Finally, the end

Chapter 6, The Set-Up to the Climax

Some men reach a point in their life’s work when all obstacles to efficiency are removed. The Most Talented Man in the World called these periods “epiphanies of productivity.” The Most Talented Man in the World also had the custom of having these epiphanies all day, every day since his infancy.

The Most Scheming Man in the World (indeed, everyone else in the world) lacked such a capacity. Yet in March and April of 1957, he entered what can be termed a “scheming flow state.” Every day, Scheems would wake up with five or ten or twenty new schemes ready to be schemed, and somehow managed to set them all in motion by day’s end. “Red Dawn Stock Options” was certainly the grandest and most time-consuming, but Scheems also hustled the automobile industry, publishing houses, mining operations, and the military.

The Most Talented and Interesting Men in the World soon realized how far-flung Scheems’ schemes ranged. Scheems, meanwhile, preternaturally managed to hamstring his pursuers on dozens of occasions. Abandoning a number of upcoming world championships and shelving his plans to invent the internet, The Most Talented Man in the World devoted himself to bringing this villain to justice. The Most Interesting Man in the World, however, was simply having too much fun with his new hobby, acrobatic aviation, for him to postpone it for the cause of justice. But he helped out by providing The Most Talented Man in the World his airplane as a means of transportation. Together, they tracked The Most Scheming Man in the World from New York down to Miami up to Chicago over to Cincinnati back to New York up to Boston out to San Francisco on to Dallas and finally down to, of all places, Manaus, Brazil.

As had been foreordained by me three weeks ago, the three most outstanding men in the world (as of 1957, though The Most Destructive Man in the World would soon come along) met on the Amazon—in a sinking storm-tossed junk, to be exact.

The Amazon River, as you geographically informed readers already know, has a total discharge greater than the next ten largest rivers (the Congo, Megha-Ganges-Brahmaputra, Orinoco, Yangtze, Rio Negro, Parana, Yenisei, Lena, Madeira, and Mississippi Rivers) combined. Its average discharge is 219,000 cubic meters per second, versus 41,800 for the Congo and 16,200 for the Mississippi. So, it’s safe to say that the Amazon is “The Largest River in the World.” And that is the only reason why I am having the climax of my story occur there.

Well, that and the fact that piranhas add a little extra suspense.

Here’s final sequence.

Chapter 7, The Final Sequence

Like a fire hose, a monstrous swell swept The Most Scheming Man in the World and The Most Interesting Man in the World overboard, instantly putting six meters between them and the boat. Miraculously, The Most Interesting Man in the World maintained his Full Nelson grip on Scheems, and kept them both afloat with his powerful legs. Grabbing three life preservers, The Most Talented Man in the World dove in after them, surfacing near the pair.

“You can’t run forever!” yelled The Most Talented Man in the World over the white noise of a billion raindrops. “Even if you somehow get away this time, I’ll hunt you dow-- aga--!” The last few words were garbled by a swell that rushed over his head and also swamped the ship.

When he surfaced from the same swell, Scheems responded fearlessly: “Stop wasting your time! You don’t kn-- wh-- I’m capable of! I WILL RUIN YOU!”

Screaming into his ear, the Most Interesting Man in the World returned: “How do you think you’re even going to get back to land, punk? You can’t even see! YOU PROBABLY CAN’T EVEN SWIM!”

Just at that moment, the air was flooded with search lights and badly broken English: “YOU TWO, POOT YOUR HANDS EEN THE AIR!”

To the dismay of The Most Talented and Interesting Men in the World, the intruding watercraft turned out to be river pirates Scheems had hired earlier that day.

“AHAHAHAHAHAHA, you fools!” shouted Scheems, for whom the river pirates’ timing couldn’t have been better. But his jubilation was cut short when The Most Interesting Man in the World complied with the pirates’ poorly-worded command. When he put his hands in the air, Scheems sank like a stone.

It is here and here only that the relative goodnesses of The Most Interesting and Talented Men in the World become relevant to the story. For in the moment when The Most Interesting Man in the World loosed his grip on The Most Scheming Man in the World, a half-formed thought flashed across his mind that stayed his hand from proffering aid: Why don’t you just let him die? the thought said. And in the time that it took him to answer, Scheems dropped ten meters.

