12/16/07

Thoughts \ Developed Thoughts \ Rants \ Raves \ Writing

From yesterday, it's coming!
From yesterday, the fear!
From yesterday, it calls him
But he doesn't want to read the message
He doesn't want to read the message
Doesn't want to read the message here

-- From Yesterday: 30 Seconds to Mars

16/12/2007 19:05:45 -0600 GMT

Homeland

The airplane ride was continuously bumpy, not enough so that one's head would hit the ceiling if one were standing, but enough that one constantly looked out the window to see what the cause was. I've been on some fearful flights.

The worst was over Mombasa, when as we cleared for landing the pilot got on the overhead and said he was glad that we were going to be able to land...holy shit! The second worst was coming in over the Potomac river, near the end of the afternoon, and I remember it being so rough that seasoned traveler businessmen were gripping the handrails, looking at one another as if this were the end. I looked around at them, gaining anxiety as a naive passenger, much as I gained naive anxiety from Susan Allen when I watched her watch the news in Kigali after a rebel offensive in Goma...I was scared because the veterans were scared.

This plane trip in 2007 is officially charted as my third worst ever.

A Nor'easter was due to come from the Atlantic, but we were ahead of that. An icy cold front that left hundreds of thousands in the Midwest without Newton's electricity had just settled, leaving nearly a foot of snow in my homeland of Massachusetts.

To take my mind off the possibility of this plane crashing, dashing my hopes for a career in medicine that would let me fulfill my life's dream, holding immense faith in the men who were piloting the vessel in which I was a passenger, ignoring my fellow passengers, I dug out my reading glasses and focused on the screen of my iPod, clicking through to the Videos section, choosing U2 videos. I watched I Will Follow, the original video from twenty-five years ago, and the Saturday Night Live version that was a special live connection between the band, the audience, and the cast members - a connection that has made the band famous, in my view.

"Saturday Night Live! There's nothin' like it! Live, Live, Live..." The words carried through as the credits scrolled up the screen.  Then I watched Vertigo, recorded during a different SNL episode...

"Live, Live, Live, Live," as if there were a seamless carryover from their last performance.

I looked, and I saw a reflection of my face in the screen. A shadow from the earpiece of the glasses cast darkness over the deepening lines that curved down 'round my eyes, towards my cheek. The glasses cast a square around my eye, and there, when I shifted focus, was the Edge, stroking with his right, his left hand close to the stem of his guitar. His red T-shirt read, "If you couldn't be a musician, what would you be?" I thought the same thing of my profession-to-be. If I couldn't be a physician, what would I be?

Then came Until The End of The World, a song that is so amazingly sharp, particularly Edge's work with his guitar bells, ringing, echoing, like waves of a the ocean that pulses through you over and over again, washing, warm, and invigorating. This song is dark, haunting, scary, and lights me up with an energy to do my best like few things in our world can. And when it's done live, with Edge and Bono dueling, hammered chords versus passionate vocals - add the crowd screaming in appreciation - it's a sight to see.

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You can tear into something with all the force you can muster, or you can hold something back...

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In only three weeks, I will be traveling to Zambia for elective rotations in clinics and hospitals. There is a huge cost to this for me, in terms of money, in terms of being away from my wife, family, and my home...in terms of missing being with my classmates on the second greatest day of medical school - Match Day - when we all learn where we will train for the next three to six years. (The greatest day will be graduation.) Despite these costs, I am called to this place. Like a moth to a candle, I can not resist going to the place where people are forgotten, and where health care needs are secondary to the host of needs that we take for granted - eating, sleeping in comfort, under a roof, with space to simply be...

The plane continued to bump along mercilessly, and I imagined a ship on coarse seas as Mary J. Blige joined the lads on the stage of the 2001 Grammy awards show for a spine-tingling rendition of One. The unity of the band's style merging with Blige's style, along with the grace that the lads displayed, of playing as accompaniment for the song that they made, letting Blige shine in her own way, and shine she did, was a view into the secret that makes greatness in any organization.

"Hey, asshole! The other guy is more important than you think he is," said Springsteen when he inducted U2 into the rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame. He was describing the secret to U2's success - democracy, and co-appreciation - teamplay...

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I was born in North Weymouth, Massachusetts in 1968. I was born to an unwed, Irish-Catholic mother who went into hiding during her pregnancy. I was born in March, and on my birth mother's eighteenth birthday, I was taken away and placed in a foster home in Stoneham, Massachusetts, under the care of a family that was new to fosterhood. I was their second, and they gave me the name Andrew.

