body

Maybe it's anatomy, or running in the mornings, or Body Worlds tomorrow, or talk of organ donations, or M & A's resolutions to gym & hot yoga it up in the new year, or Mike S's musings on naked parties, or something completely unrelated...but I've been thinking a lot about my body. I've mentioned before that my body is pretty aware of me--it inevitably responds to my stress and anxiety in the form of rashes, canker sores, sleep deprivation, exhaustion. On my end, I haven't been too good at reciprocating, haven't paid much attention to my body. I make observations and pick up on the details, but I don't consider it like I do other aspects of myself. Like Aud says, I'm too self-aware...which is true, and also paradoxically the reason I become blind to certain things. So this is going to turn out to be a pretty superficial and self-centered entry, but I suppose most my and blog entries are.

Mike mentioned that at naked parties (okay, I'd never even heard of those until this conversation), you see that every body has its imperfections. I thought that was an interesting insight to have during a naked party and made me think on what I try to hide and what I value. I feel lucky to have been in environments and around people that make me loving of even those things I hide, of those fragilities. It makes the imperfections things that I seek to describe, understand, articulate.

Since running at home, I've confirmed that my feet are abnormally sensitive. Some people think all feet are unattractive, but I don't think that's true. I think it's definitely true of mine. They blister really easily, especially on the sole below my big toe, and my heels have a coarse quality more typical of someone who actually is physically active. They remind me of my dad's, except my dad stood 14 hour days and I bum like no other. And the nails on my toes just grow awkwardly.

My skin in general doesn't stay healthy for long; it dries easily because I love really hot water in the shower and probably because I was born that way. The skin that comprises the boundary between fingernail and fingertip is really sensitive to cold and sometimes cracks so that I bleed. I'm not very good at moisturizing either. While I like my hands in general, they're not attractive either. I can't keep my nails long or even nicely trimmed or maintained, because I have this habit of peeling them, which everyone thinks is disgusting and I find soothing.

Besides shying away from letting a significant other's feet touch mine and discover their lack of appeal, I hesitate to shed the shorts over a bathing suit on the beach. I've gotten used to the fact that my thighs (and calves) are bigger (the few people I've mentioned this to scoff, so to clarify, I mean--proportionally to the rest of me, okay, not absolutely). I actually kind of appreciate that now (the thighs, not so much the calves--which I'm also not really fond of because of how my skin gains a spotty quality there). I appreciate them because it's the little thought I think to myself and fold in my hands whenever someone comments on me being too small or thin. I keep it for me and then feel no urge to defend myself. But anyway so the hesitation isn't due to that; it's because I developed the inevitable stretch marks early on, before I even knew it was normal and was kind of freaked out by them. So those are there. Probably forever.

I've grown out my hair the longest it's ever been, and the tangles that arise because I don't brush my hair become particularly apparent when I'm at home and there's no conditioner to smooth them out. When I was little I never brushed my hair. When it got so tangled that my mom forced me to brush, the brush got stuck in my hair and that was a mess. I swear that ever since then, that spot in my hair grows in tangled--even after cutting it and growing back as new hair, it gets impossibly tangled in that one spot, becomes a ball of uncombable string.

Some of these things never bothered me, a few I grew to accept on my own, others were loved and cared for in a way that comforted and reassured.

My favorite bone is the clavicle, because it's what I like most on myself, the way you can feel it and how it's the most easily fractured bone in the body. I especially like where the clavicles meet, the hollow beneath your neck...which I learned in anatomy is unromantically called the sternal notch. It's an actual space, and you can press into it and feel its texture and contours different from the bones leading into it.

As much as people tell you appearances don't matter, I think senses do. Feeling the cold sole of worn feet against thick calves when you cross your legs, running ragged fingertips along an arm to relieve an itch, tugging on that mass of messy hair when you have to stop being a homebody and go out in public, holding or being held by that hollow when you are vulnerable and loving. It can be as much you as those things inside.

anastomoses

I used to think that fiction would bring about my downfall, but am finding that scientific fact is contributing too. Each offers a glimpse of beauty whose existence I appreciate and consequently strive to possess, but can't quite create for myself.

