HOG ON ICE

HOG ON ICE

.In the instant it takes

to make the wrong decision

I lay sprawled

on a country road.

The “I” as I knew me

died.

Bleeding, unconscious, undignified.

We must die by our own hand

to become

other than ourselves.

.

We all march out onto the ice with undeserved confidence. With every breath, with every moment, we have the opportunity to choose the death of remaining the same as ourselves or the opportunity to become other than ourselves.

At various times over the  years, patients listened as I gave them information that changed the course of their lives. In February 2010 I walked into my doctor’s office and was told that, due to my health, I could no longer work as a physician. Now I was the one listening.

Life rewrites our story far more often than we imagine.

Every day I get up and apply for the job of being Stephen Weiss, and every day I am turned down. I have been assured that I will be given a chance to reapply again in the future.

So it begins.

Making art is my new story. I am searching for the multitude of ways that people describe the divine in their lives. This blog will be an ongoing “travelogue” of my experience.

.                                                        You come too.

Stephen                                                         .

Tripping Over The Ephemeral

This is an experiment. In conversation, people sometimes speak poems. Sometimes an evening is a poem.

Tripping over the Ephemeral

 

I tripped over the ephemeral the other night,

and falling I lost my grip on certainty.

 

There is an annual medical staff dinner. Black tie is optional. I had been thinking about this dinner for months and decided to go so that I could say goodbye to the many colleagues whom I have enjoyed working with these last 11 years.

 

Over cocktails a colleague asked me how I was because she had not seen me in a long time. I explained that my health issues were worse and I had been forced to do an early retirement.

 

Her face lighted up and with a big smile she said “Stephen, how wonderful! Congratulations!”

 

I retreated to a table.

 

I sat next to a colleague I had worked with every day for years. During conversation over dinner I asked if any other doctors had retired in the last year. She said

 

I’m drawing a blank,

its amazing how quickly

you forget people’s names.

 

I smiled and agreed.

 

Life has substance like a rock in the road.

It is finite, but it is not ephemeral.

 

In the absence of attention,

our lives become the ephemeral.

Beads of water in a hot pan,

evaporating in an instant.

 

Life simply disappears.

 

The trap door under you opens

and you are suddenly not inside.

 

I had tripped over the ephemeral.

 

Outside it had stopped raining,

it was cold and the sky was an enormous inverted black bowl

with thousands of stars brightly gleaming across the expanse.

There was a silver full moon sliding in and out behind the clouds,

turning them into shimmering white travelers.

 

It is our human failing that we do not listen or attend.

 

There is much to be said for the silence of reflection.

 

nuff said

 

or

 

Tripping over the Ephemeral

 

I tripped over the ephemeral the other night, and falling I lost my grip on certainty. There is an annual medical staff dinner. Black tie is optional. I had been thinking about this dinner for months and decided to go so that I could say goodbye to the many colleagues whom I have enjoyed working with these last 11 years. Over cocktails a colleague asked me how I was because she had not seen me in a long time. I explained that my health issues were worse and I had been forced to do an early retirement. Her face lighted up and with a big smile she said “Stephen, how wonderful! Congratulations!” I retreated to a table and I sat next to a colleague I had worked with every day for years. During conversation over dinner I asked if any other doctors had retired in the last year. She said “I’m drawing a blank, its amazing how quickly you forget people’s names.” I smiled and agreed.

Life has substance like a rock in the road. It is finite, but it is not ephemeral. In the absence of attention, our lives become the ephemeral, beads of water in a hot pan, evaporating in an instant. Life simply disappears. The trap door under you opens and you are suddenly not inside.I had tripped over the ephemeral. Outside it had stopped raining, it was cold and the sky was an enormous inverted black bowl with thousands of stars brightly gleaming across the expanse. There was a silver full moon sliding in and out behind the clouds, turning them into shimmering white travelers. It is our human failing that we do not listen or attend. There is much to be said for the silence of reflection. nuff said.

FADED WORDS ON WEATHERED STONE

Sara and I finished our 6000 mile trip to visit Ethan in Prague, arriving on a Wednesday. The day we arrived we were not going to be able to see Ethan for the first time until that evening. Sara and I were out walking in Prague and as we left a store we ran right into Ethan. 6000 miles, a city we had never visited, how can that be explained? It can be explained by accepting that it cannot be explained.

Our week in Prague was fascinating. I have never really had a sense of where my family came from. Sara and I were in the Jewish Cemetery in Prague and standing in there was a more powerful experience than I expected. Over many centuries when they ran out of room, they would bring in earth and create a new layer on top of the older layer and they would bring the old stones up to the surface. Standing there with stones at all angles, crowded together, I realized that I was standing at the figurative center of my family’s origin. My grandparents came from Slovakia, Poland, Romania, and Austria-Hungary. I would have said “these are my people” but no one would meet my eyes in the street as I walked around the city ( though for some that is the definition of family.)

I began this post on the plane back to California. Five hours into the flight I went into the French-Food-Addiction-Withdrawal-Syndrome. I had warned the flight crew and they were ready with tofu, beans, salad without dressing, carrot juice, and tasteless carob flavored Tofu-ti. Talk about a hard landing!