The Most Talented Man in the World, on the other hand, knew The Most Interesting Man in the World’s character better than The Most Interesting Man in the World knew himself. When he saw The Most Interesting Man in the World hesitate, The Most Talented Man in the World gulped down a huge breath of air and set off on a free-dive to rescue his hitherto antagonist. At ten meters, he caught a glimpse of movement directly below him, but at that depth he could hardly trust his sense of sight. Visibility dropped to essentially zero at twenty meters, and The Most Talented Man in the World had nearly given up hope at twenty-five meters when his hand brushed against something smooth. In three more vertical meters he had caught an unconscious Scheems, but instantly realized what a challenge it would be to fight against gravity with such a burden for nearly thirty vertical meters, the limit of human capacity. Had he not been training regularly for the First Annual Freediving World Championships, which he was organizing, he would have lacked the strength to turn them both around and get them moving toward the surface. But, fighting gravity, panic, and disorientation, The Most Talented Man in the World arrested Scheems’ freefall and began what would be the most tortuous three minutes of swimming of his life.

At about twenty-two meters, as his lungs burned and legs ached and before he had even noticed a glimmer of light above, the piranhas found them. Instantly, he downgraded his chances of survival from seventy to ten percent. At the first prick of razor-sharp teeth just two meters later, he dropped it down to five. The Most Talented Man in the World had one free hand to swat them away from his own body, but once they smelled Scheems’ blood, the piranhas truly began to swarm. By fifteen meters, they were mercifully tearing at Scheems’ flesh. At a depth of twelve meters, The Most Talented Man in the World was forced to divest his human burden and make a frenzied effort to get to the surface on his own. As he ascended, he thought he saw a figure pass him on his way down, but was too preoccupied with his own survival to care. At about ten meters, he had the proprioceptive hallucination that his lungs had caught fire. He kicked the last few meters with the very last of his reserves, finally surfacing to sweet, sweet air-- but not to safety.

He looked around, but the boat was nowhere to be seen in the fog. His shouts for The Most Interesting Man in the World found no answer, and his searching yielded only a piece of jetsam of ample area to protect his ravaged body from the brutalities of the Amazonian fauna. But he could not rest, and after a few minutes of tense waiting, he began to lose hope for the Most Interesting Man in the World. Yet just at that moment, he emerged, with Skeeter Scheems and thousands of piranhas in tow.

“GET ME OUT OF HERE!” he shrieked after sucking in a lungful of air, his eyes scarlet with free-flowing blood. With renewed energy, The Most Talented Man in the World hoisted both bodies up onto the makeshift raft, where the two figures lay motionless, one half-dead, the other over the precipice of utter exhaustion.

Minutes later, when he had caught his breath, The Most Interesting Man in the World sat up, looked quizzically down at the difigured heap of Skeeter Scheems, and said, “What the hell are we gonna do with him?”

The Most Talented Man in the World also bent over to examine Scheems, pondering that very question as the rain beat down upon them. He finally noted, “Well, he nearly cost both of us our lives—so we’d better make sure he doesn’t die on us. Who knows, maybe this will cure him of whatever made him such a villain.”

“Yeah, right. You know as well as I do that people like him never go straight. He’ll be a hustler till the day he dies.”

Deep in his gut, The Most Talented Man in the World knew The Most Interesting Man in the World was right. They spent the next minutes floating aimlessly down the Amazon, lost in the contemplation of human nature, the minutes turning into hours. They both knew without needing to say it that no prison could hold The Most Scheming Man in the World for more than a matter of weeks. The only prison that could hold him was death.

Yet even if it may have been morally justified, vigilante justice—even for a man like Scheems—went too strongly against the grain of their consciences.

Unfortunately for them, Scheems was not the kind of man who would ever tell them “thank you.”

THE END

The Third, Fourth, and Fifth Chapters of My Story

Chapter 3, The Shadows

As I’ve mentioned, it was the 50’s—more precisely, the 1950’s. The 1950’s were a decade of great “progress.” Progress is a term people often employ when they feel that, overall, things are getting better. For instance, over the course of the 1950’s, American households transitioned from a total reliance on the media of “print” and “radio” (which had been around for hundreds of years and nearly forty years, respectively) to a new and spectacular medium of communication known as “television.” In order to experience this new medium of communication, one had to commit one’s full attention to it, since it was a “full audiovisual experience.” Naturally, people thought this way of communicating was superior than the old ways of simply reading or looking at pictures or listening to the radio—why do just one when you could do all three at the same time?!

