Filling in the gaps...

Due to my tendency to drop off the grid entirely at times, I have left a large 8 month gap of unwritten blog in the Aviator´s Review. Last May I left you in a cliff-hanger of sorts with my departure from Israel and the end of an era. For 8 months no words crossed the pages of The Review. No stories and no thoughts to share could be found. I like to think of myself as a story-teller and one to seek out stories worth telling. What happened next? Where did I go? Could this be the end for our intrepid hero!?... Well, here are the lost accounts of the past year....

-- They call NYC the city that never sleeps... probably because the never-ending brouhaha that ensues on the streets every night is nearly impossible to sleep through. With a cast of characters as theatrical as any on Broadway, I am entertained and educated everyday on my new neighborhood streets. Harlem... 145th and St. Nicholas.... third stoop from the deli... second floor. Light years away from any place that I have lived before, I find my ability to adapt stretched to it´s limit. Nonetheless, I am accepted here as many foreigners before me were welcomed to the new world. Maybe it´s their way, maybe it´s me, or maybe... I find that we are not all that different.

Everyday I sit on the subway on the way to the hospital and, in typical New York fashion, try to ignore the tapestry of humanity in front of me, but I am too captured by it´s beauty and sorrow to think of anything else. All of these different colors and cultures stitched together, sometimes unwillingly, in such a close way takes the work of centuries. Each new wave of strangers adding a new shade to the works.

The emergency rooms at Harlem and St. Luke´s hospitals also fill with a parade of histories both old and recent. If you pause for just a moment, you can see where their stories wind together in those few hours. I say a few hours, but really I mean a continuous shift that never really seems to end. This fall I have worked more than any year previous, but everyday brings that crisp edge of a new beginning that only comes with days truly seized. The orchestrated chaos of the ER gives me a chance to laugh, argue, and sometimes grieve with this band of characters. Days, nights, and all hours between. It´s an experience that I haven´t found anywhere else save maybe a good book or story. I hope my story is as well written when the end comes.