August 22, 2014 Friday "a sheet of paper"

First Words

      …thoughts of an anachronistic, solo pediatrician

                    by Glenn Feole, M.D.

        "Be careful too that the reading of your story makes the melancholy 

        laugh and the merry laugh louder," Cervantes, Prologue to Don Quixote

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Blog site: ishmaelish36.blogspot.com

August 22, 2014 Friday

In tribute to Robin Williams:
I just took this picture during a 4 1/2 hour bike
ride north of San Francisco, near beautiful Tiburon.

Chief Complaint: (written on the chart before I go in the room)

     “diareha”

Interesting Name:

      Kennedi

Anecdote:

"Do you eat vegetables?" I tried to ask hopefully of Claire, despite my doubts.

"My Mother gives them to me every night."

"Do you eat them?"

"No." 

          Westport, Connecticut 1990's

Poetry:

try and be a sheet of paper with nothing on it.
Be a spot of ground where nothing is growing,
where something might be planted,
a seed, possibly, from the Absolute.

     by Rumi, from the poem "The Fragile Vial"

Coup d'essai:

     I have made some comments previously about my trip to San Francisco a couple of months ago for a pediatric conference.  What I didn't know or investigate was the history and beauty of the Bay area … crossing the Golden Gate and then biking through these towns with funny names…Sausalito, Tiburon.  It was a deeply silent, spiritual journey for me and filled with breath taking beauty, cool breezes, drifting clouds over mountain tops, fields of long grass, water lapping every where. I had no idea of the iconic figures who lived there, such as Anne Lamott and Robin Williams.  An example of how money does not buy happiness I guess.  I love the quote (to paraphrase) from Cervantes, 

' Bread tastes as good whether you are rich or poor."  Still, the material beauty of this area of San Francisco was inspiring if taken with the right attitude and spirituality.  

Favorite Musician/song:

"So Amazing" Luther Vandross

    I just played Luther Vandross over the music system in our new home that we were very lucky enough to get, with my children and family present, to 'break in' the home with songs of love.

Favorite Book/author:

Montaigne, Michel de

    Essays

    This was an eye opener to a new world when one of my intellectual mentors tossed this book at me in high school and suggested I read it.  The examined life filled with poetic and philosophical musings.  Mundane topics that come to life on a deeper levels, with literary references from this well educated mind.  A role model. 

Favorite Movie/DVD:

Dances with Wolves, Kevin Kostner

    Back to nature…native Americans…a love story as well.  I have always been enamored with the back to nature, communing with the Earth, spiritual life style of native Americans.
    When I took a leave of absence from medical school in the 1970's to play music, one beautiful sunny Saturday, a cool breeze in the air, I sat on the stone wall on Nassau Street in Princeton with the drummer from the band, Sandy Thatcher, just calmly talking about life.
    I had gone into the huge Princeton library just behind us, Firestone Library, the seat of millions of esoteric books and collections, filled with Princeton seniors writing their theses.  An intellectual powerhouse.  Sandy, as I had been, was a philosophy major at Princeton.  We both had studied existentialism under Walter Kaufmann and Sandy was now an editor at the Princeton University Press…but you would never know with his humble manner, dry laconic sense of humor.  He was Bob Newhart re-incarnated.   It was his beat up ancient VW van that we piled into to go to our gigs.
    I held a book in my hand.  Sandy asked what it was.  I showed him, "The Life of the Arapahoe."
    He gave some brief comments of this gentle, peace loving, plains dwelling group of Indians. Then he laughed and said, "Only you, Glenn, would go into Firestone Library and emerge with a book on the Arapahoe."