Leaving Grant

Tomorrow the photos on the bulletin board at Grant Medical Center come down after spending the month of February on display.  During that time I have flip-flopped week by week from Riverside to Grant, Grant to Riverside, and back over the past few months in transition.  April will see the end of that and I’ll be full time at Riverside after a fifteen year run at Grant.

Those photos are a glimpse of my time there.  They are the beauty that I saw in the people and the environs day by day, season by season, year by year.  It’s appropriate that so many of them are funny and quirky alternating with images that are beautiful and melancholy.  They really are a visual summation of my time at a place I’ve looked forward to going to every single day.

Today was special in that four different people from four different parts of the hospital stopped me and specifically mentioned the board and what photo most spoke to them.  They included an ICU nurse, an elderly maintenance man, a Trauma NP, and a clerk all of whom I’ve known for years.  There was a kind of sparkle in their eyes as they described what they saw.

The maintenance man was particularly moving.  We’ve had brief moments of interacting over the years in the hallways and he always radiates kindness.  He stopped me and told me how special those photos were and his favorite was the one with “rain drops on the window”.  He said he wished he could do something like that and I had the “eye of an artist”.

I think it hit me so deeply and unexpectedly because that is exactly what my godson Kevin had said to me years ago before he’d passed.  He was an actual artist and it had shook me up then and even more so now.  This sweet man had seen something of what I’d tried to convey through creative outlets: expressing feelings of beauty, kindness, sadness, and love.

And tomorrow those photos come down and a little more than a month from now I will no longer be going to Grant as my day to day job.  At this very moment it is like nothing is different  or has changed because I am still doing the same things and talking to the same people this week enjoying their company until that day when it is not pictures going away, but me.  

***

Shattered Personae

Dreams of the shattered personae

Attracting

Repelling

Melding

Looking for a longed for unity 

Exclusive

Obtrusive

Elusive

The struggle continues in earnest.

***

Painting of Idu Ikadabu

 

Idu Ikadabu was one of those people that others would say about him, “Everybody loves that guy!” And it was true.  He was a soccer player from Nigeria attending my college and good friends with a fellow Nigerian soccer player who happened to be my roommate, Jacob Isang.  Both of them were well known personalities at my school in the few years I was there.

Idu was a very tall and imposing figure except he always had a huge smile on his face and a booming voice with a laugh that would energize the room.  In this regard you always knew where he was if he was anywhere in your vicinity.  I can still hear his African accent that carried the brilliance of the sun and echoes of a faraway culture.

While I was away from college serving time as an infantryman in Korea my friend and future godson, Kevin McCarty, had Idu sit for a painting.  Idu was quite enthusiastic about it per Kevin and wore his traditional Nigerian garb.  They were both gifted gabbers and unique human beings.  I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall while this painting was being created!

When I returned to college from my two year stint in the Army I was greeted by Idu’s painting leaning against the wall in Kevin’s studio apartment.  I loved its arms extending into branch-like fingers.  Because of his extremely poor eye sight Kevin was a very slow painter and Idu was not known to be someone who could sit around for very long.  He was too dynamic.

So the painting was unfinished but magnificent nonetheless.  Idu’s imposing figure comes through, though it is a bit weird to see his expression so serious.  Kevin didn’t know what to do with it and considered reclaiming it for another painting, but I talked him into a barter instead.  I had a cheap jangly guitar that Kevin decided he wanted and a swap was proposed.

The painting went with me to Indianapolis for 4 years of medical school and then out to  Washington DC for 4 years of residency.  When we finally moved to an actual house in 2006 Idu went into storage in the attic.  Two more moves later he continued on sealed in a box until today when I finally busted him free and put him in my new larger office at the hospital.

***

Candy in the House

There is candy in the house.  I know it is there.  

Sitting in the lower living room staring at the wall.  Thinking melancholy thoughts that need an infusion of sugar to take off the edge, a wedge, the sadness to stall.

Why does she not acknowledge the intensity of my interest?  Does she not sense my deep appreciation of all things her?  I want things as they were or easily attained on Pinterest.

There is candy in the house.  I know it is there.

The cure for despair is chocolate melting on the tongue.  Coffee is good too, but it can sometimes simply energize the negativity.  Stimulant selectivity.  Sing what is sung.

I am a broken man looking for a quick fix, maybe a Blow Pop with thirty licks.  Would that do it?  Screw it!  I need to get up and look for it.  Detective Dicks, at your service.

There is candy in the house.  I know it is there.

Maybe under a chair?  I look through the cabinets but find only fragments.  My nose seeks out a fruity aroma, traveling about like the Roma.  Hard candies turn out to be magnets.

It is such a strange and superficial addiction.  Most things worth eating are found in the kitchen, but I feel I must look outward, northward, southward… a fiction.

There is candy in the house.  I know it is there.  But where?

***

Tinkering with the Karma Machine

 

Tenaciously tinkering with the Karma Machine,

making some adjustments, mostly small.

—

Actually listening when daydreaming

comes more natural, making eye contact.

Maybe smiling to not burden others 

with my burning melancholy concerns.

Filling bird feeders in the bitter cold and

giving the dog a few more minutes outside.

Agreeing to do the little extra, at work or at 

home, when inclinations are saying otherwise.

