of her face and into her thin white hair matted on the hospital pillow.
An angel had been sent to comfort her, but Dolores continued to feebly press the red call button she held tightly clutched with both hands. She was convinced that the majestically beautiful messenger at her side was yet another one of her frequent hallucinations brought on by advanced dementia.
Often, she knew when she was hallucinating and would quietly close her eyes and hum until the visions departed.
She clicked the red button again.
She was afraid of yielding to the dementia, but seeing that she was alone, she licked her dry lips and ever so softly exhaled the question:
"Why are you here?"
The angel said nothing, but smiled gently and gazed back at her with kind eyes full of understanding. She was surprised to see that the angel was beginning to weep.
"You pressed the call button?" came the reply from the foot of her bed. "What can I help you with?"
It was the nurse. Her cheeks were flushed red after being outside in the cold on her smoke break.
"Is my daughter here yet?" asked Dolores, her eyelashes still wet and glistening.
The nurse only looked puzzled and cleared her throat. Her mouth frowned.
Just after the nurse left, the angel knelt at Dolores' side and whispered something so softly and delicately in her ear that she could scarcely make it out. The tears continued to roll down the sides of her soft leather cheeks and she clutched the red call button with both hands.
3.27.09-1
Robert grasped the stainless steel railings glimmering in the bright afternoon sun and hoisted himself up onto the diving board. The artificially blue pool water below heaved and rippled as it swallowed the scrawny pink body of the the boy who had just sprung from the low dive beneath him.
Robert remembered how his grandmother had taught him about Jesus--about how he had walked on water. She said he had done all of his miracles by the power of faith.
She drew him up into her arms: "If you believe enough," she had whispered in his ear, "there's nothing you couldn't do."
He took a few steps forward and found himself precariously suspended high above the water, gently bobbing up and down on the warbling tip of the board.
He wondered if he could put one foot in front of the other and walk off the edge without falling.
He closed his eyes; felt the wet grit of the board beneath his feet, the smell of chlorine, and the sound of splashing which seemed so, so far below him.
He stretched his arms, lowered his head, bent his knees, and pressed his all of his meager weight down into the board before allowing it to rebound and return the energy he had lent it. His legs became pistons as they straightened--hips, knees, ankles, arches, toes. Finally, he felt his feet leave the sandpaper surface.
And then there was silence. He hung perfectly suspended between the rippling blue crystal below and the bottomless depth of the sky above. Everything slowed, and for a split second, he understood.
It was only after he opened his eyes again that he realized he had been falling.
He hit the water in a flailing crash before it engulfed and cradled him in it's quiet heavy blueness. It pulled him closer and whispered in his ear. And there beneath the surface he continued to float--suspended between the horizons.
4.07.09
Last night I dreamt I was a ghost inside your house
admiring you invisibly
--unable to speak, feel, touch, or be heard.
But then you noticed the sandy footprints I had tracked inside the house
and threw me out.
Both Less and More Bionic than Before
My time in the hospital was kind of a blur. The light grew and faded over and over again--like a tide that washed in and out of my small bay of a room.
I tried to read. Tried to memorize my lines--but everything is so hard to hold onto when you're being held by the warm, foggy blanket of narcotics.
I was there four days.
Andrew came to visit me. Carl. Ashley. Amy and Clark dropped by in the middle of the night and I thought it was a dream. Renae and Cory came several times--so nice. My mom flitted in and out. I don't think she likes hospitals.
They moved me to the sixth floor on the second day. That night there was a man yelling in the room next to mine all night long--but he seemed so far away that I barely lost a wink.
They took seven screws out of the left side of my ankle, and kept two in on the right. And the plate of course. It looks like some sort of shallow strainer spoon--polished silver and full of holes. The sort of souvenir spoon you'd get from visiting a colony on mars. They gave me the jingling artifacts in a plastic ziploc bag with a label that said: "Hardware--left ankle"
Apparently, some people try to sell used implants on the internet to people in third world countries who can't afford new. But not to worry. I don't plan on giving anyone else my infection any time soon.
I'm feeling much better, but the bad news is, they're worried about the wound becoming infected again so they sent me home with an IV pump.
Yes, a pump. I will be attached to a clear plastic bag full of Nafcillin via a battery-powered pump that I will have to tote around with me all the time, everywhere I go. It will be pickling me with antibiotics round the clock for the next six weeks.
My fridge is now stocked with said bags of antibiotics--a new bag every day.
I will change out the plastic tubing that is now attached to my arm every three days, and once every five days or so, a nurse will come and put a new hole in my veins for the medicine to flow in through.
If the flow were reversed on my pump, it could quietly and efficiently drain me in a matter of hours. Luckily, I don't think the pump comes with that option. I'd hate to think that I was secretly attached to a robot mosquito--you never know where they've been.
Going Under the Knife
I'm trying to be optimistic about this. I'm getting surgery again in the morning. I can't sleep. I thought maybe writing a list of pros and cons would help clear my head.
CON:
Being cut open.
PRO:
Anesthesia.
CON:
Pain.
PRO:
Pain meds.
CON:
Pain meds.
CON:
Four day hospital stay.
PRO:
Spring break extension. Sort of.
CON:
Hospital gowns.
CON:
Peeing in a bottle.
CON:
Hospital food. Jello.
PRO:
I'm getting my plate out.
PRO:
I'm going to ask if I can keep it.
PRO:
Visitors. (Hint Hint)
Did I miss anything? Let me know if you think of anything else. Or, better yet, come visit me! I'll be listed in the hospital directory.
2.XX.09
Busdriver like the
Boatman
ferrys souls across the Styx
Seats meant for two
hold only one
--everyone alone.
Winter garb
hoods and scarves
and fingerless mittens
hide
all but a few patches of cold pale skin.
Greys and blacks and
dark navy blues
Walking funeral shrouds.
The only color of the day: a thick-skinned
blood orange
bright rind peeled back to reveal
deep purple bruised flesh
savors sweet fresh red wound:
Things that remind us we're alive.
On Pondering My Open Notebook:
Blank page:
a wall standing firm resolute unyielding
unwilling to be scaled, toppled, tunneled under,
or made to disappear.
Only can we try in vain to cover it's expansive surface with thin scratches and fading scribbles
--like pencil marks on the pyramids.
Upon this towering mountainous frighteningly white and pristine
unadorned imposing monolith
must we pin our pithy tacks.
(which sometimes defile or desecrate that beautifully clean untouched, unspoiled space)
Sometimes our best attempts fade and peel with the paint
sometimes fail to stick
but every now and again our scrawling black lines give the illusion of spreading cracks,
the impression that we have somehow found a chink in that white perfect solid surface.
(But the wall spreads out as far as the eye can see in any direction and is far taller than the sky)
There is no filling it, seeing over it's highest towering top, or any amount of cracking to ever make it weak.
there is no other side.
It is tomorrow
and the ocean
the canvas and the stage
it is a handshake or a whisper
(the space between your lips before you breathe)
: It is the everstretching edge of the horizon on a globe.
(Let it never be our past)
