Black Lines by David Hellerstein
for the full text, please go to: http://northamericanreview.org/6457-2/
There are a few constants in the many years since I have been trying to write seriously. One, of course, is the struggle to find a time to write, which has varied over my years in college, medical school, residency training, and practice as a physician. Despite massive changes in technology—moving from spiral-bound notebooks to an electric typewriter to a primitive IBM PC with two floppy disk drives to various cranky Compacs, Gateways, and Dells, and finally to my current sleek MacBook Air—I’ve always been able to find some time to put my thoughts into words. Perhaps a few minutes here and there, perhaps hours fitting into my hospital day, the time and mental space have somehow emerged regardless of current circumstances. And somehow, over the years, this has resulted in an accumulation of essays (many have appeared over the years in the North American Review), stories, articles, books, and these days, blogs and postings too.
Something equally constant in my life has been water. Since high school, I have been a serious swimmer. My pools have changed from one year to the next, in some strange way parallel to the changes in my writing media.
swimming_blue_orange copy_800I began, naked, thrown into a chilly pool with other five-year-old boys at a strict summer camp. I must have emerged with a love of water. I swam in Ys and JCCs. I swam in lakes in Maine and northern Ontario. I swam in dozens of pools.
for the full text, please go to: http://northamericanreview.org/6457-2/
There are a few constants in the many years since I have been trying to write seriously. One, of course, is the struggle to find a time to write, which has varied over my years in college, medical school, residency training, and practice as a physician. Despite massive changes in technology—moving from spiral-bound notebooks to an electric typewriter to a primitive IBM PC with two floppy disk drives to various cranky Compacs, Gateways, and Dells, and finally to my current sleek MacBook Air—I’ve always been able to find some time to put my thoughts into words. Perhaps a few minutes here and there, perhaps hours fitting into my hospital day, the time and mental space have somehow emerged regardless of current circumstances. And somehow, over the years, this has resulted in an accumulation of essays (many have appeared over the years in the North American Review), stories, articles, books, and these days, blogs and postings too.
Something equally constant in my life has been water. Since high school, I have been a serious swimmer. My pools have changed from one year to the next, in some strange way parallel to the changes in my writing media.
swimming_blue_orange copy_800I began, naked, thrown into a chilly pool with other five-year-old boys at a strict summer camp. I must have emerged with a love of water. I swam in Ys and JCCs. I swam in lakes in Maine and northern Ontario. I swam in dozens of pools.