Flight

Flying, to me, has always been about the realization of freedom, a sense of excitement but most of all the thrill of movement and new possibilities of beginnings.  It is a flight above the clouds and induces awe and wonder at the world, it's people and the myriad of possibilities inherent in being human.

Flight is a privilege that only a certain number of very fortunate people have been able to experience.  It induces a perspective check in my heart . . . for looking down upon this cherished planet and realizing the immensity of it all and yet the intimate smallness that we occupy in the universe - makes me humble.  

Thanks Billy Collins

I once had my house in the country but it burned down recently. Thanks to Billy Collins, damn him! I put his poem up on my wall to read over and over again, chortling as I read his tail of the mice to grab the match ran through the walls and burned the house down.

I thought it was a joke I thought it was hilarious thinking of the cute little mice but then in the remains of my house I found Billy Collins poem Carefully chewed into tiny pieces and then reassembled again on the last remaining inside wall of my house. 

Clearly my country mice had read Billy Collins poem. And somehow, I knew they thought that would be funny to reenact the famous poem. I no longer have a countryhouse thanks to Billy Collins.

Bourbon Heroin

Bourbon and Heroin

Bourbon and Heroin

It's the way I want to go

when I'm a hundred and alone

Eighty or Ninety may be the new young

but ask the old what they think

as they sneer at the youngsters sayings

Don't be a patronizing asshole to me young man

I'd rather be having sex with your beautiful smoking hot wife

than be called a 'cute old man'

screw that into your head and remember it when your'e the old man!

This cute old man has seen a thousand things you have not

Done a million you cannot conceive of

held the hand of a dying child, man and woman

and wept for what was and was not,

what will be and cannot.

So pour me a glass of my finest bourbon

Give me a snort of that smack

crank up some Stones, Gustaven, Miles and Vivaldi

and lets get this done.

Regrets, I've had a few but any life . . . well lived . . .

better have some damn regret,

Without one there is not the other.

Bourbon and heroin

it's the way I want to go

living to be a hundred

if I'm all alone.

I'll have a few friends

who'll join me in those last drinks

and I will love them all forever

and hold them close, so close,

close to my heart.

So pour me one last glass

of that dark and smoky blend

I'll see you on the flip side

of gravity and rainbows end.

    David McCullough

     June 2014

Star filled night, Scotch, fire and Love

I've loved a lot of women in my time. Not a boast or wish or anything at all except a fact.  I'm sitting by a fire, sipping a single malt cask aged 23 year old scotch looking into my past and futures. So reflections come easily with Blackadder scotch, a fire, half moon rising …. Johnny Hartman with his marvelous smooth velvety voice beckoning. What perfection awaits us if only seen. 

So the woman I love, have loved and will love. I'll wish upon that star of yearning to carry me off.  I'll yearn for every true love I've ever had and will have. 

I once loved a woman ( and who hasn't?) that did not love me ( and who hasn't had this?).  Hawai'ian and she captured my longing and the pain of being adrift sans love and softness. What poems I wrote for her!  She asked me ….  Why can't I love more than one?  Who decides?

I've no answers. So I love without thought or reckoning of what may come. 

I think of you night and day, my one and only love, dead but also not yet born. You know I love you but words cannot do justice. 

I've loved a lot of women in my time. But none more than you and I'll always wish you had loved me in return. You'll go through life.  Wishing for the love I have for you…never knowing. But I know you my love and all the foolish things that remind of you on this smokey scotch star filled night . . . sitting by our fire . . . and loving you in the quiet raging solitude of my heart. 

Don't fall in love with a Redhead  - for sure she will break your heart.  Then again I've never been loved before. 

Bicycling

My week days are spent riding my bike, Yellow Fever, to and from work.  I average about 11 -12 miles a day based on what route I choose.  If I get a fifty miles in a week I am happy but sure would like more.  I love to ride in San Francisco because I mainly go through Golden Gate Park.  Many times I busy myself scheming how to get longer rides in.

