Perfection

I laid awake with a bad song twining and snarling through my brain, and thought about an article, half read, about how quantum is only understandable through numbers, putting it in words is only a poetic interpretation. And suddenly, I imagined all those perfect atoms, as taught in chemistry classes, having dents and scratches, as all life does. And I began to wonder if those molecules and protons and electrons, quarks and sour little smidgens, were really acting as a wave or a particle when we look at them, or if the perfection is simply a matter of looking at them as a mass, but that each, in itself, is just as flawed and unique as individual flowers in a field, and as soon as we get one pinned down, we see the difference.

This is probably wrong, but what do you expect from a middle-of-the-night insight? I love the idea that perfection is not just boring, it's utterly, right down to the smallest detail, impossible and against all that we are. Rather like π, any attempt to simplify our existence into a perfect three, a perfect god, any ideal at all, is doomed to be more wrong than if we just roll with what we see at any given moment.

I had a very hard day, with too many idiots - each of whom thought themselves my boss, all telling me what to do. And I juggled fast and furious to keep it all in the air, not for their sakes, but for the sake of the patients, whose welfare I take very seriously. An armless anesthesiologist (they look like arms, but they don't do nothin'), supply carts massively mis-pulled, complicated clinical-study cases. The study folks were fine, but they added three people to an already overcrowded room. I had a great scrub tech, who sailed through in good humor, and I made sure she felt appreciated. Such a difference from the day before, when- well, I cannot remember laughing so much at work, all day long, in a very long time. Evens out.

I got a note from my Massachusetts cousin. She asked me once if I would consider writing her family story, and it's a good one. I think she should get blogging herself. A sample from her email.

"Retirement is good! Busy - doing what I don't know - but many plans. To string pearls, to mat pictures, to ship a trumpet, to microwave dirt, to rake the yard, to chase the fox, to feed the bluebirds, to ski some more, to wash the paint out of my hair  and on and on..."