Tuesday, July 27, 2010
so soon
On the eve of my board exams, a super hasty post about how I cannot wait to go home, for some calm and perspective. I'm as excited to go to Fremont, California as I was for Greece or Vietnam; in some ways, the feelings are even deeper. As usual I've let many things accumulate, things to save for home, the little and the closer to heart. There are errands: passport renewal, car registration, shoe returns, health insurance, travel and work for the next year. There are things I want to do everyday--run, write, sit on the couch with my parents. In my head I have a pile of unstarted entries about science, goodbyes, people--the thought of bumming around in the city and on the beach to plow through them is driving me crazy, it's so close. There are a good number of people from past and present I will be so happy to talk to, do things with, see things with, just be with--my oldest friend, my best friends from high school, college roommates, friends here who are currently there, and people met in between. As hard as it at these times to be away from my family, feeling so strongly their pull makes me glad for that capacity and venue for feeling. My mom is making all my favorite foods and my brother is making reservations at all his favorite sushi restaurants. There will be ocean, hikes, hills, woods, climbs, and lots and lots of sleeping. Before I get there, I have two 9-hour exams, two flights and three days to get through. It is so good to know how heavily the after outweighs the before.
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
music
Spending the bigger chunks of my day studying means constant music. I really love music so much, and in the most recent immersion, I came to the thought that being with music is like being with a person. And not for memories associated with people, but because music is this living, organic thing to which you form real, heavy ties.
In listening to albums all the way through, and listening to multiple albums by the same musician, and seeing the same musician perform at different concerts in different venues, themes diffuse from the sounds to inside, and the layers shift and unveil. The National likes concepts surrounding lemons, geese, and years. There are a couple songs that Thao Nguyen always plays in concert, that I wasn't fond of before, but have grown to form a sort of attachment to because she's obviously attached, and because each time she plays them, they have a different feel, and I love that dynamic factor of moving art that people breathe.
It's funny, how despite all that movement, how much of the time when I listen to a song or album, I feel the same as I did when I first came to know it, no matter how much time and distance has grown since then. Listening to Plans (Death Cab) the other week, I felt the twinges of the summer when I first loved it, and not as a former remnant but as its complete whole, as if I was back in that carpeted room, stacking my CDs on the stereo playing those bittersweet songs, finding it insanely hard to move my hands because I was in such heartbreak over changes back then. I remember sitting at the office in Vietnam, when my co-worker played James Blunt, and I wanted to die, thousands of miles and two years away from when that song first made me feel and hurt. Regardless of listening to old music in new places, new periods of time, new places in life, how I knew it first always comes back.
In those ways and in other ways music is both less and more real than real life, and I like that funny, deeply strong state of feeling, even if it's more of an ache than anything else.
In listening to albums all the way through, and listening to multiple albums by the same musician, and seeing the same musician perform at different concerts in different venues, themes diffuse from the sounds to inside, and the layers shift and unveil. The National likes concepts surrounding lemons, geese, and years. There are a couple songs that Thao Nguyen always plays in concert, that I wasn't fond of before, but have grown to form a sort of attachment to because she's obviously attached, and because each time she plays them, they have a different feel, and I love that dynamic factor of moving art that people breathe.
It's funny, how despite all that movement, how much of the time when I listen to a song or album, I feel the same as I did when I first came to know it, no matter how much time and distance has grown since then. Listening to Plans (Death Cab) the other week, I felt the twinges of the summer when I first loved it, and not as a former remnant but as its complete whole, as if I was back in that carpeted room, stacking my CDs on the stereo playing those bittersweet songs, finding it insanely hard to move my hands because I was in such heartbreak over changes back then. I remember sitting at the office in Vietnam, when my co-worker played James Blunt, and I wanted to die, thousands of miles and two years away from when that song first made me feel and hurt. Regardless of listening to old music in new places, new periods of time, new places in life, how I knew it first always comes back.
In those ways and in other ways music is both less and more real than real life, and I like that funny, deeply strong state of feeling, even if it's more of an ache than anything else.
Saturday, July 17, 2010
empathy
Learned today about a phenomenon called sympathetic ophthalmia, which I initially thought would be more accurately called empathetic ophthalmia. Basically when one eye undergoes some kind of traumatic injury, weeks later the other eye will also become diseased, even without having been subjected to any injury. So this seems more like empathy, which involves experiencing on some level another entity's experience, instead of sympathy which is more like understanding from more distance. It also brings to the surface the self-detrimental component of empathy in its rawest form.
