My New World

The ticks and pops of the choirs of mussels in the mud of the marsh at low tide was incredibly melodious in the dark of the night. I was walking Goddess at four in the morning before hoping in the car and driving to the airport. Everything was quiet and there was no wind so the mussels performed their cantata for themselves. It was spectacular so I slowed our walk though I knew that I'd be cutting it close to make my plane. Sometimes you have to stop and take time to enjoy the beauty that is around you in spite of the demands of the world.

Goddess knows the routine. She senses when I am leaving so when we approached the turn back to our house she tugged in the other direction not wanting me to go. I pet and she concedes. We return home where I give her love and treats then back out of the drive.

I make the drive through the marsh with the top down to enjoy the coolness of the morning and the light show that the Milky Way was putting on for free. My mind was filled with thoughts of the last few days when my life was celebrated by one of the wildest parties that Tybee's ever seen! It was a blow out affair as we were acknowledged triumph over abandonment and loss.

When I hit Bay Street and downtown Savannah I am struck that this is where my life used to be. It was the site of tremendous accomplishments and sad endings. It hits me that the historic city now represents the past in new ways for me. I rush passed it to the airport where the door opens to my new world.

This is the first of multiple trips that will take me across the country several times. The purpose of each trip is to continue the cultivation of street medicine as a practice. Doctors, Nurses, medical students and social workers literally practice on the streets where the worst needs are. It is so much more cost efficient than the current crazy system that relies on high cost emergency rooms. We have a presence in forty-one cities around the world already.

Santa Barbara is this week. I was last there in 2005 when we were trying to help a couple of doctors get started. Everyone thought they were nuts for wanting to practice medicine ... outside. Instead of house calls, they are "homeless calls". Lots of these folks are emergency room frequent fliers and they drive up the cost for the rest of us so ... we decided to do something about it.

Sitting here now at 30,000 feet I collect my thoughts and try to arrange them. There is so much more to be done. Over the past couple of years love fled my life, I found myself alone for the first time in my life, a career that had run its course, the loss of many friends and a very uncertain future. It all happened in that order.

And my new world is coming back together sequentially. I am no longer alone and a house is again becoming a home. Friends were raised from the dead and others came from the strangest of places ... but they fill me with joy. Music returned. New love arrived. The future is becoming clearer and clearer. "Suddenly I see," goes the song, "why the hell it means so much to me."

There is fire in my belly again. Imagination is running wild for the first time in forever. Laughter surrounds me. Roots have again taken hold. It is a smaller and more compact universe but that is what I have needed. The holiness of an island that remains a Promised Land has sustained me. New things are being born.

These are the things in my new world. It's a throw of the dice that doesn't have all of the security of my old world ... but that didn't turn out to be all that secure anyway. So with the help of those who loved me through, I've gotten back up, dusted myself off and it's time to start again.

Or ... to say it another way ... let's kick some ass.

It's been too long.