six weeks

Back in Connecticut, today was the first day of third year. We were advised to be present: to be aware of where we are in a moment and to stop thinking about where else we need to be or what we should do after this moment is over. During the lecture about how to manage stress, it was suggested to write things down as they happen, so they don't slip as days pile upon one another. I'd meant to catch up on some things during our trip to Prague, but that didn't work out for various reasons. One of the things that has frustrated me most in med school is not having time and energy to reflect in thought and writing all the things in which we're immersed. I recall clearly deciding to not spend my life writing because I had nothing to write about, to experience instead so that I'd have something to say; medicine has brought me closer to that, has given me much to say but in the process often takes from me the capacity to form sentences.

One piece of advice was to just get things down, even if incoherent. I used to do that often, but somewhere between that and now, have done it much less. The idea is to capture your immediate impression; that you can return to it later, give it real form and thought later. I worry very much that I never will return to it, that there's too much; that I can't fully describe how I feel in a moment without more time and energy, and so I should only write when I have all the time and energy I need, and since I won't settle for less, I end up doing nothing. While I'm somewhat proud of this stubbornness about taking care about completeness, I realize that in some circumstances you do have to work with limitations, not just ignore them.

In theory this would mean I would jot down the overwhelming amount of stuff thrown at us today, but there is a lot of past too and I'd like to share that first, even if insignificant. I know I can't spend my life catching up to myself, but for the next two weeks before we start in the hospital where I have to be present, I'd like to have that luxury.

So to go back to what feels like way way back, the six weeks I spent at home studying for the Boards was pretty wonderful. I'm not sure how the test itself went, and while I learned a lot, it didn't quite feel like enough. I'll talk about that whole process maybe later. But other things happened, and for those I'm proud and glad.

I ate all my meals with my parents, and my brothers came home on the weekends for the more elaborate meals my mom would make. The first few days I returned, Fremont was gray and green. I studied in a room with a window facing the street, and we live on a busy street. I had three second glimpses of people as they passed from the left edge of my window to the right, or the other way: teenagers walking home from school, missionaries going door to door, parents wheeling strollers, dogs on leashes, stray cats, a man collecting cans in a shopping cart, young couples, old couples, people talking to themselves and each other, various runners with different running styles, a woman singing and running into her notes as they flowed forward and she walked after them.

I ran a few miles every couple days, all on the treadmill after my first week at home, which I know surprises everyone because people think I'm really unathletic (which I am, except for in elementary school but no one believes me when I tell them I was good at sports back then) and because when I do run it's always outside. I started because it got too hot in the afternoons to go outside, and despite sleeping fine for the most part I was too tired to run in the mornings. So I grew to love the treadmill, which faces away from the screen door to our backyard, in our living room. I'd open the screen to make it feel more like outside, and I grew to love the mechanics of running on a machine, of focusing purely on movement (not even forward movement, obviously, just moving), rather than surroundings and surrounding feelings. I was disappointed to realize it'd take me much longer than I anticipated to work up to a decent pace, after many years of irregularity, but it did motivate me to continue. I also started to like milk (I do tally this on my list of accomplishments), because it was the only cold drink we had. It was really satisfying to have everything I needed to run at home. Just changed in my room, went downstairs to the living room for the treadmill, panted my way to the kitchen for milk, then back upstairs to shower.

I finished one book during Boards studying (in my small defense, it was a long one)--The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Murakami. It's up there with my favorites of his. Much of it was dark, and I'd go to sleep unsure. Through it all there was something to hang onto, as is usual with even his strangest contexts and characters most disconnected from things. And in this book amidst all the unbelievably expressive and knowing and detail, there were in particular two pages that I may hang onto the rest of my life.

I didn't get to see friends as much as I would've liked, only seeing my high school friends the day before I left for Prague. I did fly to LA for a day to see Iron & Wine at the Troubadour with my oldest friend. Awhile ago I posted about my top songs and none of them included Iron & Wine, even though he is one of my top artists. This is because what I love in his music runs through everything he writes, and the whole experience of hearing Iron & Wine with someone close to me who values that feeling, felt like that, where places and events and things lose definition and become vessels for something ineffable and common in all of them. He ended with Trapeze Swinger, which is a long song and one I'd been listening to often before the show. It's a beautiful beautiful song and one that will always make me think of that moment in the show, and also the walk in the cool night to the venue before the show, and the car ride afterwards which I remember as a long straight road punctuated by streetlights, though I'm not entirely sure it was that way the whole time.

I said goodbye to my great-aunt, and the funeral is something else I'd like to write about, and separately. I wasn't close to her, but I tried to stay close to what it meant. I can't say that I was always able to completely focus on it, with the hectic background of studying and other things, which forced me to consider balance and my role in that. It also made me glad to be with my mom, who is much nicer to me than I deserve and who did teach me to make a couple of her dishes. Not quite as many as I wanted, due to her cooking hours before I got up in the morning; by the time I was getting up early enough, I was trying to make up for lost time in studying. But now I can (theoretically) make my favorite spring rolls and savory crepes? pancakes? Not really like either, but yellow and crispy and eaten with fish sauce and lots of lettuce and herbs.

I also cut off about 12 inches of my hair. I needed 10 to donate to Locks of Love, so the hairdresser asked me if I wanted to keep that extra 2 inches, but I told her to just take it all. So instead of messy wavy hair down my back, I have manageable straightness to just my shoulders. Even though I don't like the look of the haircut much, it felt pretty good to make a dramatic change, after growing it out for two years. Other tidbits at home included getting my white coat tailored to my actual size, getting a new backpack, and finishing a roll of film.

Writing about things awhile after I've thought of them is hard, and dissatisfying in the knowledge that it's inadequate. The intersection of language, or my language, and feelings makes me feel that it's always inadequate, even when I write in the moment, but this feels more so. Still, I'm really very glad to be able to do at least this.