extra thug sauce

"...lucidity gives your success a bitter taste, whereas mediocrity still leaves hope for something."

masaccio is responsible for my favorite expulsion pic

that shame, oh so palpable

RED

"...something that will ruin the appetite of every son-of-a-bitch who ever eats in that room. If the restaurant would refuse to put up my murals, that would be the ultimate compliment. But they won’t. People can stand anything these days."

~ Mark Rothko

I laid my heart open to the benign indifference of the universe

Just so you're aware (not that I think you, the reader, exist), the "..." are fairly hefty exclusions:

"So I turned my head and lazily sniffed the smell of brine that Marie's head had left on the pillow. I slept until ten. After that I stayed in bed until noon, smoking cigarettes. I decided not to lunch at Celeste's restaurant as I usually did; they'd be sure to pester me with questions, and I dislike being questioned. So I fried some eggs and ate them off the pan. I did without bread as there wasn't any left, and I couldn't be bothered with going down to buy it.... A bit later, for want of anything better to do, I picked up an old newspaper that was lying on the floor and read it. There was an advertisement of Kruschen Salts and I cut it out and pasted it into an album where I keep things that amuse me in the papers. Then I washed my hands and, as a last resource, went out on to the balcony... After smoking a couple of cigarettes I went back to the room, got a table of chocolate, and returned to the window to eat it. Soon after, the sky clouded over, and I thought a summer storm was coming. However, the clouds gradually lifted. All the same, they had left in the street a sort of threat of rain, which made it darker. I stayed watching the sky for quite a while... Just then the street lamps came on, all together, and they made the stars that were beginning to glimmer in the night sky paler still. I felt my eyes getting tired, what with the lights and all the movement I'd been watching in the street. There was little pools of brightness under the lamps, and now and then a streetcar passed, lighting up a girl's hair, or a smile, or a silver bangle... It struck me that I'd better see about some dinner. I had been leaning so long on the back of my chair, looking down, that my neck hurt when I straightened myself up. I went down, bought some bread and spaghetti, did my cooking, and ate my meal standing. I'd intended to smoke another cigarette at my window, but the night had turned rather chilly and I decided against it. As I was coming back, after shutting the window, I glanced at the mirror and saw reflected in it a corner of my table with my spirit lamp and some bits of bread beside it. It occurred to me that somehow I'd got through another Sunday."

YES. Who hasn't had a day in which your inner monologue carries this tone? Don't worry, I won't commit a senseless murder like the character in Albert Camus's "The Stranger."

But the whole bit on the last couple pages? Totally agree with it.

yin and yang

Rembrandt is the original master of shadow and light.


I could look at The Hundred Guilder Print all day and still know I'm missing so much.

When I was looking at this one,


(Portrait of a Young Jewish Man) an elderly woman a mere two thirds my height hooked her arm into the crook of my elbow and shared, "Go closer. Look at the eyes. They look real. Absolutely marvelous." Then she smiled the most genuine smile and walked along.

Munching on my severely overpriced and not spicy enough jalapeno chips alone, I mean, independently, in the cafeteria, I knew I was probably sitting facing not an unaccompanied 60 something with a coffee and a floor plan, but a vision into the future. I have trouble deciding if this is sad or not, but am happy about it regardless.

- - - -

magical and mysterious. the warmth and light here is supplied not by the moon, but the couple.


Carnival Evening by Rousseau, I love it.

Also, I gotta say, Bonnard is so good. I am currently really feeling him and can't even pick just one to share.

milkboy

i held a jejunum today. my co-workers and I refer to this particular boy's intestinal segment as "Patrick." why?

well because it looks JUST like...


does posting a picture this accurate violate HIPAA? i foto-shopped some board shorts on the distal end to properly disguise the pinky organ's identity.

drowning in a pool of "why are you here?"

I love my Mom.



when i am bottle feeding a premature infant (wait, a child in the ICU receiving their nutrition not through a feeding tube or IV??!! a rare treat indeed) ..... as i swaddle the tiny, barely there human in my arms, i am left a) astonished at the ease of consolability by a stranger [me] b) wondering "where da hell is the momma?"

filmy curtain of ambiguities

overheard:

"Ugh. Life is hard. I need to kiss someone."

Lol. Oh, sister.

I have more to say, but can't remember it right now.

hooker with a cane

this title is not an excerpt of rap lyrics like most of the things i say, rather it is something i witnessed this morning after a night of hoping my prematurely born infant patient's sunken anterior fontanelle did not indicate a problem in his newly placed ventriculoperitoneal shunt, pushing fentanyl five times during an arterial line placement post code blue in a freshly endotracheal tubed kid, and hoping the lung transplant candidate reject didn't pull out his tracheostomy as his peak inspiratory pressures spiked and his oxygen saturation dipped. well, i'm not sure she was a hooker, but her clothing was minimal.

counting the cars on the new jersey turnpike

i noticed most princeton students choose sensible shoes. whether they are practical or want to seem practical, i can't decide.

if i were to have access to a time machine, this instant, i'd tell it to take me to september 19, 1981, central park.

art looks like an adult cherub, paul's ears are so large. they are so beautiful in so many ways.

before i had it, i close my eyes and imagine.