But there's more to it than that. The mechanism is thought to be that injury to the eye exposes the body to elements in the eye that it's not used to, so the body mounts an immune response against them. So this immune response attacks parts of the other eye, and it becomes inflamed and ill. I was struck by how the valiant inefficacy of this process. As so often happens, the ways our bodies try to protect themselves result in harm, and natural processes are ramped to the point to which they become unnatural.
It's also interesting how things exist in physical compartments in ourselves, such that one part of our body is completely foreign to another part. And kind of scared of each other, the way the body is freaked out by stuff in the eye that's always been there but that it's just never seen. A good chunk of diseases is about recognizing things that are simply in the wrong place; for example, nothing should cross the diaphragm that separates the chest from the abdomen. Sometimes when I'm learning about an organ I look down at myself and wonder at how close it is and yet how little I know about how it works and what it's doing at the moment.
With all the barriers, defenses, instincts, injuries, active and passive--empathy is not so easy, I think.
But there's more to it than that. The mechanism is thought to be that injury to the eye exposes the body to elements in the eye that it's not used to, so the body mounts an immune response against them. So this immune response attacks parts of the other eye, and it becomes inflamed and ill. I was struck by how the valiant inefficacy of this process. As so often happens, the ways our bodies try to protect themselves result in harm, and natural processes are ramped to the point to which they become unnatural.
It's also interesting how things exist in physical compartments in ourselves, such that one part of our body is completely foreign to another part. And kind of scared of each other, the way the body is freaked out by stuff in the eye that's always been there but that it's just never seen. A good chunk of diseases is about recognizing things that are simply in the wrong place; for example, nothing should cross the diaphragm that separates the chest from the abdomen. Sometimes when I'm learning about an organ I look down at myself and wonder at how close it is and yet how little I know about how it works and what it's doing at the moment.
With all the barriers, defenses, instincts, injuries, active and passive--empathy is not so easy, I think.
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
crown 14A
For the last two years, here lived three goofy guys, and here a part of me was made and kept. I know we'll continue to see each of you and all of you together, but not in this place and this space anymore. I will miss so much about this--
The dirty kitchen floors. The mismatched chairs taken from different rooms for gatherings, a chair without a back, a wheely desk chair, some with cushions. The South Asian spices, and the blender where anything goes, where juice can be bright purple (beets) or conventional. The impromptu fruit salads, multiple colors eaten with condensed milk; or an all-orange salad of oranges, mango, cantaloupe. And mm, cantaloupe juice. How they never let guests wash the dishes. The balcony, for eats and smokes. The made-up songs about fruits and family and inappropriate things, the electric guitar and the acoustic guitar and the belt-out voices. The room with the gadgets where the "practicing" of video games takes place. The rooftop with sunsets, on clear nights and foggy nights, where we sit on ledges and crouch in corners to escape drizzle. In the room with the balcony: how he was always rearranging the furniture, the posters of nature and quotes. The door open and the half-clothed tall boy walking by ("that's the apartment"). The laughs, how we grew to know and identify each one. The odd potlucks, delicious and distinct items, a glass jar of kimchee and a plastic jar of yogurt because he loves yogurt, and discussions like yogurt or cheese? The planned gatherings, the spur of the moment invites, the random passings-by. The meals that are made as he goes along and can't be replicated. The big pots of rice, corn on the cob dipped in salty water, the rows of yams in the oven. The long talks, the quiet naps. The honesty and vulnerability, the disinhibition. The addition of lemon to water, and to anything. The wind through the windows on hot days, and the sun warming couch and carpet on winter afternoons. The bareness of that room, the sparse bathroom. Taking off shoes, and the too-big sandals for guest use. That one day the room exploded with clothes, to be placed into piles and piles. The ready spaces to fill and the complete acceptance freely given. The no need for apologies and thanks, and the response of gratitude to gratitude.
Thank you. Thank YOU.
