The Rational Blues

There was a lady circling the desk (a patient) and she was saying random non sense words, asking questions about the number 9, with an occasional comment about Satan, and the end of the world..... (just in case you weren't already freaked out).  And  every time she passed me, I tried not to look at her.      

As I was getting the medications ready for my next patient, my I-phone was playing a song.  It was a Beatles song from my new cirque-LOVE cd (the Beatles remixed... But not jacked up) and while I was getting my meds together, I was thinking about John Lennon and how he had said once (as a response to the blues of life), "all you need is love".  

*(of course he also said he was the walrus......  which I never got, but I totally think the crazies would understand).              

John Lennon would have made a great blues man cause all blues men know about love.  But given the crap that comes with loving people that don't love you, the question I would've asked John Lennon (were he still living) would be, how do you know, all you need is love?  Cause (from a 7 Tower perspective at least) sometimes I think all you need is Haldol (antipsychotic medication).      

In fact, if life is a debate between whether the world is insane or sound, it's the crazies these days that are winning hands down as far as I can tell.

I have an uncle who thinks he's the opposite of all that (crazy).  He's a modern man.  He only believes in science, thinks technology is the answer to most problems in life.  He scoffs at traditional cultural concepts of the supernatural as superstition... (Not just the "big five" religions.....All of them....  Old Pagan.... New Pagan..... Asian.... African..... Native American......).  But he loves science fiction (may speak Klingon).  He's reasonable and rational and skeptical of anything outside of what he can see or hear.  He believes the universe is a closed box of cosmic dust and that people are not much more than a few brain cells and sex organs and hormones (to keep it all going).

He believes that he came from nothing and that he's going to nothing and that in the end there's nothing more out there than a very lonely compact atom sized dot that the entire universe will eventually collapse back into.  But still, every day he stands in the sandwich line at work and gets pissed off when the administrative staff casually cut themselves toward the front of the line, as if anything that happens in this world, good, bad, just or unjust, should finally matter in the end, at all.

(Now that's crazy).

Living life seeing things that aren't really there (Justice, Meaning, LOVE) is the definition of crazy.  Right?  And yet, deep inside us we all "gotta feeling" (another Beatles song) that all these things are true.  (is that irrational?).  The problem is that with all the (alleged) evidence to the contrary, we think this life matters.  That it has meaning.  That maybe after all.... All you need is Love.  And either that's true, and we're all living our lives unwilling and detached from something bigger, like some dying leaf on a breeze.  Or we're just terribly arrogant.  (and crazy).  And I'm willing to believe that a little of all three are true.  And in the end, you just cant deny the truth.

(*  Charlie Dixon once said the blues is the truth.  And John Lee Hooker said to; "Let that boy boogie woogie..... cause it's in him..... and it got to come out".).

I picked up my medications to go to my next room but as I stepped into the hall the crazy lady made her way past me with her back bent, head down like a chicken, talking out of her head.  I let her make her way past me without eye contact.  But this time she looked more familiar to me.  Maybe like every single crazy blues man that I'd ever seen.

Malay

Spent some time with a bunch of friends from work on Friday night. One of our friends, her name is Malay, is at MD Anderson today for surgery to remove a recently discovered cancer. It's a very extensive surgery. I'd be lying if I said we weren't worried about her. The get together was a surprise send off and we had a great time (and I don't think it was just the alcohol). But I learned Friday night that laughter is a blues fighter.

We spent the majority of the night talking about the crazies on 7 Tower. My favorite story was about one of our nurse aides who was sitting with a patient. The patient was very confused and while our nurse aide was watching him, he fell asleep (as a sitter you never fall asleep-it's like being a prison guard). Of course, as you could imagine, a lot of bad things could go down in a situation like that. (it sometimes has..... once a naked patient ended up at a quicktrip across 11th street). However, the best possible (and most thoughtful) thing happened. While the nurse aide was sleeping the patient climbed over the bed rails, crawled over to our sleeping "security guard" and covered him up with a blanket.

Lesson learned. Not all crazies are Hell bent on destroying the world.