I've been stuck on this poem by Jack Mueller for weeks–so, maybe it will stay with me for the rest of the year. 

I resolve to update this blog a little more often. However often that may be! 

It is the dawn of a new year and the end of my holiday. On my headboard, there are three poetry books lined up that I read in no particular order. Mueller, Doty and Ashbery are currently on rotation–my favorites, and my mentor's. 

Two nights ago, I went out with some friends–it's an odd thing to catch up with people you've known for so long but whose current lives you know nothing about. It's meeting a stranger with a familiar face. Someone said that the older you are, the more people become shadows of other people you remember–sounds like someone else's voice, looks like someone else's ears, smells like someone else's cologne. Meeting someone after a long period of absence is something like that. You remember them as themselves, but have to piece together who you remember them as vis a vis who they presently are. It is a constant process. 

A tangential thought to this: it's so easy to give up investing time into meeting up with people. Medical school is like a little circle in the Venn diagram that is convinced it doesn't need to intersect with anyone else's circle. It's so easy to be absorbed into this medical training bubble, and I think for the most part of my clerkship year, I've willingly participated in locking myself in the system. Then, I think of people I love and whether we'll have anything to talk about after years of me excusing myself from gatherings and parties. I think of how much compassion is necessary from those who love me in spite of my schedule.

at 74, Mueller bites it 
no thanks to cancer. 
at  65, Doty. 

Some others, without 
notice, no Wikipedia entry. 

No consensus on 
what became of them—some, 
heaven, others, still here 
watching over the stars as much 
as we still do, just less communicating 
(under the presumption that we 
are still communicating.) 

On that note: 
I sit down, and 
finally tune in-
to your favorite television series, 
this pretense of connection 
based on a common 
captivation. Maybe 

I don’t enjoy it, 
and fake interest because of 
your interest. Would you call it 
hypocritical, or would it 
move you? would it 

come to mind when I 
bite it at the age of 62?