The dirty kitchen floors. The mismatched chairs taken from different rooms for gatherings, a chair without a back, a wheely desk chair, some with cushions. The South Asian spices, and the blender where anything goes, where juice can be bright purple (beets) or conventional. The impromptu fruit salads, multiple colors eaten with condensed milk; or an all-orange salad of oranges, mango, cantaloupe. And mm, cantaloupe juice. How they never let guests wash the dishes. The balcony, for eats and smokes. The made-up songs about fruits and family and inappropriate things, the electric guitar and the acoustic guitar and the belt-out voices. The room with the gadgets where the "practicing" of video games takes place. The rooftop with sunsets, on clear nights and foggy nights, where we sit on ledges and crouch in corners to escape drizzle. In the room with the balcony: how he was always rearranging the furniture, the posters of nature and quotes. The door open and the half-clothed tall boy walking by ("that's the apartment"). The laughs, how we grew to know and identify each one. The odd potlucks, delicious and distinct items, a glass jar of kimchee and a plastic jar of yogurt because he loves yogurt, and discussions like yogurt or cheese? The planned gatherings, the spur of the moment invites, the random passings-by. The meals that are made as he goes along and can't be replicated. The big pots of rice, corn on the cob dipped in salty water, the rows of yams in the oven. The long talks, the quiet naps. The honesty and vulnerability, the disinhibition. The addition of lemon to water, and to anything. The wind through the windows on hot days, and the sun warming couch and carpet on winter afternoons. The bareness of that room, the sparse bathroom. Taking off shoes, and the too-big sandals for guest use. That one day the room exploded with clothes, to be placed into piles and piles. The ready spaces to fill and the complete acceptance freely given. The no need for apologies and thanks, and the response of gratitude to gratitude.
Thank you. Thank YOU.
Friday, July 9, 2010
sharing
During a long conversation of several hours, the kind that's really a flowing string of prolonged jokes and many long conversations interspersed with small comments, the kind that happens over the course of time that stretches from a couch in a living room to non-matching chairs on a small balcony to standing on a rooftop against a wall on either sides of an open window--during one such conversation, there were thoughts like why writing, why paintings like Hopper's Room by the Sea and Wyeth's Christina's World, and why a song like Mad World by Gary Jules. In a stream of pockets between friends, there is fast and slow talk of how one person sees this ocean as warm and comforting and the other finds it cold and foreboding, and how the grass around Christina slightly darkens, and how we seek hauntingly dark songs for a spectrum of feeling. That song is so damn beautiful.
Some of that contributed to what I wrote about last time, some of the sense that there is too much; even when it's good, when it comes in layers and builds up into dense blocks it can be incapacitating. But that conversation(s) also made me excited about writing, because I was pushed to articulate what lies at the bottom of that urge to put things in words. Which is that when things are experienced and felt strongly, you want to share them. And this phenomenon is most reliable when it's beauty. The beautiful quality of beautiful things inspires the sharing of them. There are probably a million reasons underlying this and more reasons existing in its periphery, but this is the feeling undiluted by explanation and psychology.
Since that time, I've fought hard against the turbulence of last week that made me sluggish, and in that have naturally fallen into a flexible routine. Within that space there's been an immersion in small beautiful things.
Mornings are spent in the architecture library. I like entering the place with the neat columned wooden bookshelves and artwork above, like a picture to be taken (but I don't, because I go there every day). The deep orange carpet and long smooth tables are calming, and there's a vertical window from floor to almost ceiling across the way, to see people come and go in their own proportion. There are very few people there these days, and I stay there for a few hours before I go home for lunch.
This morning, in those hours, during a pause when I let myself savor a song and stare out the window, I thought about how you always want to share music that moves you. I was listening to The Antlers' Hospice. It's an album my oldest friend introduced me to, when I was studying for Step 1 of the boards--over a year ago. It touched me then, but over the year I've grown to really love it. I like listening to albums in their entirety, for the full stories, even songs to which I'm not partial (writing that sentence grammatically correctly is kind of lame). Sometimes songs just aren't good, but sometimes you get an album like Hospice, where some songs are difficult to get into, but over time you really listen and then one day every song makes whatever it is in us that feels, explode. And it does it not with easy tricks, but with real, honest sentiments that are sometimes so much harder to communicate. I like how often the words are incongruous with the melodies, in a way that isn't about conflict, but about many things existing at once. Seeing passersby as this washed over, I wanted every one of them to have it happen to them too.
