rain on christmas

christmas day, 2006, the rain poured down on ocala, florida

water and leaves on the glass of my accord

trauma: walking the line

for those of you i haven't talked to this month, i've just finished a rotation on the trauma service at our hospital. i truly loved it, felt so alive in this room, so buzzed. some thoughts on trauma:it is the #1 killer of people between the ages of 1 and 44 in america.
this is where they bring the broken, bloodied, beat up, crashed, and shot.
and we do everything we know to fix them up.
there is a line, sometimes narrow, between life and death.
as the trauma team, it is our duty and our priviledge
to take our patients by the hands, and lead them along this line,
no matter what happened, no matter whose fault,
no matter what time of the day or night. no matter what.

some of our patients lived this month, some died,
some will never walk again, some will never talk again, and some will.
it's not fair, it's life. it's the way it is.

light, water, and just being there

the movement of water has the power to still the raging mind, but requires the time to

l i s t e n a n d w a t c h.

this leaf was hovering above the lake in ohio in mid-october. it is now rapidly becoming soil, i am sure. things die, and we keep on living. photography is a matter of now-you-see-it-now-you-don't. "here i am" says the light, "catch me if you can." i think that 90% of photography is just showing up, and opening your eyes.

one of the fascinating things about water is its ability to be either a lens or a mirror, depending on your angle of approach. here the murky lakewater mirrors the rich blue sky above.

comment: At 1:54 AM, Bethuel said...

photography... the mind of a philosopher, the heart of a musician, the soul of a poet, and the eyes of an artist.

fare thee well, old friend

3 1/2 years ago I had to sell my first automobile, a dark blue 1990 toyota truck. i nearly shed tears thinking about that wonderful truck, which my friend paul called "the icebox" because the AC worked so well and i'll admit i kept it about 45 degrees in there. now i am having a similar experience, as i say goodbye to my trusty camera, the sony f828. i am selling this one and replacing it with sony's new DSLR, "the alpha". word's cannot describe how much i appreciate the 'ol 828, its metal rings, macro setting, tilt body, 2.o-4.5 aperature, 28-200mm focal length, comfortable grip, and sleek design. but times change, and so must i, but not without saying thank you to the camera that brought me to where i am today.

 

bro trip 2006

for those of you who don't know me, scott is my big brother. he was married to holly last weekend. the week before his wedding, we drove up to a lake in rural iowa for an extended bachelor party. unlike the traditional bach party, we spent our time biking, shooting each other with paintball guns, watching mission impossible, braveheart, bourne supremacy, and of course, making fire. this is the firepit where we were last thursday night for a ceremony of last rites. (reflections on scott)
is this picture not hot?
here is myself with scott just before we "ran the gauntlet". the game was this: two of us had to ride bikes down the road while being ambushed by two gunmen in the woods, one at ground level and one in the "snipers nest" above. it was a total rush.
here is the crew at scotts bach party, minus matthew who was driving in that night.

 

flowers of dewali

siberian sunfolower growing in front of my apartment. according to the seed packet, these plants will reach a height of 12 feet. this one was about 7.
this is my friend swetha, who invited me to a festival of dewali at old dominion university. it was really cool. i was impressed by the amazing indian dances, both traditional and modern, and by the sarees. dewali, i learned, is among other things a celebration of light. i'm not a physicist, but as i understand it color is the name we give to certain wavelengths of light. it is interesting that of the entire spectrum of elecromagnetic radiation, our eyes can detect and differentiate only a small portion of those waves, what we call the visible spectrum, or ROYGBIV (red orange yellow green blue indigo violet). in any case, here is a vibrant green/blue saree above, with rich reds, violets, and blues below.
since going to dewali i've noticed that most of the clothes virginians wear is so muted. the colors are out there, why aren't we wearing them?