In addition I finally pushed the button and bought a Water Rower and you can check them out at  www.waterrower.com

It is a hell of a workout, fun and the sound of the water is one of its chief pleasures.  This was unexpected although I had heard of it.  More on exercise later.

I do miss swimming but don't want to drive to a pool in a car and drive back.  Hate that!

Drugs, Old Age and Poetry in the Rain

If you don't already know I am an ER nurse. Often, patients really touch my heart despite attempts to hide in a secret and protected place. This is one of those times where life and the people in it just crack you wide open.

My first patient today is in their 50's. Very polite, nice, crying at times so quietly. Heavily addicted to methadone, oxycodone and a host of other substances over the years. First needle in the arm at the age of fifteen. So sitting there talking describing the life to me . . . 'So yeah, I was fifteen and it seems like yesterday and I wish I could really go back in time and tell myself to stop, make that choice not to and live it different. But then, a little bit at a time you find yourself walking along the streets and soon there's no place to live and every single thing you do . . . and it sneaks up on you . . . till you're just a hustler that you've hated your whole life . . .and every single interaction you have is trying to score, to get something up on the next guy, working every angle until finally . . . you're just another addict, there . . . alone, on the streets . . . standing in and staring up at the rain'.

This job breaks my heart more often then not. And I am used to some patients, maybe one percent - trying to hustle me, to lie, cheat and steal their way to enlightenment, the next big score and high. But sometimes they break through in an open and searingly honest plea for help. And then we both laugh, because they and I know there is nothing I can do . . . it is all up to them - I can only help pave the beginning of the path.

Later I get another patient - in their late 70's. Living alone, multiple medical problems of which thankfully drugs and alcohol do not play a role. This person fell out of their bed and woke up later and found he had urinated all over himself. So much upset, sadness and shame came upon him. We are doing our best, as he is, to find out where he can live in a place at a higher level of care so he is not alone. As I wrapped a warm blanket around his all too thin and shaking shoulders he looked up at me, with tears in his eyes and said 'Thank you so much David, I am really sorry to bother you'. And this finally brought tears to my eyes.

 It is people like these that bring deep meaning to my life. I recognize my luck and fortune. I am grateful to bear witness and in some small way bring relief, a sense of hope, humor and caring to another human being. Because in the end - none of us should be alone, in a room by ourselves at the end of our life. None of us should be homeless, alone in the streets . . . standing in and staring up at the rain.

A gorgeous spider

A most beautiful and amazing spider on Culebra. I'll post a close up later. I have not identified this yet. 

'Home' to coffee at Finca Cialitos

Burrowing into our coffee favorite within the first ten minutes of our return to Old San Juan! Loved Culebra but eaten to death by Memes - in Spanish - sand midges I think. Local coffee, Ecuador hat. 

If you're reading this - just come visit. Don't think. 

When the World Cracks Wide Open

I'll take the world when it cracks wide open

And my mind right along with it

I'll exist there in uncertainty

Certain that it is the only place

Right then and there to be. 

Yeah, at times I wish I knew where

It's all leading other than death

For it's between birth and death

That it gets interesting. 

Two or three years on the island of my mind

Out go the shoots and tendrils of a life

Into the soil of dreams and sometimes harsh reality

Wet and dry, sterile and fecund with the ripeness 

Of endless permutative possibilities

Is it yet I've found a home for my restless heart and mind?

Tis the world I think that I embrace

Too full and rich at times …

Spilling over in tears and blood and love

Engulfing me in joy

Of the woman I've come to love

my family, friends and people I love

The commonality of our struggle 

In living and loving our lives. 

David McCullough

January 26, 2014

Old San Juan, Puerto Rico

Old San Juan, Puerto Rico

This is looking west towards old San Juan from El Morro fort located at the most eastern side. It was originally built by the Spanish and defended for a couple of hundred years until they were overrun and eventually the Americans came and we never called ourselves colonialist that we were and are.

First day - old San Juan, Puerto Rico

Exhausted but so happy to be warm. Found Finca Cialitos - wonderfully local coffee shop that owns their plantation and controls the whole production chain. Very very nice, professional and outrageously good. 

Skill and talent baby.