I am so excited about something that I can't contain myself, so I came here to let the enthusiasm overflow and hopefully my person will return to a functional state afterward.

Two wheelers, otherwise known as bicycles, or bikes if you are not into the effort of multiple syllables, are an amazing contraption. Get places faster than walking, pay no gas. Parking space?? Pshaw!! More like, "wheres da bike rack yo?" Maybe even delude yourself into thinking you are getting more exercise than you really are. I could go on, but I'm going to avoid the whole overdone green aspect (you caught me, I mentioned it) and tell you that, honestly, the real reason I love them is because I think cycling is fun. Like, so fun, homie. But in suburbia, this particular action verb quickly loses its charm with the same static scenery repeated coupled with no sense of purpose. In New York, I just felt like I'd end up on all the news blogs at the end of the day as one of those horrific accident victims.

I've had the same trusty, modestly purple colored multi-gear bicycle (purchased from Sam's Club) since the fourth grade. At the time, it was too big for me so I dismounted by falling off (check out da scars on mah right calf for some evidence). My poipull babe is still going strong, and I can proudly get off without hurting myself... most of the time. It's the BEST.

I'm so excited it gets to have a new life in Philadelphia soon. Finally, an actual city where you can safely get most places on a bike. But don't think baby isn't getting a makeover. Primarily, I'll need a little basket. I'm thinking a detachable wicker one... that I could spray paint a contrasting color like a light, bright green or strong yellow. Then hot glue some artificial flowers on that shit. Hmm.. and I'll need a new helmet to avoid being an ICU case myself.. can't order online cause my head is deceptively huge and I'll need to try things on. And the bike shop near me recently burnt down, great. Looking for something colorful, and generally funky - hit me up if you know where I should look!! Lastly, maybe some sweet spoke beads if I feel like actin' like a child. Oh, and of course a rear reflector thingy. SaFeTy FiRsT.

Can I stop??? This post is incredibly annoying of me. By the way, my apartment (which it would make more sense for me to be discussing because it is mind blowing with "old world" charm [dislike those sterile, everything brand new, modern apts]) is five minutes biking distance from my jawb. I'm so siked, I could vomit.

But lets be real, obviously the bike is a microcosm of the state of my life right now. The exciting changes that are about to happen and my freedom to manipulate the multiple variables is farrrrr too vast for me to wrap my mind around, so I'll just talk about my two wheeler. Yeah.

40 slammin while eating salmon

extracorporeal membrane oxygenation, ECMO, is so intense.

"Ars longa, vita brevis"

keep it funky

a la recherche du temps perdu

just keep in mind that while reading this paragraph, i was simultaneously enjoying a layered pudding cup:

On the landing Swann had run into the Verdurins' butler, who had been somewhere else a moment earlier, when he arrived, and who had been asked by Odette to tell Swann (but that was at least an hour ago) that she would probably stop to drink a cup of chocolate at Prevost's on her way home. Swann set off at once for Prevost's, but every few yards his carriage was held up by others, or by people crossing the street, loathsome obstacles each of which he would gladly have crushed beneath his wheels, were it not that a policeman fumbling with a note-book would delay him even longer than the actual passage of the pedestrian. He counted the minutes feverishly, adding a few seconds to each so as to be quite certain that he had not given himself short measure, and so, possibly, exaggerated whatever chance there might be of his arriving at Prevost's in time, and of finding her still there. And then, in a moment of illumination, like a man in a fever who awakes from sleep and is conscious of the absurdity of the dream-shapes among which his mind has been wandering without any clear distinction between himself and them, Swann suddenly perceived how foreign to his nature were the thoughts which he had been revolving in his mind ever since he had heard at the Verdurins' that Odette had left, how novel the heartache from which he was suffering, but of which he was only now conscious, as though he had just woken up. What! all this disturbance simply because he would not see Odette, now, till to-morrow, exactly what he had been hoping, not an hour before, as he drove towards Mme Verdurin's. He was obliged to admit also that now, as he sat in the same carriage and drove to Prevost's he was no longer the same man, was no longer alone even - but that a new personality was there beside him, adhering to him, amalgamated with him, a creature from whom he might, perhaps, be unable to liberate himself, towards whom he might have to adopt some stratagem as one uses to outwit a master or a malady. And yet, during this last moment in which he had felt that another, a fresh personality was thus conjoined with his own, life had seemed, somehow, more interesting.

Marcel Proust
Swann in Love

everybody's gotta learn sometime

i forget what the world looks like when its not shrouded in white. sidewalks will seem generous when snowpocalypse melts. studies say, despite its value, possessing insight doesn't make you any happier.