Everyone here turns to me when they want to know in what context the word "satiate" can be used or which Shakespeare play "Get thee to a nunnery" is from or what some eight-letter word means. I've almost never been able to give an accurate or complete answer. I would like to explain to everyone that for me, studying literature means only appreciation, not expertise. We speak the same language; I don't know any secrets. I can't verbalize myself any better than you--I'm probably worse at it because I value all the feelings and know none of the constructs.

On the other end of the spectrum, Aud says that I'm already using a different language now that I'm in medical school (something everyone warns you about). Three months of massive amounts of material and learning later, I find myself with a new vocabulary but little fluency. I know a lot of multisyllabic words but don't expect me to tell you a story.

"Kafka on the Shore" alternates chapters between two narrators whose stories appear disparate and converge as the novel goes on. A familiar device, but Murakami is aware of its contrived nature. He makes us conscious that he's conscious of it. We grow to understand that the point is not that this kind of connection actually exists. In fact, the out-of-reality happenings remind us that this doesn't happen and won't happen. The point is we can substantiate our underlying desire for connection in fiction. Murakami never confirms the connection, never actually says that this could happen, but nudges us and says, but doesn't it make sense to happen this way? Isn't it beautiful this way, doesn't it hurt in that lovely aching way and make you breathe slightly irregularly?

In anatomy we hear "anastomosis" over and over. Two arteries start from the same source (the aorta), branch off and become different things (the posterior and anterior intercostal arteries), then these different things come back and converge. So it does happen in a concrete thing, and it makes sense, and it's beautiful in how it works. Every part of the body is related to another, and it is a system of connections that keeps you breathing so you can tell when someone like Murakami comes along and makes you breathe offbeat.

But that's a body and that's a book, and this is me.

the family you choose

Last week, late Saturday night, I brought some cookies to Bibhav's room and we were chatting when Don came by and told us that there was free food downstairs at Marigold's. We were enticed by his plate of rice and chicken, so we got Guson and went to get some. There were three long foil trays filled with rice, pork and chicken. I started eating and thought I'd bring back a plate of leftovers for the next day. Guson then says, why don't we take all the trays back. I ask him where we're going to put all this food. He thinks we can fit it in my fridge. My microfridge which can't hold a carton of milk unless it's lying sideways. He's convinced. We each take a tray up to my room. For the next hour we take apart the shelves in my fridge, fold the trays every which way, take out some rice, put the tray back in to see it not fit, take out some more rice. Guson works at this patiently and oblivious to the ridiculous nature of his effort, while Bibhav grows tired and curls up on the linoleum floor to nap, and I stare in wonder at the whole episode.

Somehow it fits, and the boys promptly arrive for lunch the next day with Jen to help us out. We eat the leftovers for four meals: take out the foil trays, scoop heaps of food onto plastic plates, stuff the trays back in, clean the rice that's spilled onto the floor, transfer food from plate to plate since only one of them is microwaveable, heat them until our plastic plate cracks, wash the disposable ones that still work, divide the heaps, pick at the bones, finish each other's food. Sometimes we supplement the meal with tea whose leaves occupy most of the cup volume because we don't use a strainer, or maple candy, or burnt cookies. Somewhere along the continuum of this ritual, we form a family in which I am the mom, Bibhav is the silly kid, Guson is the grumpy grandpa, and Jen is the auntie.



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A representative conversation:

B: When's dinner?
G: I'm eating Marigold's.
K: Haha, I TOLD you you wouldn't finish the leftovers. If other people want leftovers let me know but otherwise maybe it'd be good to save for when we have everyone since it takes work to heat and wash. Is that okay Grandpa? Whoever Grandpa is.
B: Doesn't look like there is much choice Mommy. Fine. Eating with Grandpa it is. Stupid Grandpa.
G: Don't disrespect your elders, whippersnapper.
B: Sorry. Nice to see you have accepted your position though.
G: I was telling Kim the other day that, technically, this means I'm her daddy (ooo)
J: You could be the paternal grandfather, you know.
K: I told Jen you all are adopted. I don't know where the grandpa came from. He just arrived one day and stayed.
G: There is no father in this family. Bibhav is a bastard.
B: Adopted bastards are cool. Uninvited grandpas who won't leave and moreover, are Korean, are not cool.
G: Grandpas who steal booze and trays of Indian food are cool.
B: Shut up Guson.
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I love my family.