—

Tenaciously tinkering with the Karma Machine,

a sincere investment with the hope of return.

***

Creativity is a Flow

 

1

Floating.

2

Paddling over

an abyss.

3

Creativity is a flow 

that you can ride,

an ever-cresting wave.  

4

Until the wave crashes 

and throws you 

wet and dejected 

onto the beach.  

5

Where you sit 

on the sand, 

knees to chest,

looking longingly 

out over the ocean.

6

Wondering when 

a wave will

find you again

to rediscover 

the exhilaration 

of creating.

***

The Red Snapper

 
The Captain of the Red Snapper
is trapped, though once the trapper.

Peering through a translucent eye
ice upon ice is all he does spy.

Dive! Dive! rings the bell in its belly.
It is warm inside, but also smelly.

“I don’t want to die
in this monstrously large fish!”
he can’t help but cry
as he makes this last wish.

Dive! Dive! in the belly of the snapper.
He is trapped who once was the trapper.

***

Hearts Shine Through

Seeing Kevin in a dream

but Vincent is there too.

The world transformed

by their vision

nearly blind - mentally ill

but somehow 

their hearts shine through.

***

Gifts from Greta

 

Some time in the recent past Elias has discovered Greta Van Fleet and come to enjoy their music which really surprises me.  He is not much of a Rock music fan and my attempts to get him to listen to King’s X over the years has not borne fruit (Dogman, Black the Sky, Groove Machine, etc), but here he is playing Rock via GVF over my car speakers since being home on break.

I’ve heard of Greta Van Fleet but I could not have told you any of their songs or even what their sound was like.   Elias played “Heat Above” in my car yesterday and I immediately heard the influences of RUSH and Led Zeppelin.  Some of the songs are uncanny in this regard.  I had him pull up RUSH’s “Fly by Night” and he immediately saw the similarities with Geddy Lee.

I guess that is one of the pleasures of being the father of a growing and developing human being.  He not infrequently surprises me with some new insight or developmental milestone that I was not expecting.  I objectively know he is an independent and unique human being but the parent’s temptation is to think we fully know them or nearly so.  It’s fun to be proven wrong!

***

The Dreaming Tree

 

Inside the heart of the dreaming tree

wondering at what is revealed to me.

To feel the tilting and spin of the earth.

To know being buried allows for rebirth.

To perceive lack of love as a real dearth.

To welcome the weight of infinite worth.

Inside the heart of the dreaming tree

many mysteries were made known to me.

***

The Wisdom of Clocks & Glasses

 

Time to see 

what is to be seen.

To experience

what has ever been.

To know it truly 

when sight is keen.

Wisdom is full

but foolishness lean.

***

My Desolation

Sitting in the comfort
of my desolation.

A cushioned couch
for my consolation.

An inner world springs
forth, my creation.

Offered in awed silence
as my oblation.

***

Doodles and Korea

Prior to our current state of easily accessible art-making technology I was a frequent doodler.  It was something to pass the time in meetings or serve as mnemonic devices in my voluminous medical school notes.  Prior to that I had filled my Bible with little pictures in the margins as illustrations.

This week I was thinking about my time in Korea and trying to track down some of the groups I enjoyed while living there in 91’ through 93’ but could not find any on Apple Music or even Youtube.  It was probably a search problem with my Romanization of the Korean names not being recognized.

In this process of reminiscing I thought about the mixtapes I would make for Korean friends and a doodle came to mind.  It was my idea of a nonexistent record company that I created a variety of designs for to draw on those mixtapes called “호기심 RECORDS” which means “curiosity” in Korean.  

In my internet search I was at least able to find Kim Hyun Sik who was a tragic figure in Korean Pop culture of the time.  He sang melancholy tunes with a strained and gravely voice that projected emotional pain.  My Korean friends told me he died by drinking himself to death.  I listened and doodled.   

***

Shannon, Friend of Kevin, Artist

She is an artist, a friend of a friend who was also an artist and also happened to be my godson.  I met her through him back in my college days and after he died we shared stories of Kevin.  He was missed.  He was loved.  His heart and artistic vision were appreciated.

We continued on as friends through Facebook over the years.  I appreciated her insightful comments, especially when it had to do with my attempts at doing something artistic.  She became a single Mom of teenaged kids and worked hard to make a home for them.  

I admired her from afar as she struggled in a distant town, but then I realized just this past week that she had not commented on any of my posts in quite awhile and vice versa.  It was a Facebook memory with one of her comments that alerted me to the gap in communication.

I started reading the most recent posts on her account and a creeping dread mixed with sadness began to take hold.  Friends posting about missing her, about praying for her kids.  I messaged one of those friends who informed me Shannon had died in her sleep in February.

February!  I felt bad I hadn’t figured it out sooner.  She had gone to the ER not feeling well and was evaluated but then sent home.  Her kids found her in the morning, dead of an apparent heart attack, the subtle signs of female cardiac symptoms lost on a night shift ER staff.

But then today in the blue garage at work I noticed a peculiar sight.  Someone with a baby blue Lincoln Continental had custom-attached a blue-winged angel ornament on their hood.  It made me think of Shannon and her quirky artistic nature detaching itself from corporality.

***