There was also the “nuclear arms race,” the beginning of worldwide “nuclear proliferation,” and the fear of a “nuclear holocaust.”

There was one man who noticed all of this “progress” and hatched a scheme to make a great deal of money using a)television and b)fear of a nuclear holocaust. His name was Skeeter Scheems—The Most Scheming Man in the World.

Scheems was a child of the Dust Bowl, the environmental disaster that literally swept America’s heartland in the 1930’s. On April 14^th, 1935, at the age of nine, he was working far out in a Kansas cornfield when the storms of Black Sunday hit. The grit scarred his corneas so badly that he never saw again.

Because he could no longer work on the farm, his parents sent him off to the Kansas State School for the Blind, where he excelled, especially in history, psychology, and art. Either because he was an introvert or because he started at the school later than the rest, Scheems was never able to make friends with his classmates, so every day after class he would lock himself in his dorm room, plant himself in his chair, and listen to the evening radio dramas such as “The Shadow,” “The Whistler,” and “The Adventures of the Thin Man.” Even after he left the school in 1945, Scheems would religiously post himself by his treasured radio from the hours of 5:30 to 9:30, transported into worlds of drama and intrigue he could see only in his mind’s eye.

On same the day he graduated, Scheems started working in the call center of Kansas City’s most popular radio station, KUDL. Over the next decade, he earned a number of promotions until, by 1955, he had held nearly every position in the company. But the year 1955 (the same year that the Pentagon announced its plan to deploy intercontinental ballistic missiles) proved to be a fatal year for KUDL and many other radio stations and programs, for one very important reason: television.

Jobless and destitute, Skeeter Scheems’ heart broke with each passing of his favorite radio dramas. The tipping point of his psychosis finally arrived as the last words of the final episode of “The Whistler” faded into static on September 22, 1955. As a sign-off, the series ended the way each episode began: with the sound of footsteps, a person whistling, and the unforgettable lines: “I am the Whistler, and I know many things, for I walk by night. I know many strange tales, hidden in the hearts of men and women who have stepped into the shadows. Yes ... I know the nameless terrors of which they dare not speak.” That night, embittered beyond cure by a world that had rejected all he had loved, Scheems stepped into the shadows. He defenestrated his radio from his third-story apartment (killing a cat in the process) and started scheming.

Chapter 4, The Big Apple

His first schemes were simple pyramid schemes and matrix schemes that collapsed after a few months, but not before raising thousands of dollars and clouds of judicial ire which Scheems would escape by mere hours. He would then travel to the next city, come up with the next catchy title, such as “The National Exchange,” or “Investors Unlimited,” then prey upon hordes of ignorant and gullible citizens. Scheems merely portrayed himself as a wholesome, handicapped entrepreneur, and his schemes practically sold themselves.

As 1956 dragged on, Scheems made ever-increasing amounts of cash—but he began to tire of his itinerant routine. As the frigid Midwestern winter set in, limiting his activities, a grander, more ambitious scheme began to quilt itself together in his mind. In late February, 1957, he decided to act on it—so he packed his bag and caught the next bus for The Big Apple.

Chapter 5, The Source

This is the part of the story when I make you realize how and where the trajectories of the protagonists and antagonist intersect.

Legend: Red: The Relative Location of The Most Talented Man in the World. Blue: The Relative Location of The Most Interesting Man in the World. Yellow: The Relative Location of The Most Scheming Man in the World. So there you have it—the whole story lies in that picture. As you can see, the lives of The Most Interesting and Talented Men in the World had continued to intersect in the intervening four years, forging a lasting friendship. They both happened to be in The Big Apple for the spring and summer of 1957, the Most Talented Man in the World for the Fencing World Cup, various international summits, and high-profile development projects and The Most Interesting Man in the World for alleged buried treasure in downtown Manhattan (which he found) and for the planning stage of his next expedition to the Arctic. Scheems—soon to be the official Most Scheming Man in the World—arrived around the same time, and it wouldn’t be long before their paths crossed.

