This is the trick to creative work: it requires a slip-state of being, not unlike love. A state in which you are both most yourself and most alive and yet least sure of your own boundaries, and therefore open to everything and everyone outside of you.

...the fragile constructions of grey breath and thought that were his theories for changing the world without setting foot in it. 

My boundaries weave in & out - broken away by a night in the air, holding onto a small foot through a perspex cot. Back as I discuss discharging patients we can't find, reporting to child protection. Blown away again as the toddler with head lice reaches for the pearl hanging around my neck.

Medicine is creation, at times: the art of sifting for the treasure, the piece that completes the puzzle. The shared building of future hope, the push to trust in another. This point of connection teeters out beyond the edges of comfort, requires a willingness to set foot in the world, to be bruised by it and, at times, to be swept away.

A slip-state of being.



With thanks to Anna Funder, whose words I have cherry picked for my own ends.