This song, which recaptured my imagination a few months back, popped back into my head today.
Love of mine some day you will die
but I’ll be close behind.
I’ll follow you into the dark.
No blinding light or tunnels to gates of white,
just our hands clasped so tight
waiting for the hint of a spark.
If heaven and hell decide
that they both are satisfied.
Illuminate the NOs on their vacancy signs.
If there’s no one beside you
when your soul embarks,
then I’ll follow you into the dark.
In Catholic school, as vicious as Roman rule,
I got my knuckles brusied by a lady in black.
And I held my tongue as she told me
“Son, fear is the heart of love”
so I never went back
If heaven and hell decide
that they both are satisfied,
Illuminate the NOs on their vacancy signs.
If there’s no one beside you
when your soul embarks,
then I’ll follow you into the dark
You and me have seen everything to see
from Bangkok to Calgary
and the soles of your shoes are all worn down.
The time for sleep is now,
It’s nothing to cry about
‘cause we’ll hold each other soon.
The blackest of rooms
If heaven and hell decide
that they both are satisfied
Illuminate the NOs on their vacancy signs
If there’s no one beside you
When your soul embarks
then I’ll follow you into the dark.
Then I’ll follow you into the dark
—”I Will Follow You Into the Dark” by Death Cab for Cutie
The YouTube star Kina Grannis and her sisters sing a cover of this song.
At first, it makes me think of the legend of Orpheus and Eurydice, with Orpheus heading out for Hades in order to bring his beloved back.
But I met one of my patients again whose wife had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease 8-9 years ago, and they had moved into an Independent Living facility. He has a lot of medical problems and is in fact on oxygen for his ephysema and has been somewhat saddened by the fact that he can’t really take care of her. He and his daughters have decided that it would probably best to house her in the dementia unit.
But I think of his devotion to her. She will always be his one and only, even though the disease has been stripping her of what makes her her.
And I got pretty damn teary eyed. “For better and for worse, they told me,” he said matter-of-fact. “She would do the same, maybe more, if it were the other way around.”
And, even though I know I may never find an answer to this question: how do I find a love like that?
-Triple-Diamond 1¢ game: 7,200 coins = $72
-Wheel of Fortune 25¢ game: 1,000 coins = $250 on the damn bonus spin.
Down to my last $20, I decided to hang out at the 1¢ slots, betting a measly 18¢ a pop. Over the next hour or so, the slots whittled down my 2,000 coins to a pathetic 200 coins. This was not without its ups-and-downs, though. At first, I kept telling myself that I would quit when I got down to $15. This actually took a while since the machine would intermittently give me 50-80 coins back. But when I hit $15, I decided to keep going, telling myself that I would stop at $10. Again, it was this slow game of attrition. At $5, I moved over to another machine. The slow trickle of coins lost continued. I found myself mulling over the miserable failures and disappointments in my life.
At this point, I decided, what the hell, might as well get it over with, and bet the maximum 180 coins.
This rocketed me back up to $20. From then on I went for broke and kept throwing down $1.80 per spin. I was getting tired and I just wanted to go up to my room and put my head down for sec. Down to my last two spins, the machine decides to spit out 7,200 coins. Not bad for a 1¢ machine.
I cashed in my $72 and decided to go back to the Wheel of Fortune machines. On the third spin or so, I hit the bonus spin, but I was only able to get a measly 25 coins. Eventually, I ended up putting another $20 in, only to lose it. But instead of quitting, I moved over to another machine in the same bank. On the third spin, I hit the bonus spin. 1,000 coins. Yeeah!
Exhausted and exhilarated, I headed back upstairs. But I’m too awake to actually go to sleep, so I decided I would blog.
Vegas has always been a weird place for me. My parents love this place, and I’ve probably been here almost every year of my life, up until 2002. I didn’t come back again until August 2006.
I’ve found that trips to Vegas tend to presage big changes in my life. So I always get a little paranoid and anxious.
I wouldn’t say that I’m happy, not by a long shot. But I’m in an emotional state where there is a lot of inertia. I still get lonely sometimes. Actually, a lot. But the torture of trying to overcome that inertia seems to outweigh the discomfort of being alone. I make do.
In the end, there are a lot of more basic things I need to sort out in my life anyway. Besides charting my destiny once I finish residency, I really need to work on how I live life. I have come to the reluctant realization that the way I live my life is completely unsustainable. I need to learn discipline. Some sort of flow and balance. The other thing is that my health is completely shot out to hell. I need to start exercising. If only to get my HDL back into normal range.
Unsurprisingly, inertia is probably literally one of the most fundamental phenomenon in nature. The current thinking in physics right now is that, just as there are electromagnetic fields and gravity fields, there is a field called the Higgs field, generated by a particle that has never been observed called the Higgs boson, sometimes referred to as the God particle. There are some huge experiments attempting to find it. Not only will it explain why there is a difference in mass between the particles that mediate the four fundamental forces of nature, it will explain why mass exists at all. In Peter Higg’s theory, the reason why we need to exert energy to move things is because the Higgs field is resisting the acceleration. Somehow, we have come back to a theory where the aether (slightly reformulated, and modernized) may exist.
Don’t underestimate the power of inertia! It takes a ginormous amount of energy to start moving things around. Before you try and start a revolution, stop and think if you really want these things to move. And if you decide after lots of careful consideration that, yes, it’s a good idea, don’t stop until you’ve expended way more energy than you can possibly imagine. That’s how hard it is to make a change in destiny.
I’ve been rifling through my own blog entries and trying to index them. That’s one of the things that I liked about my old hacked-together system (see exiled by fate, foobar, lunacy, and congestive soul failure) that Blosxom lacked. And while Wordpress, Simplelog, and Mephisto all support excerpts, I haven’t really used them. (I suppose that’ll be the next project once I get through the several hundred entries I posted through Blosxom.)
It’s interesting how my mind can re-enter the conceptual framework I was in at the time I actually wrote these things. I can vaguely remember how I felt those particular days, even though a lot of these issues are quite moribund. Although I must admit, 2003 is a damn long time ago. Already I’m finding myself sifting through obsolescence, and trying to stop myself from commenting anachronistically.
Who am I kidding. The blogosphere is going to be a gold mine for my enemies. That’s why I’ve got Plan B: fleeing to a country where they can’t extradite me from. (This is also the plan in the highly improbable instance that Mike Huckabee is actually elected president. Stranger and more fucked up things have happened in my lifetime so far, though.)
I woke up this morning with it still dark outside, and all my lights were on. I was uncertain whether it was still yesterday evening or whether the new day had in fact started. My sleep cycle is completely out of whack. I’m in a weird place in my brain right now, and I’m worried about whether or not I’m really going to ever snap out of it, or if this is the best it’s ever going to get, and I should just learn how to deal.
