Continuing with my promise, this drip was written by hand. For my writing bros, you’ve gotta try this. I think so much more about what I write down. And then when I’ve got something that feels like anything I type it up and it’s so short. Rock on. I’ve been using a legal pad and an EnerGel Pentel 0.5, trying to rip through one long thought a day. A nice exercise in believing.
WHAT HITS
Hear me out. The Hippocratic Oath. In my head it was, “the promise doctors make to not gossip.” I assumed it was completely boring. I read it last week and, oh, was I wrong. In 1964, Louis Lasagna wrote a modernized version which is the iteration adopted by most medical colleges. It’s poetic and resolute. One line, “Above all, I must not play at God.”
A DRIP
When you take a swell of eighth graders out to recess they do one hundred different things, it’s okay, you let them, they need it. There are patterns but they’ll flip the script fifteen minutes in, surprising even themselves. She didn’t do anything wrong, but it was confusing, which somehow felt worse for all of us, but I found myself halfway through becoming extremely proud. There is a David Bowie quote about pushing yourself to create in discomfort, it should feel like risk, it is a better quote than that. There is some quote from this book I’m reading that when you force extreme change, or when it’s put upon you, during the transformation, the first thing you will do is try and go back. Death is holding on. Life is dying to it. Which I always have to relearn while it’s happening, like an eighth grader, a remembered epiphany, it’s okay. She knows a lot, though. She solved for x so fast in my class she was left with 30 minutes to kill. You can work on homework, I suggested. I have none, she replied. Then, maybe, an educational game? She looked at me gravely and I ashamed. So I guess just sit. I said. She did. Did she reflect on the incident at recess? Did it reek, as I hope, of glory? Few would discover a huge metal road sign! Just inside the fence! pick it up by the edge, drag it across the green grass like duty, through the basketball courts like a plague, parting the games like the red sea, over the vast inexplicable slap of cement like a vast inexplicable slap of cement, up the stairs, to the corner of shadow girls. In the latter three stages of the journey, the sign dragging made a noise so grating the surrounding eighth graders yelled, “WHAT THE F**K,” so loud that the teacher trailing her yelling her name could not be heard. So she stopped yelling it and followed, smiling. A slow, fine parade. Because nothing was urgent, it was just as it was, continuing and strange. Like when someone on the treadmill last week wore arm floaties. Like when I told my friend about the arm floaties and he told me about the high wind pushing and the flag’s despite. Like how on days when you don’t think of their absence something still seems amiss. The teacher carried the sign back.
WHAT’S UP, DAD?
Everyone, meet my Dad. My parents are my roommates right now. Let me tell you, I am not an easy roommate for the first 12 to 16 weeks. But I’d say we’re finally hitting our stride. Right, guys? (Mom and Dad, if you disagree just shout up the stairs.) My dad is one of the funniest dudes I know. In another life, he was a comedian who used a lot of voices. We are so alike that we do not get along until we do. I think he would agree with this. (Again, just shout up the stairs if you don’t.) I’m a big fan of what he has to say here and a very big fan of him.
1. What is something strange, cool, or funny that happened to you recently?
2. What advice would you give yourself one year ago?
Be content, my man. Xx.
We are all a fan of Lance!! I think he is kinda cool!
We are all a fan of Lance!! I think he is kinda cool!