I pass by 3 theaters on my walk to school. I often watch stagehands loading in shows at The Paramount. A terrace outside our classroom overlooks the stage loading doors. I have watched trusses and familiar-looking road cases come and go for a year now. I took a picture a few weeks ago, thinking I was far enough away to not be noticed. Wrong. One dude gave me the finger. Stagehands see everything. I should know.

A pricey watchmaker did a whole commercial shoot around The Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM), which looked like it cost a dozen of their watches to produce. This is another theater I pass while walking to school. There was enough lighting equipment to illuminate the dark needle on our President’s moral compass from orbit. Lurking across the street, I empathized with the guys struggling to make the shot work, as the model (and shiny wristwatch) waited patiently on a fire escape. Directors of Photography love their Rube Goldberg setups that require twenty techs and a brief suspension of physical laws to accomplish. It justifies the rate. Encounters like these amuse me. The universe’s sense of irony is exceptionally developed, which I appreciate.

I can tell who stagehands are by the way they dress. Black everything, but grayed from years of washing. Usually, I spot them as they rush the last cigarette before the call. Their shoes are substantial, needed for foot protection, but heavily worn. They carry tools in a nondescript backpack or satchel slung over their shoulder, unlike contractors that use proper tool bags or boxes.

Dressed in medical scrubs or a sports jacket, I am invisible to them, another annoying civilian looking curiously at their unusual work from afar. It is a strange feeling, knowing their world intimately but not belonging to it anymore. That’s what a transition is, though: a movement between spaces of belonging. I don’t particularly like this feeling, but by now I am used to the discomfort. I liked pushing road cases much less. Now that I understand how the spine works, it makes sense why every middle-aged technician has back problems. If you wanted to cause low back pain, there would be no better protocol than pushing, pulling, and steering those things off a truck and into a building.

I digress.

Didactic year is complete. We did it. Four of the original forty-two students did not make it this far. My GPA is still low by my standards but is high enough to move on to clinical year. Also, no one but me cares. Every other metric diminishes with advancing age, so I should not be surprised GPAs do too. There’s a push to make PAs earn PhDs, no doubt fueled by Big Academia. If we extrapolate the trend, I will need a program that allows me to graduate with a 2.75. This seems unlikely.

But enough about me. We’re back with Series … checks website … 19! In a few days we triumphantly return to Iceland, this time to explore the northern, more remote coast.

If you are receiving this via email, you’re all set. We depart Friday.

I noticed from the readership metrics that some of you forward these emails to others, which is fine. Just also know anyone can sign up on the website or by sending me their info. Up to you.

We depart JFK this Friday around midnight, arriving in Iceland Saturday morning. It’s an almost 6-hour flight with a 4-hour time difference, putting us in the country around 10 a.m.

Talk to you then. Message me if you have any questions.