 

CAMP

A couple of weekends ago the high schoolers from Lighthouse went down to north carolina to a place called camp kahl on the pamilco sound. my friends pete and emily and myself and the other youth leaders go with to facilitate reflection and spiritual growth. as pete and i were talking about on the way back, these weekends end up being a time of growth for us probably as much as our little brothers and sisters. and we shot trap (shotguns + clay pigeons!) and went swimming and it was a blast. here are photos i took during "solo" reflection time on saturday morning. austin, peter, jesse
natalie
david

 

october ski

jodi took this photo, and we instantly fell in love with it. the unusual focal point in the foreground, far from detracting, adds depth and interest to the photograph. that's me in the background.the position of the hands is what drew me to take this photo. this is jodi taking a picture of me taking a picture of her taking a picture of me taking a picture of her taking a picture of me taking a picture of her. ok you get it.
this insanse person is matthew, who is not only making the perfect slalom turn in this shot, but doing so in almost glacial water.

 

the apartment

these bowls were made by a local artist, absolutely blew me away so i had to buy them at the halizo arts festival. cool story too: the colorful patterns on their inner surface were created by accident: she heated them 100 degrees too hot in the kiln. if you believe that accidents happen.

this is my creation in "my front yard" which technically is not mine, and technically is not a yard. it is just a triangle of space in front of the apt which i adopted. the sand is compliments of croatan beach south of the inlet in va-bch.
this is my sink (after its bi-annual cleaning)

 

family part 1

from top: dad ready to ascend, scott in the stratosphere over qatar or saudi arabia, todd in character.

 

family part 2

from top: matthew and jodi plugged in and taking care of business, scott and his fiance holly in omaha this summer, and mom on the back porch with everyone's favorite creature, hunter.

 

beautiful mornings, strange nights

this is my surfing buddy scotty on tuesday morning, and that's me below, a couple of photos by christian, who himself has a very cool blog; i'll link to it when i find out the address. it is the very best way to start a day i think: a cup of coffee, drive to the beach with a friend and the windows down, then see what happens! some days there are dolphins, some days great waves, some days not. you cannot force the hand of god, or some would say the hand of nature. but, as annie dillard says "the world is full of extravagance, the least we can do is show up."
you may not believe me, but i'm telling you that tonight when i poured the ravioli into the pot to boil it, it said "hi"! this isn't alphabet soup you know, it's just pasta, or so i thought.
i suppose wierder things have happened on this planet than pasta forming letters, but this is the only wierd thing that i have seen lately, so there you go. 

love and pain

Love, it's the wave I ride that won't ever reach the shore, overwhelmed by the tide and wanting nothing more, tonight, than to take this time and make it all mine. It's comin' around again. Every now and again sometimes I get lost on the wind of a dream, the air gets clean and the seas get wider and I can do anything. The pain it won't even cross my mind and it's a wonder, and everyday the rope gets loose and the chains unbind me and I can do anything.

Lyrics by M.A.E.
I'm up late reading about chest and abdominal pain, listening to mae(multisensory audio experience) and some other great music. i also love the songs "mistakes we knew we were making" and "painless". had an interesting case saturday morning of a woman with seizures and posterior dislocation of the shoulder... reminded me of the value of pain in terms of bringing people to the hospital. (i would never say this to a patient in pain!) there's a lot i could say about pain, it is one of the most interesting topics for me in medicine. i must say i feel underqualified to discuss it in a sense, not having experienced very significant physical pain myself. i've never had major surgery, trauma, appendicitis, i guess the most serious disease i've had would be asthma, for which i have never been hospitalized. there is a really good chapter called "the pain perplex" in a book called "complications: a surgeon's notes on an imperfect science" by atul gwande. i know some of my friends have read it, anyways it is a fascinating study.

anyways, how did i get from love and the ocean to pain?

 

mystery photo

if there are any EVMSers still reading this blog, this is a "name that place" photo, especially for those of you who have gone away and are missing norfolk. i can give up to 4 hints if you don't get it right away. anyone else is free to guess, but i don't think you'll know it unless you are in medicine. oh wait that was a hint. i'm off to another overnight shift at virginia beach general in the ED. i got to go surfing this a.m. after finishing my shift at 7, probably will go again tommorrow morn, if anyone is game, just be at first street around 730.