there are things i want to write here

but that I feel I cannot due to the fact

that people I see everyday read this site

and so i'm starting a new site where

i plan to stay somewhat anonymous to

allow ease of mind in personal matters...

This morning,
A tired-looking gray squirrel
Rested its tiny claws on my index finger
As it ate pieces of bananna bread from my hand.

It made me happy after that shitty test.

It could have clawed or bitten me
Giving me some awful disease.
I could have grabbed its wispy tail,
Or chased it up a tree.

Yet I took from this, something profoundly simple.

Even after that exam,
I still had a love for nature,
And this short-sighted squirrel still had
Preparations to see to before winter.

Bad tests aren't going to change the world.

now scream if you can feel this...

YEEEOOWWOk, so I have this appointment at Central Diagnostic Imaging for some procedure that is supposed to help my back.  FYI -- After a very short 3-4 weeks of slightly agonizing pain, the doctors feel it somewhat necessary to bring my attention to this herniation of my disk between L4-5 of my spine.  In my case, the 'ruptured' disk is bulging out and pressing on my nerve, which is all fun and good.  But now the interesting part -- the procedure...

So in comes a portly middle-aged man with glasses, whose first words of concern for me are: "Are you k.....ki......kim?...Mk....mk...mck.....Mckenna?  Oh god, doc, please tell me your hands are more steady than your tongue.  Well, it turns out he was just expecting my last name to be Kim, and was a little confused, and doesn't have a studder, and actually has a grandfather that is Korean.  Well! That's great to hear.  And so he continues to ramble on with his assistant about how much he likes Korean food, and almost went to Seoul, and knows this great Korean restaurant and on and on.  This normally wouldn't bother me as he was simply trying to get my mind off of the injection procedure he was prepping, but for some reason...it just wasn't working.  I dunno - perhaps it was the absolutely massive 3-inch needle he was waving around while talking about his favorite korean dish - Bulgogi.  But instead of making me hungry - which he readily confessed to being, I couldn't get my mind off of me possibly becoming his next dish of Korean sweet and shredded beef, watching in masked terror as he brandished that thing around my half-bared buttocks.  Yes, now I know why they make you sign and initial the form that says you can't hold them responsible for the rare chance they sever the nerve or spinal cord, rendering you paralized, cause side-affects only dreamt up in sci-fi flicks, or even death.  "Ok son...don't  move  a muscle...This is only gonna hurt once...but maannn is it gonna hurt."

Ok ok, so i'm being a little melodramatic.  And everything turned out peachy.  Walked out on my own with not but a numb right buttock and leg, a hole in my lower back to my lumbar spine, a little imbalance, and some squinty eyes.  Oh wait...i'm asian...nevermind that last one.

The steroids are supposed to start helping about 3 days from now, but may take up to 7 days to start taking effect.  Meanwhile, the pain is supposed to come back tonight, and may even be worse for a while after the novocaine wears off.  Only missed 3 days of school because of this, so no worries...except for the fact that I'm paying for summer school.  Whatever, more information that you needed.  But hey, now you have something to look forward to if you rupture a disk!!  Actually, it's really not that bad...if you're a masochist.

Sometimes I wonder if we are regularly presented with one-time situations - fleeting chances to capture optional experiences, with that ephemeral possibility of changing our lives however drastically we feel secure enough to risk.

I feel as if thousands of pages are flying by my head, and I must decide quickly which ones to snatch and incorporate into my life-story by glancing only at the first few words, lest the page should fly out of reach while I am trying desparately to discern whether that next word was "love" or "lost."  Even lacking context these are quite different in meaning, and yet they will undoubtably (and in fact must) be taken at face-value, as there just happens to be a certain factor called a time-constraint, which bars us from reading for the subtext.

And in light of this, I am to understand that first-impressions are unfortunately powerful.  Assumptions, precognitions, prejudgements, and resignations, all spawning from a mind trained to snub and spurn at the first hint of incompatibility, don't allow the senses to do what they do -- that is, to make sense of a novel situation.

But we don't get to read the novel.  We get a page - a fragment at that.  Cautiousness or procrastination, which in many cases are interchangeable, can at times prove useful.  However some of these moments, the ones with the capability of shaping your life with words like "love" or "lost,"  simply won't hover over your head while you weigh pros and cons.  While warning signs pop up with trite adages concerning 'books' and 'covers,' you have to filter it down to whether or not the possibility of something good is worth the risk of getting the bad also, perhaps even instead.