I walk back home for lunch, and cook something easy that I can have for both meals of the day. It's amazing how different, concretely and otherwise, it feels to have fresh food in your fridge, and to eat your own food. I'm going to make my own food for the rest of my life for as long as I can, because in the midst of everything else, it's so satisfying to care for your basic needs, and to know that the taking care of them can be basic too.
After passing time to digest by studying a bit more at home, I go running. I've found that one thing I really love about this is that it coincides with my love of long stretches of time. Running for an hour gives time to listen to an entire album and then some, or to a smattering of songs when I feel like it, and to be immersed in movement. The gym is also pretty empty these days, especially in the mid-afternoon, and this is a welcome break in the day.
It's also nice to shower in the middle of the day. It's almost like starting again, and makes the studies feel not so prolonged. But the studies, for the most part, have been good. Going through a different area of medicine each day, I remember the actual experience of the rotation in the past year, which is something I haven't been able to draw upon in the past. It's not that I remember anything scientific or clinical better because of those experiences; it's that spaces are filled in and studying becomes three-dimensional. Studying ob-gyn, I remembered what it was like to first consider the physical experience of miscarriage, to witness how abortions were performed, to squeeze into the corner of a crash C-section, and all the life that happens. Studying rheumatology, I remembered what it was like to think about living with constant pain in your muscles and joints, to speak to the people who have molded their skins to accommodate their illnesses, to appreciate the care and tenderness with which my attending physician touched their hands and bones. Studying renal, I remembered when I first thought about how simple and creative dialysis as a concept is and how awful and foreign it can be for the person being dialyzed, and how I felt a visual miracle to see the kidney go from gray to pink during a transplant surgery. And throughout all of that, there's the science and body alone, how dynamic we are and how a lot of the way our body functions are weird phenomenons. That's a post for another time.
I get distracted easily, of course. Yesterday I looked at photographs of my brother's trip to Wyoming, and that led to an hour of daydreams of road trips and open spaces under big clouds. I immediately shared them, and our nature loving friend said, these pictures make me want to stab myself in the heart and explode. My favorite pictures are ones where the muted browns/grays of the rocky backdrop contrast with other vibrancy in the scene; natural things that exist as they should, vivid trees and bright sturdy houses, and a rainbow after rain. It's as though their color, and presence, don't quite belong, but they're there, a quiet surprise that just about made me want to die.
In the late afternoon and evenings, I take a pick of coffeeshops. In the evening I spend time with someone whose presence I enjoy; this can be anything from eating with wife or studying at The Study, a posh hotel lobby and restaurant, with a classmate who's also wearing shorts and also not buying anything. Or it can be an activity like climbing or dinner with friends, something to look forward to and something to remind that there's not only things worthy of sharing, but people worth sharing them with.
Some nights I sneak in a few pages of Murakami's Hard-Boiled Wonderland & the End of the World, a book that steadily flowed along and has spun into a heartaching last quarter. Murakami is something else I've consistently wanted to share, so much due to how much I feel he sees and shares. The part of the book in which I'm currently residing, shouts that conflict and imperfection and all this mix-up I feel is, if nothing else, honest and therefore, worth it.
Before sleep I feel things I try to hang onto upon waking, and these days it's been the sense that all these things add up to a minuscule percent of a percent of all that can be experienced. It's how heavy that feels, in our hands, and then how light it is buried at the bottom of what's been and what can be; this is why.
Some of that contributed to what I wrote about last time, some of the sense that there is too much; even when it's good, when it comes in layers and builds up into dense blocks it can be incapacitating. But that conversation(s) also made me excited about writing, because I was pushed to articulate what lies at the bottom of that urge to put things in words. Which is that when things are experienced and felt strongly, you want to share them. And this phenomenon is most reliable when it's beauty. The beautiful quality of beautiful things inspires the sharing of them. There are probably a million reasons underlying this and more reasons existing in its periphery, but this is the feeling undiluted by explanation and psychology.
Since that time, I've fought hard against the turbulence of last week that made me sluggish, and in that have naturally fallen into a flexible routine. Within that space there's been an immersion in small beautiful things.
Mornings are spent in the architecture library. I like entering the place with the neat columned wooden bookshelves and artwork above, like a picture to be taken (but I don't, because I go there every day). The deep orange carpet and long smooth tables are calming, and there's a vertical window from floor to almost ceiling across the way, to see people come and go in their own proportion. There are very few people there these days, and I stay there for a few hours before I go home for lunch.
