Weekly update

Guest speaker

Been asked to speak in an online graduation ceremony of my former high school. Initial thought: what have I accomplished in life, really? Agreed to it in the hopes that I don’t get invited again. Perhaps I need to tell the kids I, too, graduated last year in an online ceremony, and I know that not everybody pays attention to his/her screens. What do I know now that I wish I had known when I was younger? Many things. Experience sucker punches youthful boasting. My years outside of high school taught me there are far smarter people than me. Listening to counsel from family and church goes a long way. Read your Bible, pray every day. Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not in your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight. Read and read and, perhaps, avoid the internet, if you can. Study hard. Invest in fountain pens. Find good friends. My message will be recorded this Wednesday, so I’d better start writing. 

Sunday rounds

Drove to the hospital after Sunday service today. My patient, a Christian woman who sings hymns during chemo, was admitted for bacterial and fungal pneumonia five days ago. She feels better today. Told her I was sorry I didn’t see her in the morning. She brushed off my apologies and said, in the most loving voice, “Akigan ta gid ka, Dok, kung gin-una mo ko. Di ba, ‘Seek ye first the Kingdom of God’ dapat.” My patients are blessings to me. 

Reading extravaganza

E. M. Forster’s A Passage to India. Breathtaking. Glad I was able to visit India before the pandemic. Liked to think my experience created a background for the novel’s sights and sounds. A Passage will end up as one of my favorite novels. Couldn’t wrap my head around it entirely. The language is glorious. 

Alice Munro’s Something I’ve Been Meaning To Tell You has stories that are, in brief, the textual distillations of her imagination. Now on the tenth story of the collection, “Winter Wind.” The stories are so good that I reserve them for later. 

Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential sounded like the TV show host. He wore desert boots, hated vegetarians, loved to cook, kept a close set of friends, was a professional. Book has tips on when to eat seafood in New York. The reading experience was aspirational for me, as I don’t see myself traveling elsewhere any time soon. He wrote about a person he knew who killed himself. Knowing what would happen in the future, it sounded ominous.