poem

 Op Note XXVII like to think I ’ve gotten better at this as time goes on.  Fifteen years a surgeon, you learn a few tricks.  Whip out a gallbladder lickety split. Slide along the planes of action. Spot the hidden vessel.  Some cases it ’s almost elegant.  But never anything close to art.  The best we can get in this gig is mechanical, the cold uncanny beauty of something approximating a machine. Actual machines are never beautiful.  Awe inspiring, maybe. Useful. Precise. Remorseless.  A hint of indescribable dread. Dogged relentlessness. The perfect soldier, in other words.  Art is something else. Only we can do it. But once you strike those heights how do you match it?  Do it again, someone says.  Only “again” isn’t enough.  It has to be something else; higher, better, more extraordinary.  Imagine that, for the rest of your life toiling away in the drudgery of mediocrity when only the sublime counts.  End up like Hemingway, never evolving beyond that perfect first chapter ofA Farewell to Arms, the dust powdering the leaves of his trees, repeating himself in ever more derivative patterns spiraling into self parody with a shotgun poised against his head.  Me, I could operate all day without a single glance toward posterity.  Line ‘em up. One after another.  Filling up the foreseeable days. No one pays to watch. It ’s simply the work of the preservationist.  Nothing destroyed...
Source: Buckeye Surgeon - Category: Surgery Authors: Source Type: blogs