Parenthetically, you can also see that The Most Talented and Interesting Men in the World had almost met Skeeter Scheems in early 1955, when they gave a series of guest lectures at the University of Missouri- Kansas City School of Law just two blocks from KUDL. But I digress.

On a windy April morning in 1957, the Most Talented and Interesting Men in the World met up for coffee at a shop on Wall Street two hours before the Pulitzer Prize Ceremony, where The Most Interesting Man in the World would accept the prize for a book he had recently written entitled Me.

Here’s where it gets interesting.

Dispensing with formalities, The Most Interesting Man in the World steered the conversation toward an issue that had been troubling him that morning.

“Hey, have you heard of this new corporation called ‘Red Dawn Stock Options?’

“Never,” responded The Most Talented Man in the World.

“I just heard about it from a friend at the Stock Exchange yesterday—it’s very hush-hush. Anyway, the company offers exclusive stock options on other companies whose business would benefit in the case of nuclear war—hazardous waste disposal companies, companies like that I guess.”

The Most Talented Man in the World’s eyes narrowed. “‘Exclusive stock options.’ The only other time I’ve heard those words were in reference to Charles Ponzi, the famous swindler of the 1920’s.” After a brief pause, he continued, “I’d like to talk to this friend of yours down the Exchange. He available?”

“Now? Um, he should be.”

“Let’s pay him a visit. It’s just a couple blocks away.”

To summarize, the two extraordinary gentlemen found the trader, his source of information, his source’s source, and, after hours of sleuthing, his source’s source’s source. In the process, they forgot all about the Pulitzer Prize Ceremony-- which was ok since The Most Talented Man in the World planned on winning it the next year. But finding the first four levels of information on "Red Dawn Stock Options" was the easy part. The hard part came over the next three weeks, as they tracked the wispy traces of the trader’s source’s source’s source’s source: The Most Scheming Man in the World.

Stay tuned, beloved audience. You're not going to want to miss this showdown.

Sometimes I Sits and Thinks

I've now been in McDonald's for over four hours and haven't eaten a thing in almost eight, which as you all know is quite a feat for me. My sustenance, if you will, has been the ideas which you can read below, the first two chapters of my new story about The Most Talented Man in the World (based very loosely on the life of the economist John Maynard Keynes).

I'm scheduled to depart Ecuador tomorrow morning at 6:30 AM, so this will be my last update from Ecuador, though not my final post on this blog-- I've got to finish the story! I apologize for going nearly a week without a post-- I've had a sore throat that entire time and I lost my camera so I couldn't post any new pictures. I'm now feeling mostly better and am two days into a five-day course of azithromycin, taken on the off-chance that our friend Streptococcus is trying to give me Rheumatic fever or glomerulonephritis. But the past week hasn't been as bad as I just made it sound-- I never had a fever and, apart from my throat, actually felt ok most of the time. I saw more births this week as well-- vaginal and Cesaerean-- and got to scrub in for the first time on a couple surgeries, a cholecystectomy and a fibular reduction and rod placement. I also saw a plastic surgery for a boy with extensive facial scarring from a burn, a tubal ligation, a couple other surgeries, and some interesting inpatient cases. On Wednesday, five other students in the program each gave a brief presentation on a tropical illness (I picked Giardiasis and Amebiasis-- diarrhea, yessss!) to the pediatrician who was our preceptor, and she shared some of her knowledge of tropical medicine with us after each of us finished.

I also really enjoyed the non-clinical part of my time in Chone, in which I got to do exactly what I pleased. After finishing up at the hospital around one, my companions and I would trek thirty-five minutes back across town to our homestay, where we consistently had the best food I've ever eaten in Latin America. After lunch, I'd nap for a bit under the oscillating fans, then read for hours on end. I knocked out Kurt Vonnegut's Breakfast of Champions over the course of twenty-eight hours, finished memorizing all 501 verbs of 501 Spanish Verbs (I already knew most of them, so it's not that big of a deal), and almost finished going through Evangelio Segun Juan (The Gospel According to John), on which I'll probably be leading a Bible study this semester. My colleague Sarang, a Hindu, and I had some enlightening conversations about our faiths and our ideas about what makes life rich and meaningful-- I read a bit in a few of his books, Flow by Mihaly Csikzentmihaly (good stuff which echoed a lot of what I learned about flow and being in the zone in Buddhism class), Awakening Hippocrates by Edward O'neill, Jr., and The Teaching of the Bhagavad Gita by Swami Uberlonglastname. I also got comfortable fooling around with my medical iPhone apps, which I'll probably start relying on this year as I learn pharmacology and pathology. Last and certainly least, I started teaching myself the Moonwalk... gotta long way to go on that one, though!

