My Beautiful Stalker

[Todd]

Have you ever been stalked by beauty? Have you ever had a magnificent work of art continuously revisit your life like a persistent recurrent dream? A symphony, a painting, a novel, a few lines of calculated prose...you know, that stuff that speaks more than the words which sometimes compose them...I have. There's a poem by John Donne entitled "The Expiration." I came across it one fateful undergrad day in the university library as I was vigorously searching to find that would-be rekindler of my love for Western poetry...a love that had swiftly faded since I started courting the likes of Rumi and Hafiz.

I opened it to The Expiration and remember being virtually paralyzed. I think I must have read it about 20 times before I shook my head and came to my befuddled senses. Of course, when you see a work of art that affects you like that you don't just memorize it. You taste it, you swallow it, it flows in and out of you and in a real sense it becomes part of who you are. You know when you look at a painting and you can feel your brain stretching as that work of art, itself informed by that raw creative energy that intoxicates so many of us, changes your perception of how you view reality? I totally felt that. But the damn thing kept coming back to me.

I remember the first time it hit me was a few years later when I was on my pediatric oncology rotation and had a 9-year old patient, Jaime, with a hepatoma that you could see from across the room. I watched his mother watch Jaime suffer day in and day out as the cancer continued to eat him away. I had developed a really sweet relationship with him and his family and made it a habit to see them a few times every day. I walked in one of the last days and saw her give him a long and gentle kiss on the lips. One of the most tender/heartbreaking moments that I have ever witnessed...she was kissing him goodbye. I thought how can you say goodbye when you love so deeply?

The Expiration hit me like a ton of 17th Century Royal bricks.


The Expiration


So, so, break off this last lamenting kiss,

Which sucks two souls, and vapors both away,

Turn thou ghost that way, and let me turn this,

And let our selves benight our happiest day,


We ask none leave to love; nor will we owe

Any, so cheap a death, as saying, Go;

Go; and if that word have not quite kil'd thee,

Ease me with death, by bidding me go too.


Oh, if it have, let my word work on me,

And a just office on a murderer do.

Except it be too late, to kill me so,

Being double dead, going, and bidding, go.


-John Donne

[tara]

I remember listening to my uncle play the violin, as a small child. But "playing the violin" is poorly stated. He doesn't play the instrument as if it is separate from himself. They play each other. Each responds to the others touch, a beautiful dance, a tango, wrapping, tangling, and then somehow unwinding just in time for the final cadence. It's never just a song with them.

When I see my uncle play, even to this day, it unlocks something within me. Perhaps because it's something so special, so unique that he does, that opens me up. I am stalked by Dai Balal.