This morning, in those hours, during a pause when I let myself savor a song and stare out the window, I thought about how you always want to share music that moves you. I was listening to The Antlers' Hospice. It's an album my oldest friend introduced me to, when I was studying for Step 1 of the boards--over a year ago. It touched me then, but over the year I've grown to really love it. I like listening to albums in their entirety, for the full stories, even songs to which I'm not partial (writing that sentence grammatically correctly is kind of lame). Sometimes songs just aren't good, but sometimes you get an album like Hospice, where some songs are difficult to get into, but over time you really listen and then one day every song makes whatever it is in us that feels, explode. And it does it not with easy tricks, but with real, honest sentiments that are sometimes so much harder to communicate. I like how often the words are incongruous with the melodies, in a way that isn't about conflict, but about many things existing at once. Seeing passersby as this washed over, I wanted every one of them to have it happen to them too.
I walk back home for lunch, and cook something easy that I can have for both meals of the day. It's amazing how different, concretely and otherwise, it feels to have fresh food in your fridge, and to eat your own food. I'm going to make my own food for the rest of my life for as long as I can, because in the midst of everything else, it's so satisfying to care for your basic needs, and to know that the taking care of them can be basic too.
After passing time to digest by studying a bit more at home, I go running. I've found that one thing I really love about this is that it coincides with my love of long stretches of time. Running for an hour gives time to listen to an entire album and then some, or to a smattering of songs when I feel like it, and to be immersed in movement. The gym is also pretty empty these days, especially in the mid-afternoon, and this is a welcome break in the day.
It's also nice to shower in the middle of the day. It's almost like starting again, and makes the studies feel not so prolonged. But the studies, for the most part, have been good. Going through a different area of medicine each day, I remember the actual experience of the rotation in the past year, which is something I haven't been able to draw upon in the past. It's not that I remember anything scientific or clinical better because of those experiences; it's that spaces are filled in and studying becomes three-dimensional. Studying ob-gyn, I remembered what it was like to first consider the physical experience of miscarriage, to witness how abortions were performed, to squeeze into the corner of a crash C-section, and all the life that happens. Studying rheumatology, I remembered what it was like to think about living with constant pain in your muscles and joints, to speak to the people who have molded their skins to accommodate their illnesses, to appreciate the care and tenderness with which my attending physician touched their hands and bones. Studying renal, I remembered when I first thought about how simple and creative dialysis as a concept is and how awful and foreign it can be for the person being dialyzed, and how I felt a visual miracle to see the kidney go from gray to pink during a transplant surgery. And throughout all of that, there's the science and body alone, how dynamic we are and how a lot of the way our body functions are weird phenomenons. That's a post for another time.
I get distracted easily, of course. Yesterday I looked at photographs of my brother's trip to Wyoming, and that led to an hour of daydreams of road trips and open spaces under big clouds. I immediately shared them, and our nature loving friend said, these pictures make me want to stab myself in the heart and explode. My favorite pictures are ones where the muted browns/grays of the rocky backdrop contrast with other vibrancy in the scene; natural things that exist as they should, vivid trees and bright sturdy houses, and a rainbow after rain. It's as though their color, and presence, don't quite belong, but they're there, a quiet surprise that just about made me want to die.
In the late afternoon and evenings, I take a pick of coffeeshops. In the evening I spend time with someone whose presence I enjoy; this can be anything from eating with wife or studying at The Study, a posh hotel lobby and restaurant, with a classmate who's also wearing shorts and also not buying anything. Or it can be an activity like climbing or dinner with friends, something to look forward to and something to remind that there's not only things worthy of sharing, but people worth sharing them with.
Some nights I sneak in a few pages of Murakami's Hard-Boiled Wonderland & the End of the World, a book that steadily flowed along and has spun into a heartaching last quarter. Murakami is something else I've consistently wanted to share, so much due to how much I feel he sees and shares. The part of the book in which I'm currently residing, shouts that conflict and imperfection and all this mix-up I feel is, if nothing else, honest and therefore, worth it.
Before sleep I feel things I try to hang onto upon waking, and these days it's been the sense that all these things add up to a minuscule percent of a percent of all that can be experienced. It's how heavy that feels, in our hands, and then how light it is buried at the bottom of what's been and what can be; this is why.