I'm glad I came. Trying to wrap all of my experiences here up in a paragraph or two is a toughie... kinda reminds me of a poem I wrote in January about how our deepest feelings can't be captured by words or even by the left-brain thinking to which we're so accustomed. With it, I end my efforts, which I hope have resulted in new fields of thought for you all:

The ocean of unfiltered feeling

Fights the force that gives it frame.

Words and thoughts, the airy sky

To which the great white sea sublimes--

But oh how slow, the wait, the pain!

The wisdom of a million winters

Takes as long to yield its gain

And so I wait, and as I wait

I've watched a sunset and a storm or two--

The mark of the unbridled real

Transcends what here I try to do.

The First Two Chapters of a Story Intended to be Read

“The Most Talented Man in the World Meets the Most Interesting Man in the World and, After an Awkward Power Struggle That Neither of Them Would Later Acknowledge, They Join Forces to Defeat the Most Scheming Man in the World”

By Daniel Goble

July 30, 2010

Chapter 1, The Meeting

None of you know this, but there was a man who lived in the past century who was the most talented man the world had ever seen. He will be known in this account as “The Most Talented Man in the World.” I know none of you know about this man because I just made him up this morning, after my last breakfast with Graciela and Jennifer and Hilary. Right now, I’m sitting in a McDonald’s in Quito with free WiFi and writing a story about three men of action, three men of bold action whose bold steps, by a twist of providence or fate, would converge one unforgettably hot and sticky Amazon day in 1957. In order of goodness to badness, they were The Most Talented Man in the World, The Most Interesting Man in the World (of recent Dos Equis notoriety), and The Most Scheming Man in the World. To give you all an idea of exactly how much of the qualities of goodness, talent, and interesting-ness each of these men had, I include the following picture which I will draw in “Paint,” since I don’t have a scanner handy:

LEGEND: T= THE MOST TALENTED MAN IN THE WORLD

I= THE MOST INTERESTING MAN IN THE WORLD

S= THE MOST SCHEMING MAN IN THE WORLD

As you may have deduced from his name, The Most Scheming Man in the World was more bad, or “evil,” than good. And the Most Talented Man in the World, since he happened to be mostly good, naturally did not like this particular quality of the Most Scheming Man in the World. So he decided to stop him.

But before I delve into this plot, I must lay the “groundwork,” which is an architectural term often applied to stories, since most houses and stories have a structure that goes more or less like this:

Born in the middle of a blizzard on the top of Jungfrau-Joch, Switzerland in 1930, The Most Talented Man in the World made his first millions (of francs) when most people were just trying to put their lives back together. He won all six of Switzerland’s gold medals in the 1948 St. Moritz Olympics, sweeping the three downhill events as well as the Nordic combined, the Skeleton, and Ski Jumping. He used the proceeds from the ensuing endorsements and advertisements to form a darn-near monopoly on French and Swiss ski resorts and establish his own financial firm and an international charity organization. At the age of twenty, having made his fortune, he purchased and restored a 1720s Rococo villa overlooking the Lac D’Annecy in the French Alps—the lake whose restoration into Europe’s cleanest lake he would oversee two decades later. In 1953, he married the diva Francesca Aurman and settled into a rather itinerant routine as a visiting scholar and neurosurgeon at prestigious universities and medical centers, chessmaster, advisor to various governmental and international agencies, and chairman of an assortment of banks, monetary funds, trade cooperatives, and the International Olympic Committee. Parenthetically, The Most Talented Man in the World also played a central role in the peaceful transition of Egypt, Indonesia, and possibly Taiwan into self-governing states. It was during one of his trips to Egypt, in early 1953, that he met Most Interesting Man in the World—which forms the true beginning of this story.