By virtue of grace and smoky, backroom maneuvers, I was adopted by William True and Esther-Louise McDonald, who were in Boston for his (William's) schooling in Engineering. Barely a month passed, and I was taken from my homeland to sunny California for the furthering of my dad's schooling.

There I grew up, with semi-frequent visits back to my homeland of New England, including North Tewksbury, Lowell, the mysterious Cape, Nantucket, Nashua, and Chelmsford.

On a remarkable day in 1994, after I had finished college, and on the very same day that my dad retired (for his first time) from his engineering career, I spoke with my biological mother and father for the first time. It was May 20th, 1994.

Nothing could have made me feel more complete.

Moreover, fortune could not have smiled on me more brightly - as gratifying as it was for me to find my biological parents, my real parents were equally gracious with sharing me, unthreatened and indeed, happy for the gift that this Finding brought to me.

Photograph albums, friends, family, memories and stories (most of them true), and a remarkable new path - all of these were born at that time, and I was at the center of it all.

I was reborn in the late California Spring of 1994.

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When I returned to the Boston area now, in 2007, the path that began in 1994 is matted down. In fact, two paths converge - the confluence of my old roots, 39 years old, and my relatively newfound roots, only 13 years old, and my career goals as an individual who has been twice born - my sense of a homeland in Massachusetts is stronger than ever.

It used to be that southern California was the place that I called home, but I think that in the last year or two, Mass has overtaken Cali, and it feels good.

Alabama and Zambia - my A to Zed homes - these places still belong to me. I am as loyal to Alabama as I am to the far reaches of the darkest Africa.

But I am an adoptee, my friends, and if you wish to understand me, you need to understand this: I am a stray dog, always looking for my home. That is my mentality, despite my having found my home. Whether I am at home at the University of Alabama at Birmingham that has gifted me avec un incroyable acceptance and opportunity, or whether I am at Main in Laguna, shooting hoops after the old-dog locals have swept the courts of sand, or whether I am walking on Cairo Road in Lusaka, at peace with my brethren, overlooking the shantytowns of piecemeal commerce under the flyover bridge, or even in the truly foreign lands - of Cairo, or Paris, of Goa or Old Delhi, of Rome...ah Rome!...or the beach towns of Cabo, or the cities of Prague, Vienna, Venice, the Vatican - in places that are not my own, my feeling of being stray is equilibrated with comfort.

Wherever I am, that's where it's at.

And Massachusetts, with it's history, my two families, outstanding organization, and a multitude of things to do...my homeland calls me loudly.

Come home, my son.

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And the Fly's best friend hammers his guitar...

Oh child...

It's no secret that the stars are fallin' from the sky

The Universe exploding 'cause of one man's lie.

Look I gotta go, yeah, I'm runnin' outta change;

There's a lotta things, if I could I'd rearrange

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Kiss me, love. Press your lips to mine. Let me breathe your breath, and as I press into your warmth, oh my God, there is nothing like you. Hold me, Thrill me, Kiss me, Kill me.

Lights. A flash, and a final warmth, of the end of the world, of when sex doesn't matter, of when the core of it all is burned down to final ember.

I couldn't do it without you. You made me take this step, and I will be indebted as long as the ocean moves. My love for you is inexplicable, and that is part of its majesty. I wish I could let you know.

Sorrow? I haven't time for it. There's too much of you to stop and feel pity. I will strike you down. And in that moment of force, peace will rise, like a receding tide that reveals the shore, wet, dark , and soft to the foot.

But there is the old man, only a bit weary, but weary still - it's in his diet, and his eyes, and she...

She's there, dangerous, honest, and full of unrealized potential. There is the sadness. She gave, and accidentally, she cut, we bled, all of us, but the scar is all that remains.

Stolen cash, stolen kiss. Lies, abuse, friends, disorder, despair, and discovery. And all the while, the waves of the ocean wash over me, six to a minute, sets of blue ivory bringing God's peace over it all.

Though the embers may still burn, and the smell of smoke may pass through the air, blackness may surround my homeland, but it's a Phoenix rising up, blades of passion on his wings.

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To my homeland, comrades. Come with me. To my homeland...

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"Everybody havin' a good time...

Except you.

You were talkin' about the end of the world"