Monday, July 5, 2010
coming back
Since I returned to New Haven about exactly a week ago, I've been feeling out of sorts. The out-of-sorts feeling is out-of-sorts itself, as it's a fluid thing whose quality changes with the seconds, the temperature, the walls or windows, and with nothing at all. Its source and its course is never quite one thing for very long. A lot of things are happening or at least going on, and in the midst of it I feel messy and moody. Messy is status quo, but what's changed is that with it there is unease instead of easy acceptance, and moody is unusual. Writing about it will probably feel the same.
Leaving my family was difficult, even as I'll be returning to them in a few weeks. Even though my parents don't change much at all in the intervals between my seeing them, time always claims more weight when I see them. When I'm with them, I find myself wanting not vacation time but daily time, the kind that lends itself to stray stories and details of their lives that fall here and there. My mom is constantly losing her jewelry because she isn't careful with where she places her earrings and watches and rings after taking them off; I'm constantly telling her to simply put them back in the same place. As I help her search underneath the bed and by the sink, I miss her. When I come back to lose my own earrings, I miss her.
For some reason I wrestle with small decisions like spending the month of July at home or here. I had ultimately decided to study for Step 2 of the boards here in New Haven, instead of going home as I did for Step 1. Having to hop from place to place to study and with all the places closing early in the night for summer, I've missed my corner by the window with a steady view of Fremont hills and passersby. Leaving my family after our trip, and having it really hit me that I have two more years here, makes me wish I'd taken the opportunity to be home for a full month. At the same time, I appreciate having other things going on here for escape and a sense that I still function as a person outside of books. I know that I wouldn't have been completely satisfied at home either; still, this knowledge that I wouldn't have had a perfect decision in any case doesn't move the sense that this was an imperfect one.
A big reason for my staying was to spend time with a friend who will soon be leaving for most of the rest of the year, and in that sense I feel I'm in the right place. On my first real night back, we had an impromptu dinner at his place, as we've had sporadically over the past couple of years; a couple nights later we planned a potluck, as we've had sporadically over the past couple of years. This time it took place on the roof of the apartment building, with shadows a light black against the deep yellow that the sun becomes when it's retiring. The food was a hodgepodge, the cups included small bowls, and the girls wore oversized coats supplied by our favorite nature-lover who always has plenty of coats and who threw chicken bones over the side and who wanted to fly. The directions of New Haven sprawled as we ate and laughed, and I feel so lucky to have people who have so defined my time here.
How sharp that definition has been, surprised me a bit. A lot of my close friends are currently scattered about the world, and I can feel their absence. I also feel the absence of parallel doings; I'm the only one studying for my boards right now, and that has felt strangely strange. As I'll be spending most of my year off being the only of us to be doing whatever I'll be doing (an unstructured mix of writing, processing, and talking), it bothers me a little that I'm bothered by being alone in my endeavors. I had thought this solitude would be welcome. I'm finding that as much as I hate crowds sometimes, I really love individuals, and I've missed many of them upon my return to a place where they've been for so long. Of course they will come back, but they will come and go, as we are all forming our own structure right now.
And the challenge of that, for myself, is one that I hadn't fully recognized as such. I never acknowledged the change that is going from third year (the introduction to/immersion in clinical medicine, and our toughest year) to fifth year (a gap year where we choose pretty much what we want to do). I hadn't given much thought to what this freedom and self-guidance means, and more specifically, that it can be difficult. I completely set my own goals this year, and completely set my own ways to go about them, which is wonderful, and daunting. More than that, or more purely than that, it's different. The simple fact of change happened as I blinked, and the unawareness is another rarity, something that has made me feel not myself.
Not that I didn't think about this year's approach--when third year ended, I looked forward to time and space to digest all that's happened. I forgot that I first have to get through the harder parts of the year first, my board exam and my medicine subinternship, both intense endeavors that leave little room for the little things. I resent being restricted, when I feel flooded with things that want for my attention. Again I'm conflicted, as I'd looked forward to really getting down to it and consolidating all we've learned in the past few years that has accumulated in the clinical knowledge that'll be tested. And to be honest, it has felt good to study. I'm surprised by things I remember from studying for the boards last year, things like how the fungus malassezia furfur causes tinea versicolor and looks like spaghetti and meatballs under a microscope, and how rhizopus causes mucormycosis in diabetics (I think I just like the words). I like reading the questions, which are written as cases with symptoms and findings and test results, and I'm aware of each acronym and number I didn't understand just a year ago. Concentrating on the science for hours has also let me put other things, things that aren't so rational and organized, at rest for awhile.
