Marathon

I have been working on my writing for hours on end the last three nights and I am just exhausted. I woke up this morning and had to go back down for another fifteen minutes, my eyes straining to open. The work has been fantastic, don't get me wrong, I'm just beginning to feel the physical effects of it.

I've been telling people where I study lately. It seems to come up in conversation and so many people are baffled by the fact that I would willingly go to a hospital to study. They see it as such a morbid place to be, their own experiences coloring their impressions, but I don't believe it to be the same place they recall from their memories of mourning or stress.

I enter the hospital between 5:30 and 6:30 and I make my way down to the public cafeteria. Often there are a spattering of people at the tables, some staff, some family of patients. As I look around at all of the faces it is surprising how few sad or tearful people are there. There are families eating together, talking about their lives, the things that are waiting for them outside of the hospital doors. Oftentimes there are small children in these groups, squirming in their seats, picking at a cup full of pudding, but they are, more often than not quiet, as if reading the solemnity under the surface of their parents' calm. When they see me working on my computer I can tell that they are curious, wondering what it is I am doing in the middle of a cafeteria, typing away.

The stories I hear are often mundane, slice of life kinds of talk, but if you look closely at these conversations, really listen to what is being said you can feel these people surviving. They are doing their best to keep their sights on the things that must go on, either in the face of recovery or tragedy. While the emotional weight of their talk is not blatantly on the surface, it runs as an undercurrent in the things they say. There is often a lot of scheduling taking place, planned visits, follow up appointments, medication schedules, etc. When you sit amongst these people, I have been them, you begin to see the human capacity for hope and renewal. Hospitals are truly places of healing and that kind of energy can only be good for a writer.