Unfurled

I bought 3 pears and two apples from the Farmer’s Market. I paid $3.50 which I thought was rather a lot, but they promised that the apples would be sweet.

I went for a walk to CitySports and stocked up on my Gu; the girl at the counter told me that if I bought 4 more, I could get 20% off. I now have 12 Gu.

I ran 8 miles. I went out with my ipod and I just ran to my music without a single thought, worry or concern to compete with my utter mindlessness.

I ate the other half of my Uptown Cafe baguette sandwich. Filling: grilled chicken, portobello mushrooms marinated in balsamic, and tomatoes.

I talked to my parents: my father recently planted 20 blueberry bushes which all withered away because he had used the wrong kind of soil. Today, he replanted all the bushes and for the first time since my father began curating his plant kingdom which includes no fewer than 15 palm trees, 4 honeybell orange trees, 2 bourgainvillea vines, 2 tons of stones, and no less than a few hundred pounds of mulch, fertilizer and probably insecticide– he finally declared that he’s tired. At nearly 75, I figure that’s not so bad.

Life is good.

I’m tipsy from a glass of wine. My first drink in, I don’t know, 3 months. Actually, also representative of the first time since I’ve been out since this debacle began. The grant is in. Sent into the ether at 11:56am. I couldn’t even feel a wash of relief when I hit the ’submit’ button. I had three patients waiting and I was beginning to feel the sluggish jitterness that only days of sleeplessness can produce.

Now, sitting here in the silence of my home, I feel strangely empty. I absolutely do not wish under any circumstance no way no how to return to the other side of this day. On the other hand, my brain feels like it has nowhere to go. For the first time, I hear only the quiet echoing quiet.

Wait, that’s the shiraz.

Our natural inclination as humans is to wallow in the puddle of our own existence. We’re less apt to do this when life doesn’t feel stressful and certainly, some people are worse wallowers than others. Most of us at one point or another however, have all drowned in our respective puddles. I’m beginning to realize that this is what happened to me over the last few months, definitely over the last few weeks. Looking back, I’m amazed how preparing this grant quite literally consumed all my waking, and sometimes sleeping, hours. I’m not so concerned about the times I was working on it, but I am concerned about the times that I wasn’t working on it– and worried that I wasn’t working on it.

This has become a battle for me over the last few years. I’ve managed to convince myself that work and life are one and the same– the boundaries somehow have become so blurred that I don’t think twice anymore about staying late at work or bringing work with me when I’m going somewhere for fun. Not that I always do the work I plan to do– in fact, I often don’t, but I do allow the spector of work to hang over me wherever I go. I think this is less about time management and being organized, than about deciding what’s important to me as a person.

When I’m lying on my craftmatic bed being spoon-fed pureed banana with my dentures on the side-table– what will make me feel that I’ve lived my life fully? Certainly, it won’t be this grant (though it might be the individuals that it’s helped). It won’t be the fact that I ran 17 miles (which I did last Saturday, by the way). In reality, it’ll be my family and friends– the relationships I’ve built and the human interchanges and plain old fun I’ve had with them.

I recall an apt memory from medical school: Traversing the hallways after dinner-time, some rooms were filled with chattering, laughing family and friends; others were dark with only the sounds of Matlock reruns grating into the corridor. I decided then, that I could not, would not, should not lead such an insular life that I too, would one day be alone with Matlock. And I really like Matlock.

I set off for my usual 8 mile run this evening and realized as I set off that I had not eaten anything since 8am. I was already running late to meet my partners and didn’t have much choice but to use what glycogen stores I had left in me.

It seems I didn’t have enough as I had to stop frequently from waves of nausea– I made 7.5 miles, but with a significant amount of not pain, per se– but an overall feeling of utter exhaustion. At times I felt completely transparent– as if I didn’t exist; other times I felt like a lead brick. I felt like an apparition of me was running which wasn’t really fair to the non-apparition me since tonight I really needed to clear my head and feel like I was running. My friend took it upon herself to feed me a slice of pizza from Upper Crust which I consumed unzestfully and now I can barely keep my eyes open and write what I consider my all-time unenlightened post.

I was on a JetBlue flight from Tampa this afternoon after a weekend carousing with my family (not true: I was glued to my parents’ imac the entire time working on this grant). I found myself seated next to– I really hate this phrase, but it just feels right– white-trash, yes assholes. How one male and one female of this distinctive species ended up next to each other by simple happenstance, just seems too unbelievable to be true. God must have thought I needed a laugh (which I do).

Over the course of 3 hours, they had each consumed about 6 beers (her first, by the way was a bottle she had brought on board with her) and they were each awarded by the flight attendent with a bacardi and coke ‘on the house’. I can’t help it– I so eavesdropped. Watching their relationship unfold from complete strangers to acquaintences to the stolen touch(es), to the inevitable discussions about relationships– she was in one, he was not– to some attempts to kiss to his final plea after we landed that she marry him as she was screaming terms of endearment to the poor sucker on the end of the other line who was apparently waiting just outside the airport. While we were taxi-ing (how does one spell this?), she spent an inordinate amount of time drunkenly (i.e. very loudly) coo-ing at a baby across the aisle and then diverted her attention to the Cosmo that she had ignored the entire flight… all the while, he’s pleading with her to consider the karmic meaning of their meeting like this. Even I was confused.

A friend forwarded me a New York Times article today Won’t raise your heart rate? Then you won’t raise mine which puzzled me. Not only do we have to worry about emotional, intellectual and physical compatibility– now we need to add physical activity to this dimensionally expanding list?

Quite frankly, I find that people who care about this are crippled by their egos– either small ones (because they need the affirmation and want everyone to be like them) or tiny ones (because they don’t want to be alone).

I fall into the first camp. Actually, it’s a little more complicated than that. My primary motive for making sure the person I’m with gets regular exercise is to minimize the time I’ll be a widow. If it weren’t for that, I think I could appreciate and love the sloth for their independence of spirit in this world of vain gym rats.