There are a lot of those things. My hives, along with lip swelling, recurred intermittently over the past few weeks, and after several trips to the doctor I'm following a regimen of daily claritin for a month, to break the cycle of histamine outburst in my body. Other than the physical inconvenience, I don't like thinking about what internal happenings my body is reacting to. This past weekend emotional impulses and ruminating responses usurped my abilities to sleep and eat correctly. The fatigue and dizziness that followed was annoying less for the actual senses and more for the knowledge it was my own doing.
In less physical and equally consuming areas, I'm scared and excited about the prospect of spending this year writing. I have a pile of one-line stories, of experiences and things I want to record. I'm annoyed that currently, I can't get to them, and a small part of me is glad for some more delay as I struggle with fears of not-good-enough and not-sure-enough, and doubts about purpose and product.
In terms of life outside of lined paper and blank computer screens, I'm pretty sure it's impossible for me to have simple interactions, and while I know that misunderstandings and bumps in communication and nonlinear connections are always part of the space between people, I really do wish that sometimes I could find myself in something simple. And with that, I miss innocence. I miss when certain moments don't have to lead anywhere else, and when an accumulation of moments take you honestly and naturally to a place where pride and perceptions give way to vulnerability. I've found myself feeling deeply and strongly on one end of the spectrum to the other, in the course of days and nights, and in that yet another conflict, I've grown tired.
Immersed in this push and shove, and mix of so many components alternately distinct and connected, I've decided, both rationally and emotionally, to simplify for the time being. It's not how I approach things as a principle; I want to learn to face multiple complications and find balance. But right now, it's a bit too much.
For July I want to do the things that give good--and give it simply. As integral as they are to me, I'm going to avoid sources of complicated or layered good. I'm going to concentrate on learning as much medicine as I can, to do well on the exam and to prepare for my subinternship and to be a competent doctor. I'm going to go grocery shopping for what I'll need for the next few weeks, to cook and to eat well and to save money. I'll run most days and climb on the days I don't, to stay healthy and to have breaks in the day when I'm moving and to feel good. I'm going to be with friends, to laugh a lot and to have conversation and to have company. For all the rest, I'm letting it rest.
Leaving my family was difficult, even as I'll be returning to them in a few weeks. Even though my parents don't change much at all in the intervals between my seeing them, time always claims more weight when I see them. When I'm with them, I find myself wanting not vacation time but daily time, the kind that lends itself to stray stories and details of their lives that fall here and there. My mom is constantly losing her jewelry because she isn't careful with where she places her earrings and watches and rings after taking them off; I'm constantly telling her to simply put them back in the same place. As I help her search underneath the bed and by the sink, I miss her. When I come back to lose my own earrings, I miss her.
For some reason I wrestle with small decisions like spending the month of July at home or here. I had ultimately decided to study for Step 2 of the boards here in New Haven, instead of going home as I did for Step 1. Having to hop from place to place to study and with all the places closing early in the night for summer, I've missed my corner by the window with a steady view of Fremont hills and passersby. Leaving my family after our trip, and having it really hit me that I have two more years here, makes me wish I'd taken the opportunity to be home for a full month. At the same time, I appreciate having other things going on here for escape and a sense that I still function as a person outside of books. I know that I wouldn't have been completely satisfied at home either; still, this knowledge that I wouldn't have had a perfect decision in any case doesn't move the sense that this was an imperfect one.
A big reason for my staying was to spend time with a friend who will soon be leaving for most of the rest of the year, and in that sense I feel I'm in the right place. On my first real night back, we had an impromptu dinner at his place, as we've had sporadically over the past couple of years; a couple nights later we planned a potluck, as we've had sporadically over the past couple of years. This time it took place on the roof of the apartment building, with shadows a light black against the deep yellow that the sun becomes when it's retiring. The food was a hodgepodge, the cups included small bowls, and the girls wore oversized coats supplied by our favorite nature-lover who always has plenty of coats and who threw chicken bones over the side and who wanted to fly. The directions of New Haven sprawled as we ate and laughed, and I feel so lucky to have people who have so defined my time here.