The Most Talented Man in the World was early, as was his custom, to a summit of British and Egyptian leaders in the midst of the Valley of the Kings, and had just decided to give himself a tour of the archeological sites, since of course he read most known types of hieroglyphs fluently. The Most Interesting Man in the World had just finished discovering another vault off of King Tut’s tomb, and was rounding a corner just outside the vault when he collided with The Most Talented Man in the World.

“Excuse me, señor,” The Most Interesting Man in the World said.

“It’s quite alright… you look like you’re in a bit of a hurry.”

“Actually, yes, I’m in danger of forfeiting the Handball World Championships—my match is in just one hour and it took me nearly two to get here. I guess I’ll have to test the limits of my Lamborghini!”

“By all means, please take your leave—your name, by the way?”

“The Most Interesting Man in the World,” called The Most Interesting Man in the World over his shoulder as he bolted towards his automobile.

“Hmm. Interesting name,” The Most Talented Man in the World mumbled to himself as he gazed after the retreating figure. “I shouldn’t be surprised if we run into each other again very soon.”

Chapter 2, The Decision

The prescience of The Most Talented Man in the World was of course on point. The next day, the two ran into each other again, this time at the foot of the Sphinx.

“We meet again—The Most Interesting Man in the World, correct? How did the match turn out?”

“It was a tough one—I broke my little finger against the damn wall halfway through the first set and had to play the rest of the match with nine fingers. But I finally wore him down: 16-21, 21-20, 11-7.”

“Congratulations—by the way, I didn’t get a chance to introduce myself yesterday. My name is The Most Talented Man in the World.”

“Is that right?” responded The Most Interesting Man in the World with incredulity sweeping across his face. “How’d you come by that nickname? My name give you an idea yesterday?”

“Actually, no, I earned it, several years ago in fact. The nation of Switzerland had my name permanently and irreversibly changed—I had no say in the matter. But unlike some people, I don’t like to brag, like about how I won that same championship when I was seventeen… or even how I’ve won more Olympic gold medals that all of Latin American in every Olympic Games to date.”

The brown eyes of Most Interesting Man in the World narrowed, making up the four inches he lacked in height with a gaze that would melt steel. His nostrils flared as if caught by the conflagration of his emotion, and he bit his lip until blood squirted onto the pressed white shirt of The Most Talented Man in the World. Still, neither of them moved, nor did they speak as minute upon minute ticked by.

The calm blue eyes of The Most Talented Man in the World masked his deliberations: Had he stepped too far? Had he underestimated this man’s ability to appreciate a well-conceived jab? Was this the kind of man who could engage in repartee, or was he a mere jock with a child’s penchant for archeology? In a word, was he really that interesting? And was he about to blow his top? These were the questions that hung in the balance as The Most Interesting and The Most Talented Men in the World stood locked in a grim staring contest, mentally debating their next moves.

After a wait that far outstripped the confines of awkwardness, The Most Interesting Man in the World cleared his throat of all its dried blood and spoke.

“I can see you are worthy of your title. But speaking as an expert on the subject, your pride makes you much less interesting than you could otherwise be.”

A wry grin stole across the face of The Most Interesting Person in the World. “Touché. You know what, I think we’re going to get along after all.”

And that is how the extraordinary partnership of these extraordinary two men was formed.

And I Think To Myself...

