There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says ‘Morning, boys. How’s the water?’
And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes ‘What the hell is water?’
– David Foster Wallace, This is Water
Every week, I gave the same patient a testosterone injection in the butt. And every week, without fail, we talked about art.
I don’t remember how our deeper talks started. I think I complimented his Cillian-Murphy-Oppenheimer-like hat one day. And between preparing the syringe and asking him to relax the muscle, we discovered we were the same kind of person, bonding over our shared interests in the arts. I learned that he was retired, now spending his time as a sort of freelance art/tour guide. His eyes lit up whenever he talked to me about the architectural beauty of San Diego and Los Angeles, which I distinctly remember as having caught me off guard; for having grown up in SoCal, I did not believe there was much to be inspired by in these parts, especially architecture- and art-wise and just… everything-wise. We often laughed about the absurdity of the situation; two people, so opposite in life stage, bonding over art in a medical office, one of them with his pants partially down.
I remember why our interactions—and everything he stood for—resonated so deeply with me.
A few months earlier I had just returned from Amsterdam. It was my first time in Europe, a perfect week of canals and bookstores and lovely alleyways. Coming home had been hard. SoCal, in comparison, felt flat and familiar in the worst way. No more canals lined with people biking and walking, no more trains or trolleys. Just cars and highways and huge parking lots. I was grieving a life I could never live; one more beautiful, more charming, more… anywhere but here. I was restlessly pining for a new life in a new city. Somewhere far, far away.
Around that time I had also watched Paterson—Jim Jarmusch’s film about a bus driver in New Jersey who writes poetry in a notebook and finds beauty in the ordinariness of his days. My life looked a lot like his. The same drive to work, the same city, the same scenery, each day just a tad different.
What God seemed to be trying to tell me, through this jovial, artsy man and through this film called Paterson, was this: that everything I need is already here. That there is so much to notice, to appreciate, to admire, and to fall in love with all around me. That rather than waiting for life to begin once X, Y and Z occur, I could wake up to life today and live each day fully.
During his final testosterone injection, the patient told me that I HAD to visit the Broad—a free, contemporary art museum in LA—while one of his favorite exhibitions was still up. To pay homage to our unlikely friendship, I promised him that I would and decided to make a small day-trip out of it. I reached out to a friend I’d been meaning to reconnect with. Around the same time I started reading about the history of San Diego. Started going to local museums. Started writing a bit more. And a few months after that, I finally started this blog.
I’ve been thinking about David Foster Wallace’s fish parable lately. The patient was the older fish. And he did for me what great artists have always done. He taught me to see.
journal entry, 7/28/25
I finally started a blog. It felt just as scary as I thought it’d feel to put myself out there. Felt embarrassed. To be openly perceived in that way felt so vulnerable. I’m just so, so afraid of being deemed “not good”. Reality faces me, and I can’t live in my delusions, like that I might be a good writer, or talented. What I put out there is under my name. But I’m glad I did it. I can find comfort in knowing that this is only the beginning. I’ve never blogged before. I’m gonna suck. But everyone starts somewhere. I’ll just keep trying, if I want to write something good one day I have to start now.
marginalia 