I am sure you have heard the advice from someone: “you have to live each day as if it were your last.” I have no idea what that means or would look like.

I do know that when we sit down with good friends and they set before you a casserole of coq au vin with wild mushrooms swimming in a fragrant sauce, accompanied with a glass of French wine; you do the only thing that is proper. You temporarily suspend your vegan diet and grab a fork and join your friends in a wonderful moment, all the way through to the cheese course. To have missed that moment out of hesitation would be the same as being condemned for eternity to remember that brief moment of possibility when as a young teenager I chickened out and did not ask the cute girl out on a date.

I look around me and my sons are now men of the world. I spent time in a beautiful home in the French countryside with wonderful friends and the most beautiful woman in the world who actually said yes when I got up the nerve to ask her to marry me as we stood in the canned fruit aisle at a San Francisco grocery store in 1982, with a can of peaches in my hand instead of a ring.

Love, the affection of good friends, wonderful food and wine at a table in the French countryside or Sonoma County, or anywhere for that matter, transforms us time after time. Suddenly life is a wonderful taste on the tongue, a visual feast of color and above all else, the laughter of a woman who loves you and who you adore beyond description. Life is more than we imagine, in fact it is more than we can describe with words.

I love this life, with the good and the bad that comes with it. For me, above all of that are the people I love. All of you.

Each day we sit down together at a common table, whether we are together or apart. One world, one table. May it always be so.

Stephen

Innocents Abroad

Sent by email 5 November 2010

No matter how sure we are of our own selves, when traveling we come to realize that we are all innocents abroad

I begin by saying that Sara and I have had a magical first week in Southern France.

Our trip actually began in In March 2009, during our trip to Italy. We stayed for several nights in a B&B in the small town of Montalcino in Tuscany. Marie and Etienne Claesen, a couple from France, were also there and we met at breakfast each day and had dinner together as well. We hit it off very well and the four of us became friends in a way that it seemed we had always know each other. Both Marie and Etienne were born in Belgium. Etienne is a primary care physician in his small town of 600 people. Marie is very dedicated to the preservation of the environment and has been working for years on projects that involve supporting local agriculture, working to help large manufacturers be better neighbors, and sustainable forrest management. Our conversations were hilarious, as we stumbled along massacring French, English, and Spanish as well as waving our hands and gesturing. Dictionary’s were paged through madly. It is important that you understand that a conversation with me in French (or what I like to call the “Linguica Fronkah”) is like watching a wild boar destroy a treasured garden.

When we planned our current trip it was clear that we would visit Marie and Etienne at their home in the Dordogne which is in South Western France, about a two hour drive east from Bordeaux on the Atlantic coast. They live in a lovely little village, Champagnac de Belair, that is impossible to find without a GPS. (If you can, never drive in Europe without one, it made a huge difference.) The town has few things for tourists, and with it being off season, we were effectively the only visitors. Marie and Etienne are exactly Sara’s and my ages, and they have three boys who are the same ages as Adam and Ethan. Marie has about her an air of elegant refinement, and she remains so in the forest and garden. Etienne is a walking vessel of joy and amusement and affection, his face pure poetry. Both of their families live at a distance and Marie said “our friends are our families, it is our fortune that we get to choose our family.”

Have you ever had the experience of looking through the window of a restaurant and thinking that the people inside seem to be having so much fun, but you know you are not invited? That would have been our experience, but for us, the window dissolved and we were seated at the table with all the joyful conversation and friendship. Stepping through the window we became something else. We were no longer Tourists with a capital “T”, we were American friends of Marie and Etienne at the table with their friends. We have seen more of the French people, countryside, villages and Chateaus than I could ever have imagined. I realized often that I am sitting down with people in places I would otherwise have passed at a distance, never leaving the car.

Etienne seemed to have as much fun as Sara and I as he took us touring on more than 200 miles of the smallest back roads in the French countryside. He took us to a private Chateaux that is closed to the public, a village cut into a sheer rock face over 1,000 feet tall along a river. We went to spectacular castles, a restaurant in a remote village, a village market, Roman ruins, a winery at the top of a small mountain, and a dinner at a restaurant on the Michelin list. Our last day with Marie and Etienne was spent with a large group of their friends in a remote forrest, the ground carpeted by the explosive color of fallen leaves. There were 20 or so men in vests and sweaters and several with pony-tails, their hair silver gray, cutting down trees, cutting off limbs, and using horses to take the trees out of the forrest. The day ended at Marie and Etienne’s home in a building with a huge open room, and a feast for all who had worked in the forest that day. Tables of cheese, country pate, bread, fruit, ham, wine and apple tart. Everything I am not supposed to eat, but this was an experience we had never had, and would not miss. At the end of the afternoon, we prepared to leave. When Marie came to say goodbye we did not realize that they were going out and this was the final goodbye. When Etienne came to our room there was a quick goodby and over his shoulder as he walked away he said “goodbyes should be done quickly, eh?” As we began to drive away I had the sense that we were taking with us a glorious hand-written and illustrated manuscript locked with a key that Etienne and Marie had gifted to us.