What a day.
This morning, I signed up for a boat tour that would take me 1.5 hours into the choppy Pacific to the Isla de la Plata-- the aforementioned ¨Poor Man´s Galapagos.¨ I meant to take Dramamine, I really did.
About five minutes into the voyage, I realized what a grave oversight I had made. To my credit, I fought merciless waves of nausea for an entire hour-- those of you who´ve experienced seasickness can sympathize. At the first sight of blue skies, the song ¨What a Wonderful World¨ got stuck in my head-- because I don´t know all the words, it went like, ¨I see skies are blue, red roses too, ladadeedeeda, ladeedodadoo, and I think to myself, what a wonderful world!¨ Not at all appropriate.
I finally gave up the fight when one of the employees of the tour company said I´d feel better if I just threw up. By that point my entire gut was conspiring against me, so I leaned over the side of the boat and proceeded to evacuate my stomach and proximal duodenum four or five times in rapid succession. And I did feel better. For about two minutes.
The hope of making it to the island kept my strength up during most of that first hour. But right about the time I hurled, there was a whale sighting. To my infinite remorse, the pilot slowly turned the boat around and everyone--but me-- went a-whale-watching. I had other things on my mind. The second bout of vomiting did not present itself in the form of a choice, and it came only about twenty minutes after the first. And though it didn´t rid me of my nausea, it did weaken me to such an extent that my brainstem realized I was possibly dying and therefore sent my body into a semi-conscious state in which I closed my eyes and contemplated why God and natural selection had not spared me this fate.
After whoknowshowlong, we made mercifully made landfall. I rested and ate with the rest of the group for about fifteen minutes, then gathered my strength for the hike; I would not be deterred from seeing whatever there was to see. What I saw were hordes of fragata birds... my tour didn´t go to the side of the island with the blue-footed boobies, so I was deprived of my one opportunity to make immature jokes today. But I did manage to gain some strength as the afternoon progressed, comforted by the fact that I had been armed with dramamine by a German lady on the same tour. I also saw some beautiful fish and a group of eight or nine sea turtles. Wish I had gotten photos but I can´t locate my camera at the moment.
The trip back made a true believer in dramamine out of me, though I had an urgent need to urinate and narrowly avoided hypothermia. Nevertheless, I survived it all and proceeded to watch one of the most beautiful sunsets I´ve ever seen when I returned. I also just gathered a few dozen stones and coral pieces that struck my fancy. Tonight, I recover-- no dancing or drinking at the beach-side tiki huts for me.
I anticipate my final week in Ecuador to be good but laid-back. I´ll be at the hospital (which has been consistently a good experience) in Chone again on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, then return to Quito on Thursday. I´m over halfway through the book 501 Spanish Verbs and hope to finish it up by the time I leave on Saturday the thirty-first. The Spanish-only thing is tough when everyone else speaks Enlgish, but I´m still trying to keep it español. I also have an idea for a short story that I might try to write when I get back to Quito. Stay posted. Looking forward to seeing you all.

Chone

I´ve now been in Chone for three days. Here´s a picture of what it´s like: firstly, there are boatloads of dirt and mud everywhere. Fortunately, this part of the year is the coolest and driest, so walking to and from the hospital (a 30-minute jaunt) isn´t too bad. But for the first and probably only time in my life, today I saw a machine plowing a city street. Anyway, tiny tiendas of various sorts populate said streets, and everywhere you look you see stray dogs of all sizes and colors, people of all ages sitting outside in cheap plastic chairs, and of course, mud of all consistencies. There is a thriving bus and taxi system here, so you can´t walk anywhere without hearing the jubilant notes of popular Spanish tunes blaring through diesel-fueled rumblings. Sometimes I hop on a bus, mostly so I can experience the town´s scenery with the soundtrack of Latin America in my ears. It´s fun, at least the first few times.
At the hospital, I´ve been able to observe some surgeries and interview a few patients in the Emergency Room, which is more like an outpatient clinic than an ED. I´ve seen a C-section (my second birth-- a boy!), a combination cholecystectomy and ovarian cystectomy, a breast reduction, a wrist ganglion cystectomy, and a cleaning and escharotomy for a third-degree leg burn. I´ve also tried to decipher a lot of patient charts and looked at a few neonatal chest radiographs.
Tomorrow, my friends Sarang, Jesel, and I travel four hours to the beach, Porto Lopez (¨The Poor Man´s Galapagos¨) to meet the rest of the people in our program who went today. Sorry, no time to upload photos-- should have some up by next Wednesday. Ciao!

