the more loving one ...

... by Auden ... my favourite poet of all time ... this poem transports you to a summer night sky with such love and hope, despite the raindrops outside, and the cold ... but at least my psychiatry paper is finally finished ...

Looking up at the stars, I know quite well
That, for all they care, I can go to hell,
But on earth indifference is the least
We have to dread from man or beast.

How should we like it were stars to burn
With a passion for us we could not return?
If equal affection cannot be,
Let the more loving one be me.

Admirer as I think I am
Of stars that do not give a damn,
I cannot, now I see them, say
I missed one terribly all day.

Were all stars to disappear or die,
I should learn to look at an empty sky
And feel its total dark sublime,
Though this might take me a little time.

~ Auden

Whistle for the Choir ...

... by The Fratellis is a pretty amazing song - soooo happy and hopeful ...

"Well it's a big big city and it's always the same
Can never be too pretty tell me you your name
Is it out of line if I were so bold to say "Would you be mine"?

Because I may be a beggar and you maybe the queen
I know I maybe on a downer am still ready to dream
Now it's 3 o'clock time it takes for you to talk

So if you're lonely why'd you say your not lonely
Oh your a silly girl, I know I hurt it so
It's just like you to come
And go you know me no you don't even know me
Your so sweet to try, oh my, you caught my eye
A girl like you's just irresistible

Well it's a big big city and the lights are all out
But it's much as I can do you know to figure you out
And I must confess, my hearts in broken pieces
And my heads a mess

And it's 4 in the morning, and I'm walking along
Beside the ghost of every drinker here who has ever done wrong
And it's you, woo hoo
That's got me going crazy for the things you do

So if your crazy I don't care you amaze me
Oh your a stupid girl, oh me, oh my, you talk I die, you smile, you laugh, I cry
And only, a girl like you could be lonely
And it's a crying shame, if you would think the same
A boy like me's just irresistible

So if your lonely, why'd you say you're not lonely
Oh your a silly girl, I know I hurt it so
It's just like you to come and go
And know me, no you don't even know me
Your so sweet to try oh my, you caught my eye
A girl like you's just irresistible"

being practical ...

... is definitely not my cup of tea. I spent an hour sorting out my mobile phone bill today ~ I did have the most helpful assistant on earth ... he was liked ~ hmm, your bill is £90 ... because you bought things with your phone?!?, made £13 worth of calls in one go, have subscriptions which you didn't even know exist ...

For example, I am subscribed to mobile TV, but "I don't even have TV in my flat" (he was liked - "TV on your mobile dear"). When I couldn't unsubscribe via the internet, despite clear instruction from him, he was "hmm, via your mobile". So there you are. The worst thing is that he kept on calling me "Doctor ... doctor ..." ... sometimes I think I am an embrassement to my profession ... Oh well, never mind, at least I can claim to be a star in blood taking ... (which is what I have learnt from vascular surgery ~ a very important life skill!)

Closure ...

... is an interesting thing and sometimes, they happen without us realising it ... They do tend to come when it is least expected, like rains falling on a sunny day, but most of the times, they are essential and vital for the continuity of the day-to-day life ...

This week has been a major wake up call for me (seeing a few long-lost friends, having a patient dying randomly, being honest with how I feel/what I struggle with, realising what I miss, learning the harsh reality of work ...) ... In the past year or so, I have been running away ... but the long hand has finally turned to "12", and it is chiming for me to face up to them. It will involve a substantial amount of thinking and exploring ... and it will hurt, as holes in myself, my faith, and the world will be found ... but I need to close this ambiguous chapter of my life, need to reassess where I stand, what I believe and how to continue ...

it is going to be a long long road, but hey, a pretty relaxed bank holiday weekend is definitely the way forward ...

vascular surgery ...

... is pretty awful ... really not enjoying the firm ... the shouting, the randomness (our operating list metamorphoses 3 times in a day), the meaningless (preparing for meetings where no one actually listens to what you have to say), the lack of facilities (not enough papers, chairs, blood forms, computers in a windowless room for 10 people), the long hours (to be honest, we are only doing 11 hours day at the moment, so it is not the end of the world), the brutalness (telling a patient that we are going to chop off all of her toes in 3 days' time ~ all in one sentence), the boringness of it all ... each morning, I wake up and start to dread the walk into 4 south more and more ...

But then, I went out for a drink tonight, and suddenly, the world seems like a brighter place ... work is still rubbish, people are still not great, one is still going to get hurt, with a lot of uncertainties circulating around the world, but I do have some wonderful friends, the sun is going to come out soon, and afterall, only 73 more days to go ....

An arundel tomb ...

... an amazing poems ... evoking the feeling that all things are possible ... actually based on a tomb in Chicester Cathedral ~ may go and visit it in the summer ...

"Side by side, their faces blurred,
The earl and countess lie in stone,
Their proper habits vaguely shown
As jointed armour, stiffened pleat,
And that faint hint of the absurd -
The little dogs under their feet.

Such plainness of the pre-baroque
Hardly involves the eye, until
It meets his left-hand gauntlet, still
Clasped empty in the other; and
One sees, with a sharp tender shock,
His hand withdrawn, holding her hand.

They would not think to lie so long.
Such faithfulness in effigy
Was just a detail friends would see:
A sculptor's sweet commissioned grace
Thrown off in helping to prolong
The Latin names around the base.

They would not guess how early in
Their supine stationary voyage
The air would change to soundless damage,
Turn the old tenantry away;
How soon succeeding eyes begin
To look, not read. Rigidly, they

Persisted, linked, through lengths and breadths
Of time. Snow fell, undated. Light
Each summer thronged the glass. A bright
Litter of birdcalls strewed the same
Bone-riddled ground. And up the paths
The endless altered people came,

Washing at their identity.
Now, helpless in the hollow of
An unarmorial age, a trough
Of smoke in slow suspended skeins
Above their scrap of history,
Only an attitude remains:

Time has transfigured them into
Untruth. The stone fidelity
They hardly meant has come to be
Their final blazon, and to prove
Our almost-instinct almost true:
What will survive of us is love."

~ Larkin

sad steps ...

"Groping back to bed after a piss
I part thick curtains, and am startled by
The rapid clouds, the moon's cleanliness.

Four o'clock: wedge-shadowed gardens lie
Under a cavernous, a wind-picked sky.
There's something laughable about this,

The way the moon dashes through clouds that blow
Loosely as cannon-smoke to stand apart
(Stone-coloured light sharpening the roofs below)

High and preposterous and separate -
Lozenge of love! Medallion of art!
O wolves of memory! Immensements! No,

One shivers slightly, looking up there.
The hardness and the brightness and the plain
Far-reaching singleness of that wide stare

Is a reminder of the strength and pain
Of being young; that it can't come again,
But is for others undiminished somewhere."

~ Larkin