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Showing posts from October, 2012

Cabin in the woods

I am having fantasies of a long hot holiday in a cabin, in a forest by a lake. I'm not sure where the cabin is. Perhaps it's in Canada, as Alannah Weston recalls in her profile in the Gentlewoman, All we do is canoe and kayak and roast marshmallows and swim. The water's like silk, and you get those hot, hot blue days, but there's always a breeze. And then there's a thunderstorm and everybody gets into bed. Or perhaps it's south of the Canadian border, as in Wallace Stegner's 'Crossing to Safety': "I'll be out on the porch, looking and smelling and recherching temps perdu." Which is what I do for a good long time.  It is no effort. Everything compels it. From the high porch, the woods pitching down to the lake are more than a known and loved place....The light is nostalgic about mornings past and optimistic about mornings to come.    I sit uninterrupted by much beyond bird song... Aah. I want to sit uninterrupted by much

body bags

I have had a crappy week at work. An ICU colleague once told me that ED doctors make good ICU doctors because, "They're used to shit. Loads of bad shit.  They've waded through shit." So this week I waded through shit. I have been listening to classical music.  All week- Sibelius, Berio, Shostakovich.  This felt like a regression to my adolescence, but perhaps it is a renaissance.