The program

In the past couple weeks, I've often compared my experience in the CFHI program to my free-spirited jaunt in Europe earlier this summer. One thing that sticks out to me here is the culture of the program. Society has been created among the students ex nihilo, and in less than seven days. We've all used Spanish class, the clinical rotations, medical school, and touristy activities to connect with each other, though sometimes I would rather be doing my own thing, which is to say running, hiking, playing music, reading, studying, and praying. In Europe, on the other hand, Sam and I usually did exactly as we pleased (which were all of the above and more)-- though we met only a handful of people we'll remember. So, much like during the school year, I've sought to find a balance here between study and society, but the opportunity to get to know new and different people has overshadowed my scholastic pursuits in the past few days. Here's the good, the bad, and the feo:

On Friday, I traveled with friends two hours north of Quito to Otavalo and spent Friday night hanging out in front of a fire at our hostel and playing a guitar I had found. The guitar felt like an answer to prayer-- I've really been missing being able to play music down here. Saturday morning, I made a few purchases in the traditional market (South America's largest, apparently-- photos above) and surprised myself with the reality that I am beginning to have a legitimate taste in art. We returned to Quito that afternoon and went out to "Tapas y Vinos," a restaurant that offers unlimited tapas and wine all night. Unfortunately, I forgot my school-issued Ecuadorean cell phone at the restaurant and will probably have to drop $60 to replace it. Dang. I woke up this morning pretty anxious about that one and plan to call the make some calls to try to recover it later this afternoon. But despite that, I don't regret the time I spent with people this weekend, since I had some experiences that challenged me in new ways. For instance, a bearded, fifty-ish guy approached me at a bus stop near Quito and asked me (in very good English) for twenty-five cents so he could get on the bus, explaining that all of his belongings had been stolen on his bus ride from Bogota, Colombia. Indeed, all he had was the polo shirt, jeans, and shoes he was wearing, so I helped him out and he ended up sitting in front of me on the bus and explaining his situation. He was born in Colombia, grew up in New York, got put in prison for fifteen years (didn't ask why), and was deported back to Colombia upon his release six months ago. He had obtained a fake id so he could get into Ecuador and travel to Guayaquil where he was going to stay with a friend from prison and apparently teach English for $800 / month. The guy was certainly rough around the edges, but my friends and I all empathized with his situation and gave him a few bucks so he could catch the next bus. Thinking about his situation-- and the situation of the majority of the people here-- makes me a lot less stressed out about losing a little phone.

So the wind in my sails at the start of my voyage has been replaced by a bit of a headwind, and I face the task of reorienting yet again for the week to come. The English spoken by all my companions this weekend wore my resolve down to speak only Spanish, so I must build up that broken-down wall as well. And my thoughts keep wandering down the trail to this fall and the abundance of life as a student at Brody School of Medicine, so I must bridle my thoughts and stay focused on the tasks at hand. Which are, to love people and to learn, having peace in the process and growing in sensitivity. I'm only beginning to learn how important that last part is to the making of a rich life.

But you know, sensitivity also has its price, and it's often in the form of contrition. Which brings to mind a favorite song of mine by Red Mountain Church, "Decide This Doubt For Me:"

The Lord will happiness divine,

On contrite hearts, bestow

Then tell me gracious God is mine,

A contrite heart, or no?

I hear but seem to hear in vain;

Insensible as steel,

Insensible as steel;

If aught is felt, ‘tis only pain,

To find I cannot feel.

To find I cannot feel.

I sometimes think myself inclined,

To love thee O, if I could;

But often find another mind,

Averse to all, all that is good.

My best desires are faint and few;

I fain would strive for more,

I fain would strive for more;

But when I cry, “My strength renew,”

Seems weaker than before.

Seems weaker than before.

Thy saints are comforted I know,

And love Thy house, Thy house of prayer;

I sometimes go where others go,

But find no comfort there.

O, make this heart rejoice or ache,

Decide this doubt for me.

Decide this doubt for me.

And if it be not broken, break,

And heal it if it be.

O, heal it if it be.

One thing that blew my mind about this song is that the writer, William Cowper, doesn't at first glance seem to know the current status of his own heart! He spends line upon line meditating upon his sin and his desire for spiritual renewal, but seems to end it with a plea for either more brokenness or more joy, depending on which one God thinks he needs. But as I reflected on it, I realized that he is not asking for either one OR the other, but both-- at the same time. He is indeed a sensitive and broken person, but his sensitivity lies in his ability to recognize his own insensitivity. Which is exactly where I find myself this Lord's Day.

Thanks for your love and prayers. Pray as I travel to Chone tomorrow that I would be sensitive to the needs of the people around me, and my own.