To Seeing the Invisible

I broke someone's trust today. What's worse, I found out a very dark secret about this person. This guilt--this lethal, purpose-sapping elixir that sloshes sloppily through my veins. A distinct sense of missing a target, an almost out-of-body experience that washes over you as you refuse to fully accept what you have done. There's a longing to go back in time, to grab the hands of the clock and force them to just a few hours before when I still had the chance to make things go the way they were supposed to. What I have done?

You know I've been thinking about this for quite some time now... Tell me the truth Rachel, will you regret it?

In the mid 19th century, hospitals were scary places. Back then there was no concept of the Germ Theory of Disease . Which means pregnant mothers often passed away. Take for example the Vienna General Hospital's First Obstetrical Clinic. Here mothers died of puerperal fever after giving birth as often as 10% . But it wasn't all bad news: at the Second Obstetrical Clinic, it was only 4%--and everyone knew this--some would beg on their knees and beg to be switched over to the Second Clinic, rather than the First. Some even decided they'd rather give birth on the streets. This is where the hungarian physician Ignaz Semmelweis comes in; an assistant at the First Clinic, he couldn't bear this. So he desperately searched for some kind of explanation for the difference. He tested out many things, but all proved to be unsuccessful. Then, in 1847, Semmelweis's friend was performing an autopsy when a student accidentally poked him him with a scalpel. It was a minor ...

Rachel, you hear me? Don't you ever make the mistake of forgetting how what you've experienced in Berkeley. I mean it. These are the most overlooked, misrepresented, and misunderstood people you will ever meet. Such an insidious problem that half the country has turned turned a blind-eye. Walking home, a client I saw a clinic came up and thanked us for everything we stand for. It's our collective vision, Rachel. Such a fucking powerful thing.

[Breath In.] Imbued with tree-sapped pine, the crispness of this evening permeates me deep into the marrow of my bones, infusing each and every one of them with a clarity that promises not to fade unnoticed in the past. [Close your eyes.] We lay there, cocooned under our sleeping bags, and surrendering to the music and its alchemy. Synapses are firing with painfully acute tenderness and pleasure that every intro, every breakdown, and every drop of every track brings me to the point of intoxicating and irresistibly benign sense and feeling. [Breath out.] Eyes still closed, the scattered patchwork of stars are still burned within the darkness of my eyelids. The lack of airglow and the painfully prominent highlights brings a constant reminder of such remoteness from any civilized life. This is us and only us, deep within the thickness of the Mendocino Forest. It really doesn't matter though--this is sonic bliss. [Swallow your doubt.] Here, under the embrac...