How sharp that definition has been, surprised me a bit. A lot of my close friends are currently scattered about the world, and I can feel their absence. I also feel the absence of parallel doings; I'm the only one studying for my boards right now, and that has felt strangely strange. As I'll be spending most of my year off being the only of us to be doing whatever I'll be doing (an unstructured mix of writing, processing, and talking), it bothers me a little that I'm bothered by being alone in my endeavors. I had thought this solitude would be welcome. I'm finding that as much as I hate crowds sometimes, I really love individuals, and I've missed many of them upon my return to a place where they've been for so long. Of course they will come back, but they will come and go, as we are all forming our own structure right now.
And the challenge of that, for myself, is one that I hadn't fully recognized as such. I never acknowledged the change that is going from third year (the introduction to/immersion in clinical medicine, and our toughest year) to fifth year (a gap year where we choose pretty much what we want to do). I hadn't given much thought to what this freedom and self-guidance means, and more specifically, that it can be difficult. I completely set my own goals this year, and completely set my own ways to go about them, which is wonderful, and daunting. More than that, or more purely than that, it's different. The simple fact of change happened as I blinked, and the unawareness is another rarity, something that has made me feel not myself.
Not that I didn't think about this year's approach--when third year ended, I looked forward to time and space to digest all that's happened. I forgot that I first have to get through the harder parts of the year first, my board exam and my medicine subinternship, both intense endeavors that leave little room for the little things. I resent being restricted, when I feel flooded with things that want for my attention. Again I'm conflicted, as I'd looked forward to really getting down to it and consolidating all we've learned in the past few years that has accumulated in the clinical knowledge that'll be tested. And to be honest, it has felt good to study. I'm surprised by things I remember from studying for the boards last year, things like how the fungus malassezia furfur causes tinea versicolor and looks like spaghetti and meatballs under a microscope, and how rhizopus causes mucormycosis in diabetics (I think I just like the words). I like reading the questions, which are written as cases with symptoms and findings and test results, and I'm aware of each acronym and number I didn't understand just a year ago. Concentrating on the science for hours has also let me put other things, things that aren't so rational and organized, at rest for awhile.
There are a lot of those things. My hives, along with lip swelling, recurred intermittently over the past few weeks, and after several trips to the doctor I'm following a regimen of daily claritin for a month, to break the cycle of histamine outburst in my body. Other than the physical inconvenience, I don't like thinking about what internal happenings my body is reacting to. This past weekend emotional impulses and ruminating responses usurped my abilities to sleep and eat correctly. The fatigue and dizziness that followed was annoying less for the actual senses and more for the knowledge it was my own doing.
In less physical and equally consuming areas, I'm scared and excited about the prospect of spending this year writing. I have a pile of one-line stories, of experiences and things I want to record. I'm annoyed that currently, I can't get to them, and a small part of me is glad for some more delay as I struggle with fears of not-good-enough and not-sure-enough, and doubts about purpose and product.
In terms of life outside of lined paper and blank computer screens, I'm pretty sure it's impossible for me to have simple interactions, and while I know that misunderstandings and bumps in communication and nonlinear connections are always part of the space between people, I really do wish that sometimes I could find myself in something simple. And with that, I miss innocence. I miss when certain moments don't have to lead anywhere else, and when an accumulation of moments take you honestly and naturally to a place where pride and perceptions give way to vulnerability. I've found myself feeling deeply and strongly on one end of the spectrum to the other, in the course of days and nights, and in that yet another conflict, I've grown tired.
Immersed in this push and shove, and mix of so many components alternately distinct and connected, I've decided, both rationally and emotionally, to simplify for the time being. It's not how I approach things as a principle; I want to learn to face multiple complications and find balance. But right now, it's a bit too much.
For July I want to do the things that give good--and give it simply. As integral as they are to me, I'm going to avoid sources of complicated or layered good. I'm going to concentrate on learning as much medicine as I can, to do well on the exam and to prepare for my subinternship and to be a competent doctor. I'm going to go grocery shopping for what I'll need for the next few weeks, to cook and to eat well and to save money. I'll run most days and climb on the days I don't, to stay healthy and to have breaks in the day when I'm moving and to feel good. I'm going to be with friends, to laugh a lot and to have conversation and to have company. For all the rest, I'm letting it rest.
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