alchemy

I'm driving down to the med center to take my first Block III exam. It's a cool crisp morning and the sun is brightly burning against a blue sky for the first time in several days. Rush is cranked up and belting out over the stereo via my ipod and traffic is light. The butterflies in my stomach are forming into attack formation. I am ready. And in an instant everything seems to take on a sharp and utter clarity. There are moments in life where everything seems to not so much pause as to come into focus. Alas, they are but brief moments and almost painful in the knowledge that quiet transcendance is emphemeral. The day to day grind will enter back into the picture. Things will become uncertain and pain rears its head again. One aches for that moment to last unto eternity, or at least through the day. That's not entirely true, or I should say accurate, as that paints an incomplete picture. Alchemy is often viewed as something to be scoffed at. Turn lead into gold? Crazy. But in its time, the alchemy tradition was one that was inherited from the Greeks. It was a rediscovery of modern man - one that sought to take the material elements of his world into his hands and fashion them into something of beauty and value. It was the beginnings of modern day chemistry. The ipod that transmits it's electronic signal over my car stereo is no different in spirit. It takes simple metals and electricity and turns them into piercingly touching sounds. And so are these moments of clarity in life. If you let them, they are moments of alchemy. Signals are sent and received across synapses. Memories are built. The psychological has become the physical. Transformation. Alchemy. To borrow a line from Rush coming out over my ipod: pleasure leaves a fingerprint as surely as mortal pain in memories they resonate and echo back again